Immigration Frequently Asked Questions

The Skills in Demand (SID) program, subclass 482, allows employers to sponsor overseas staff to be employed by them in skill-shortage positions in their business.

Here is how it works: –

• The SID visa program comprises one occupation list, called Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL) Every occupation on the list can be used to apply for a 482 visa for 4 years;
• If the salary offered will be at least $135,000 any occupation from the ANZCO list can be nominated except mainly trade and technician occupations;

There are three stages involved in the Skills in Demand (SID) Program: –

• Standard Business Sponsorship – Business needs to be approved as a business sponsor;
• Nomination – the position/occupation within the business needs to be approved -this is based on the Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL)
• Visa applicant has to meet the skill level requirement either from a relevant qualification or in some cases, relevant work experience can replace a qualification, as well as having one year of work experience in that or a closely related occupation;

All the above 3 are separate applications and have specific criteria to be met.

Whether you are an employer or visa applicant, please contact us, and we can explore how the Skills In Demand (SID) program can apply in your situation.

A 482 visa holder can cease employment with their sponsor, either due to the sponsor ceasing their employment or the visa holder ceasing their employment due to their own choice. The visa holder can work for a maximum of 180 days for any employer to a maximum of 2 employers, meaning a total of almost 12 months of unrestricted work but no more than 180 days per employer, which is not their sponsor.

To switch employers and work for a new sponsor, the 482 visa holder must transfer their 482 visa to a new employer. The new potential employer must lodge a new nomination with the Department of Home Affairs. The new sponsor must apply to be approved as a Standard Business Sponsor if not already approved as one. The new nomination must be in the same occupation as what the visa holder was approved unless a new visa is lodged with a new occupation.

The visa holder can then be employed/ and sponsored by their new sponsor for the remaining time left on their visa.

Yes.

To do this, the visa holder must prove they are in a genuine relationship with their partner, even if married. If in a de-facto relationship, this is taken to mean that they are living together under the same roof as a couple for at least 6 months.

The employer must also agree in writing to meet their sponsorship obligations towards the secondary applicants. ​The subsequent dependant applicants will be granted a visa for the same period as the sponsored 482 visa holder.

Yes.

The spouse of a 482 visa holder has unrestricted work rights – providing they are included in the application or are subsequently added into the application.

Your sponsor must inform the Department of Home Affairs within 30 days once your employment ceases. The Department of Home Affairs will grant up to 12 months to find a new sponsor or lodge a new visa application, which can be a different subclass of visa, such as a student or partner visa.

Your sponsor does not have the authority to cancel your visa; only the Department of Home Affairs can do that, and it goes through a process.  You will be informed that the Department of Home Affairs intends to cancel your visa, as you will receive a NOICC –   Notice of Intention to Consider Cancellation by email. This usually grants 7 days to show compelling reasons why the visa should not be cancelled.

482 visa holders have up to 180 days to find a new employer if their employment with their sponsor ends.

• 482 visa holders are allowed 180 days at a time to secure new sponsorship, with a maximum limit of 360 days in total across the visa period.
• If you wish to change only your employer, a new nomination must be lodged for the same occupation as originally approved under your Subclass 482 visa.
• If you intend to change both your employer and your occupation, both a new nomination and a new visa application must be submitted.

Yes, it is mandatory to advertise the position. They must appear in 2 national reach Job -Boards or a professional recruitment website with a national reach, that publishes advertisements for positions throughout Australia. Typical Job Board websites are Seek, Indeed, Career-One, Career–Jet, and Linked-in and industry-specific websites can also be used. A job advert on the sponsor’s business website or Linked -In page is not accepted. The ad has to have compliant wording. Only if the nominee is from certain countries is there an exemption from advertising. These include countries with which Australia has a trade agreement, such as citizens/nationals of the UK, China, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, or a citizen/national/permanent resident of Canada, Chile, South Korea, or Singapore.

Applying for permanent residence under the Subclass 186 Employer Nominated Scheme allows previous employment on a 482 visa to count toward the two-year work requirement for the Subclass 186 Visa application. However, when you apply for the Subclass 186 visa, the nominator must be the current employer who sponsored your current 482 visa. This means you will need to transfer your 482 nominations to your current employer before becoming eligible for the 186 Temporary Residence Transition (TRT) stream.

After two years of the last three years of full-time employment, with an approved business sponsor, holding a 482 visa, in the nominated occupation on the CSOL list (or the previous Consolidated Skilled Occupation List), a 482 visa holder can apply for a 186 visa, Employer Nominated Sponsorship, under the 186 Temporary Residence Transition (TRT) Pathway.

There are two application pathways for this category:.

