475 Visa - Who has to work

[Guest james185]

Hi

 

My wife and I have a 475 visa for SA, it was my understanding that now we have this visa it did not matter which one of us worked for the 12 months required as part of the pathway to PR and it also does not matter which field we work in...

 

Please can anyone confirm whether or not this is the case?

 

We applied for the visa under my wifes occupation of 'Office Manager' but as we will have two very young children when we move to Australia we were planning on myself working whilst my wife looked after the children.

 

Thanks

James

[Gollywobbler]

Hi

 

My wife and I have a 475 visa for SA, it was my understanding that now we have this visa it did not matter which one of us worked for the 12 months required as part of the pathway to PR and it also does not matter which field we work in...

 

Please can anyone confirm whether or not this is the case?

 

We applied for the visa under my wifes occupation of 'Office Manager' but as we will have two very young children when we move to Australia we were planning on myself working whilst my wife looked after the children.

 

Thanks

James

 

Hi James

 

The requirements for upgrading to the sc 887 visa depend on the primary holder of the sc 475 visa having fulfilled the work element provision of the sc 475 visa. So if you want to try to upgrade to the sc 887 in due course, your wife will have to work in Regional Oz for at least 12 months first.

 

However, it doesn't matter what she does by way of work. She can do whatever she likes and she can be self-employed and working at home if you wish, as long as she does it full-time. There is some debate about how many hours constitutes "full time" work in this context. I've heard that it can be as little as 20 hours a week according to the PAMs but a lot of COs seem to be uncertain about this, so if you aim for 38 hours a week then things cannot go wrong. The difficulty is proving the hours if the person works from home, is self-employed and the business is not a roaring commercial success.

 

All that said, if you forget about the sc 887 visa and work towards the idea of an RSMS visa in your own name instead then your wife will not need to bother to work at all unless she wants to. You could become the primary visa holder instead in due course, via an RSMS visa instead.

 

However if you choose this as the strategy then it is necessary to ensure that you do something that is on Schedule 4 of the SOL:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/_pdf/sol-schedule4.pdf

 

You must ensure that your own occupation is one that an employer would be able to sponsor you for and you would have to choose a large-ish employer as well. Would this bit be OK if you adopt a longer-term strategy of obtaining PR via an RSMS visa instead of via an sc 887 visa?

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[Guest payeldu]

Hi James

so far i have communicated from my agent regarding the working conditions to apply for PR is, its the main applicant (your wife in case of you) who has to work for 12 months not the dependent member. (pls dont quote this as i have just informed from my agent...i dont have any ref against this)

And for your 2nd query, yes main applicant can work in any relevant field.....

But few days back, i have heard a horrible things from one of my friend, currently living in Adelaide. As per him, DIAC has changed this policy and that is "Main applicant has to work only the Job she had been applied during the VISA application ("office manager" for your wife)"

 

I am also looking for this answer (though i dint get any info on this by googling any site). Please let us know the issue if any one knows......

 

By the way......I am at the final stage of my VISA application...please wish me luck

[Guest james185]

Hi James

 

The requirements for upgrading to the sc 887 visa depend on the primary holder of the sc 475 visa having fulfilled the work element provision of the sc 475 visa. So if you want to try to upgrade to the sc 887 in due course, your wife will have to work in Regional Oz for at least 12 months first.

 

However, it doesn't matter what she does by way of work. She can do whatever she likes and she can be self-employed and working at home if you wish, as long as she does it full-time. There is some debate about how many hours constitutes "full time" work in this context. I've heard that it can be as little as 20 hours a week according to the PAMs but a lot of COs seem to be uncertain about this, so if you aim for 38 hours a week then things cannot go wrong. The difficulty is proving the hours if the person works from home, is self-employed and the business is not a roaring commercial success.

 

All that said, if you forget about the sc 887 visa and work towards the idea of an RSMS visa in your own name instead then your wife will not need to bother to work at all unless she wants to. You could become the primary visa holder instead in due course, via an RSMS visa instead.

 

However if you choose this as the strategy then it is necessary to ensure that you do something that is on Schedule 4 of the SOL:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/_pdf/sol-schedule4.pdf

 

You must ensure that your own occupation is one that an employer would be able to sponsor you for and you would have to choose a large-ish employer as well. Would this bit be OK if you adopt a longer-term strategy of obtaining PR via an RSMS visa instead of via an sc 887 visa?

