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When a parent wishes to come or migrate to Australia it is necessary to obtain a Visa in order to do so, and it is called a parent visa. Of course that parent needs to have either a stepchild, adopted child, or natural child be either a settled eligible or settled permanent inhabitant of either Australia or New Zealand.

Further the applicants need to have at least ½ of their children permanently living in Australia, and have more of their children living in Australia than in other countries. Continue Reading

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Here at Getting Down Under HQ we’ve focused our efforts on publishing news and articles specific to what’s going on in the world of Australian Immigration right now.

The thing is, there isn’t ALWAYS something going on (of interest to our readers anyway). This means that the pages of our site don’t update as often as we’d like them to and if you are one of the many folks who visit our site every day, it’s not going to be particularly exciting for you either!

With this in mind, we have decided to introduce a number of articles written by guest authors. These Articles are focused on educating our Getting Down under readers on the process of migrating to Australia and we’ll look to publish a new article every day for at least the next couple of weeks. If the articles prove to be a popular introduction then we’ll look to source some more. Continue Reading

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Australia Immigration figures show applications for 457 visas (temporary skilled workers visas) fell 49 per cent in the five months to November, after the laws were tightened requiring employers to pay equal wages and lift conditions for foreign workers.

Despite these changes, the numbers for the same visa class began to pick up through October and November as employers became more familiar with the rules. Currently, more than a third of the country’s temporary skilled migrants work in NSW.

The Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said a report released Monday on temporary workers provided evidence the changes were having the intended effect as the Australian average salary jumped to AU$85,300, from $74,700 in the same period a year earlier. Continue Reading

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Western Australia job advertisements surged 6% in December which is the strongest monthly growth since May 2007.

Experts say that the renewal of the mining boom could force business to compete ferociously for workers. This isn’t good news for businesses in WA but it could be great news for folks looking to migrate to the state.

Just one day after Western Australia was declared the nations best-performing economy, treasurer Troy Buswell called for a state-based migration scheme as WA businesses were warned to brace themselves for skilled labour shortages. Continue Reading

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So before I even begin to tackle this sensitive subject, let me give you a little context behind the purpose of this article.

Today the federal government said the Indian media is unlikely to show restraint when reporting on alleged racism in Australia. India’s foreign ministry has called on its media to exercise restraint when reporting on recent attacks on Indians in Australia.

The call follows media reports that suggest the stabbing death of Nitin Garg in Melbourne on January 2 and Saturday’s attack on Jaspreet Singh, who suffered burns after being allegedly set alight, were racially motivated.

So there we have it, more attacks on Indian students but are they racially motivated? Continue Reading

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Hi all, well for our more regular visitors, you may have noticed that the availability of Getting Down Under has been very off and on of late.

Since January 2006, Getting Down Under has been hosted on it’s own server located in (of all places) Texas!

As technology has evolved we’ve found ourselves becoming a little left behind and the recent crash was a sign that we needed to move our site to a more stable host.

With this in mind on Friday morning we started to backup out site in preperation for the move to a new web host and it was during this process that our old server completly died! Continue Reading

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Wanted Down Under makes a return to the BBC with Series 4 Being aired this Monday at 10am on BBC 1.

I think this is the first time that Wanted Down Under has made it’s way onto BBC 1 with the last few series being relegated to obscure times of the day on BBC 2.

For those looking to Migrate to Australia, wanted down under has proved to be a very popular series to watch and I’d really love to hear your views of the latest Wanted Down Under series  if you’ve seen one of the programs which has gone to air so far? Continue Reading

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So I’ve been getting updates on email and Facebook from friends back in the UK and the general consensus of opinion seems to be that the snow was great over Christmas however everyone is kind of getting ‘over it’ now.

Looking on the BBC’s website today it looks like the severity of the bitterly cold weather is causing significant disruptions across the UK and much of Northern Europe with over 16 inches of snow being recorded in a 24 hour period in some places!

If it’s any consolation for those getting a little fed up, the weather down in Australia can cause problems to. I saw the attached poster on the train yesterday and it made me chuckle. So much so that I had to take a picture of it to share with our Getting Down Under readers. Continue Reading

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Hey Everyone

We’ve recently updated some software on the server that hosts Getting Down Under and this has caused some significant issues with out forums.