Pathway One – 186 Temporary Residence Transition:

Once 482 visa holders have been employed for two years out of the last 3 years on a 482 visa, which could have been with the same employer/sponsor or a combination of previous sponsor and current sponsor, they can apply for 186 Temporary Residence Transition. They must be sponsored on a 482 visa by their current employer who will nominate them in their Employer Nominated Sponsorship application, subclass 186 application.

The visa holder can hold any occupation, both from the previous Consolidated Skilled Occupation List (CSOL) and the current Core Skilled Occupation List (CSOL) so long as they hold a 482 visa.

The application must be lodged before turning 45 years old, unless they meet specified exemptions. One of these is that their salary (net of superannuation) has met the high-income threshold in two of the last three years as applicable in the year they hold that visa. The current high-income threshold for 2024 is set at $175,000.

Pathway Two – Direct Entry:

The nominated occupation must be on the Core Skilled Occupation List (CSOL). The 186-visa applicant must complete a Skills Assessment from the assessing authority of that occupation and demonstrate that they have had at least three years of post-qualification work experience in that occupation. Applicants need to be under 45 years old at the time of application. There are no exemptions for age under 186 Direct Entry.

If a new ABN is established, due to the sale of the sponsoring business, the new company/business will need to be approved as a Standard Business Sponsor under the new ABN. Then a new 482 nomination will need to be lodged linking your visa to the new nomination under that new ABN.

Before applying for a permanent visa, you must work on a subclass 482 visa for 2 out of 3 years (which can include working for your initial sponsor whose business has been recently sold and excluding any unpaid leave you may have taken for either sponsor). Both the occupation as well as the reporting structure has to be the same as it was before the business was sold.

You are required to apply for an RRV (Resident Return Visa) if your Permanent Residence visa is about to expire and you intend to depart and return to Australia or you are offshore and wish to renew your permanent residence visa.

If you’ve been living in Australia for at least two years (this can be accumulative) in the last five years before lodging your Resident Return Visa (RRV), you will be granted a new five-year block of time so you can continue living in Australia with your Permanent Residence visa.

If you have been living in Australia for less than two years in the last five years or living overseas but have visited Australia even for a short time prior to the date of lodging a new RRV application, you may be eligible for a one-year RRV.

To be eligible for a one-year RRV, you must present evidence of your ties to Australia, such as employment, family/personal, investment or business commitments. If you have spent a substantial amount of time offshore in the last 5 years and only occasionally visited Australia, it is also advisable to write a statement explaining your absence from Australia.

If you have been living offshore, and your permanent residence visa has expired,  but have been to Australia at least once in the last 10 years, you can apply for a one-year Resident Return Visa based on presenting compelling reasons why the visa should be granted.

If you live in Australia and your Permanent Residence visa expires, your visa status will automatically carry over – meaning you will continue to have Permanent Residence visa status. If you then wish to travel outside Australia, you will need to apply for an RRV, which will enable you to return to Australia as a continuation on your Permanent Residence Visa, but with a new RRV visa.

Please contact us and speak to our expert team at AustraliaMigrate to help you with the renewal of your RRV.

You are required to apply for an RRV (Resident Return visa) if your Permanent Residence visa is about to expire or has expired and you intend to depart and return to Australia or you are offshore and wish to renew your permanent residence visa.

In limited circumstances, you can apply for a bridging visa in Australia without a valid visa.

A bridging visa A is granted automatically when an application is made for another visa while the applicant holds a substantive (that is, a proper visa, such as a Student, Temporary Graduate, Visitor, Working Holiday visa SID, etc).

A bridging Visa or C is granted if an applicant is in Australia and holds a bridging visa A, or in some cases, does not hold any visa, and applies for another visa. It allows them to remain in Australia until a decision is made on their application. The Department will usually place a no work restriction on a bridging visa C, but it is possible to apply for work rights to have this overturned to be able to work.

If you are granted a bridging visa A, and only when it is active and you want to travel outside of Australia while your application is being assessed, then you need to apply for and be granted a Bridging visa B before your scheduled travel.

It is important to always check what conditions your bridging visa is granted with and to always ensure that you abide by the conditions on the visa.

You must always avoid being in Australia without a valid visa or a Bridging visa. Unlawful stays in Australia usually carry a three-year restriction on any temporary visa that allows re-entry into Australia.

As a visa holder, you can use VEVO to check your current visa details and conditions. VEVO stands for Visa Entitlement Verification Online. This is a link on the website of the Department of Home Affairs. You will need to have your passport details with you when you apply for a VEVO check.

An EOI is not a visa application, it is an application that you would like to be invited to apply for a skilled visa. It’s an online form, with no fee which asks you a series of questions about how you intend to score your points for a subclass 189, 190 or 491 visa application. It is imperative that your points are calculated accurately so that when a visa application is lodged after being granted an invitation, the points in the visa application are the same as the points claimed in the EOI. An EOI does not result in a bridging visa.

No, not necessarily. You must obtain a minimum of 65 points to lodge an Expression of Interest. The higher the points, the more likely it is that you will receive an invitation to lodge a visa application.

However, depending on the volume of applications with the same occupation received by the Department of Home Affairs, a higher score than 65 is usually required to be granted an invitation to lodge a visa application. As an example, accountants may require 100 points or more to be granted an invitation whereas high school teachers may only require 65 points. The way the Department of Home Affairs will issue an invitation depends on a lot of factors, which could be what occupations are in most need at that point in time, such as medical occupations in the covid – 19 era receive the most invitations.

If you are a holder of a subclass 491 or 494 you must have held that visa for at least 3 years before you can lodge an application for a subclass 189 or 190. You will have to meet all criteria of that visa subclass in order to be granted the new visa.

Many Australians find overseas partners who they wish to spend the rest of their life with, and there is a pathway to obtain a permanent visa based on a genuine relationship with an Australian citizen, Australian Permanent Resident or Eligible NZ citizen.

Most partner visas can be lodged in or out of Australia, except for Prospective Partner visas, which must be lodged when the overseas partner is offshore. To lodge any partner visa, the applicants must show that their relationship is genuine and mutually exclusive.

This visa can be based on marriage, a de-facto relationship of living together for 12 months under the same roof, or de-facto of less than 12 months of living together and registering their relationship with the Registry Office of their State/Territory in Australia. Please note that not all States and Territories have a facility for relationship registration. As an example, WA and NT do not allow for relationship registration. In the case of these two states, you and your partner need to either be living together for 12 months under the same roof or get married prior to lodging your partner visa. Please also note that if you are going to lodge on basis of being married, the marriage needs to have taken place prior to lodgement.

A partner visa is a two-stage application. In the first stage, once positively assessed, a provisional visa is granted. After two years from lodgement of the provisional visa, the provisional visa holder can apply for a permanent visa.

It is important to check if your overseas partner does not have an 8503 condition (no further stay) on their visa from which they are going to lodge a partner visa, as this condition would prevent them from lodging another visa onshore. A no further stay condition is (8503) is typically, but not always, placed on some visitor visas, especially 600 visas and family-sponsored visitor visas.

You have the right to request the Department of Home Affairs to make a decision on your 820 or 801 visa (PR), even if it highly likely to be refused. Once refused you can appeal the decision by lodging an appeal application at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and remain in Australia while the application is in the AAT queue, pending a hearing date. If you withdraw your application, you do not have the right to appeal.

You may be able to apply for your 801 (PR) if special circumstances apply.

These include:

1. Sharing parental responsibility, if there is a child born of the relationship;
2. If your partner has died;
3. If you have been the victim of domestic violence.

The other option is to consider lodging another visa such as an employer sponsorship TSS or 186 visa or student visa while holding an 820 visa.

You can lodge a Partner visa 820/801, based on either a de-facto relationship or being married, with limited evidence and keep adding new relationship evidence even after the application has been lodged, so when the Department of Home Affairs assesses your application, there will be a lot more evidence than at the lodgement stage.

The Department of Home Affairs will take into consideration whatever evidence you have provided in your application, before and after lodgement, at the time they assess your application. You can also lodge a partner visa based on a de-facto relationship without presenting your relationship registration certificate at the lodgement stage, but it is recommended to provide it as soon as possible.

Yes, you can request voluntary cancellation of your student visa after lodging your partner visa application. However, before proceeding, it is important to understand the potential implications, such as bridging visa conditions and work rights. We recommend consulting with AustraliaMigrate for expert guidance tailored to your situation.

To lodge an onshore parent visa, your parents must meet the balance of family test. In addition, at least one of your parents must be old enough to receive the age pension in Australia. They must not have an 8503 (no further stay) condition on their visitor visa, or if they do, they must apply for it to be waived prior to lodging the application.

No, although they are both Parent Visa Applications, it is not possible to switch once either application has been lodged. A new application and new visa charges will need to be paid. You can ask the Department to use the same documents so no need to send in new documents where there is an overlap of documents for both applications. In addition, you will lose your place in the queue when applying for a new parent visa category and will be treated as a new application.

No, Parent visas can only be lodged by paper-based applications and all parent visas are lodged at the Parent Visa Centre in Perth.

Their bridging visa will last as long as it takes the Department of Home Affairs to assess their Parent visa application, even if it is 30 years, which is the expected wait time for a Non – Contributory Parent visa to be assessed. While holding a bridging visa, there are no government benefits such as Medicare, so it would be advisable to take out private health insurance.

No – as long as you are on a subclass 870 visa you cannot apply for any other kind of    parent visa subclass.