Let me take this opportunity to apologise for the downtime. We are trouble shooting the issue with our host and VBulletin (the guys who make the software we use for the forums) and hope to have everything back on line as soon as possible.

Please feel free to keep in touch by either posting a comment at the bottom of this post or via the discussion option within the Getting Down Under Facebook Group which you can view by clicking here. Continue Reading

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From today (1st of January 2010), applicants applying for an offshore GSM visa who are nominating a trade occupation will no longer be able to meet the Australian Study Requirement. These applicants are now only able to meet the work experience criterion.

Work experience means that an applicant must have been employed in a skilled occupation for a minimum of 12 months of the 24 months immediately before the day on which the visa application was made.

This change relates to the following visa subclasses: Continue Reading

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Hey all, well it’s nearly 1 am down under on the 1st of January 2010!

Much food has been eaten and much wine and beer has already been drunk

With that in mind, this is a very short post to wish you all the very best for 2010.May this year be the year that your down under dreams really do come true.

All the best and enjoy the new years break!

Regards

Mark

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From the 1st of January, as part of the skills assessment process for certain onshore GSM applicants who nominate a trade occupation, applicants will be required to demonstrate that they are ‘job ready’.

This new requirement will be assessed through the Job Ready Program (previously referred to as the Job Ready Test). The Job Ready Program has been developed by the relevant assessing authority, Trades Recognition Australia (TRA), in consultation with industry and unions and will include a workplace assessment by a TRA approved assessor.

The new job ready requirement will ensure that people who wish to migrate to Australia as skilled migrants in trade occupations are able to participate in the labour market in the area of their skills and knowledge. Continue Reading

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VETASSESS conducts assessments for over 200 occupations for people applying to migrate to Australia under the General Skilled Migration (GSM) and Employer Nomination Schemes (ENS).

From the 1st of January 2010, VETASSESS will be changing the requirements for assessment against these “Generalist Occupations” which are managerial, administrative, professional and associate professional occupations.

The new assessment process will help to ensure that applicant’s who meet the requirements under the new process are job ready and have the relevant skills and qualifications for employment in Australia in their nominated occupation.

From 2010, in order to receive a positive assessment, you will need: Continue Reading

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Prior to the 1st of January 2010, applicants applying for permanent migration based on one of the onshore General Skilled Migration (GSM) visa subclasses were required, at time of application, to provide evidence that they had applied for a skills assessment by the relevant assessing authority. At time of decision, a suitable skills assessment was required.

From the 1st of January 2010, applicants applying for either the Skilled – Independent (Migrant) Visa (Subclass 885), Skilled – Sponsored (Migrant) Visa (Subclass 886) or the Skilled – Regional Sponsored (Migrant) Visa (Subclass 487) will be required to have obtained a suitable skills assessment prior to applying for migration in order for the application to be valid and assessed for a decision. Continue Reading

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G’day everyone! Well, in less that 14 hours time it’s going to be Christmas day here in Australia.

For those ‘enjoying’ the snow throughout many countries in the Northern hemisphere, you’ll be interested to know that it’s forecast to be a not so chilly 36 Celsius here in Australia tomorrow.

We’ve got the ‘outlaws’ over from Sydney this Christmas so were looking forward to what will be the largest ‘family Christmas’ we’ve had in the three years that we’ve now been here. All we need to do now is work out how to cram 60 hours of defrosting time for the turkey into 24. I’m sure we’ll be OK

I know when we were in the UK planning our move to Australia we spent many years saying ‘just imagine what it’ll be like…. Christmas in Australia’. I can concur that it is the most wonderful place to spend Christmas and the sweat, tears, frustrations and almost endless waiting really were worth it. Continue Reading

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From the 1st of January 2010, the Migration Regulations are being amended to allow Student visa holders who have been affected by the closure of their education provider in the preceding 12 months to lodge an application for a further Student visa to continue their studies and be entitled to a nil visa application charge.

Transitional provisions are being implemented from the 9th November 2009 to enable Student visa holders who were affected by an education provider closure in 2009 to lodge an application for a VAC refund.

This provision is available to students in circumstances where they need to apply for a further Student visa to continue their studies as a result of the provider closure.

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