 

Cheers

 

Gill

 

Hi Gill

 

Thanks for the info, this does however contradict what True Blue told us on application that it did not matter whether it was myself or my wife who worked for 12 months.. I am getting more confused by the minute!

 

I have just googled the situation and found this post which seems to go along with what we have been told:

 

"Yes, everyone has no work restriction on this visa - during your 3 year visa (which can be extended up to a date 4 years from when the 475 visa is granted) you must all live in ANY/ANY regional area of Australia while in Australia, and at least one of you, has to have lived in a regional area for at least 2 years and that same person has to have worked for at least 12 months full-time (usually at least 35 hours per week) in ANY occupation, skilled or unskileld - it does not matter.

 

So eventhough your wife is teh secondary applicant, she could become the mai napplicant for the permanent application say if you had a skileld job that was only 30 hours a week and she had an unskilled job that was 35 plus hours per week.

 

Regards

Tony Coates

MARN 0635896

 

I have emailed True Blue again so will see what she says but as I say we were told from the start that it could be either of us working..

 

Thanks

James

[Guest james185]

Here is another link that seems to confirm what we were told by True Blue, I just hope it is still the case!

 

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=641750

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Gill

 

Thanks for the info, this does however contradict what True Blue told us on application that it did not matter whether it was myself or my wife who worked for 12 months.. I am getting more confused by the minute!

 

I have just googled the situation and found this post which seems to go along with what we have been told:

 

"Yes, everyone has no work restriction on this visa - during your 3 year visa (which can be extended up to a date 4 years from when the 475 visa is granted) you must all live in ANY/ANY regional area of Australia while in Australia, and at least one of you, has to have lived in a regional area for at least 2 years and that same person has to have worked for at least 12 months full-time (usually at least 35 hours per week) in ANY occupation, skilled or unskileld - it does not matter.

 

So eventhough your wife is teh secondary applicant, she could become the mai napplicant for the permanent application say if you had a skileld job that was only 30 hours a week and she had an unskilled job that was 35 plus hours per week.

 

Regards

Tony Coates

MARN 0635896

 

I have emailed True Blue again so will see what she says but as I say we were told from the start that it could be either of us working..

 

Thanks

James

 

Hi James

 

I know Tony Coates and I rate what he says. He worked for DIAC in Perth for about 10 years, then he returned to Ireland but he has now moved back to Perth. His MARN only starts "06" because he didn't need to be a Registered Migration Agent when he was not working as an RMA in Oz, so he allowed his RMA registration to lapse for a while.

 

Tony is saying that either of you could apply for the sc 887 visa in due course. So - what does S887 of the Migration Regulations 1994 (as amended) [continually] say about this?

 

S887 appears to say that either of you or your wife could satisfy the eligibility criteria for an sc 887 visa. I think that this is how to interpret S887 because the rubric to it says:

 

Note

The primary criteria must be satisfied by at least 1 applicant. Other

applicants who are members of the family unit of the applicant who

satisfies the primary criteria need satisfy only the secondary criteria.

Is your own visa subject to either Condition 8539 or Condition 8549, please? (One of these applies when the applicant is State sponsored and the other applies if s/he is Family sponsored instead but I'm not sure which is which.) If your own sc 475 visa is subject to one or other of these Conditions then it does appear that you could be the main applicant for an sc 887 visa in due course.

 

However, in the case of yourself and your wife, this does not necessarily assist because if you haven't also fulfilled the period of residence requirement then who has been working (or as what) is not relevant in any case.

 

S887.212 says:

887.212 The applicant must have lived in a specified regional area for

a total of at least 2 years as the holder of 1 or more of the

following visas:

The visas listed include the sc 475, sc 487 and Bridging Visas, so we need not worry about which preliminary visa but it does seem to be pretty clear about the 2 year requirement, which is construed as meaning 730 days in Australia (to iron out any problems caused by Leap Years.)

 

S887.213 goes on to say:

887.213 The applicant must have worked full-time in a specified

regional area for a total of at least 1 year as the holder of 1 or

more of the visas mentioned in clause 887.212.

I can't put hand on heart and say that Tony is definitely right. Ideally, I'd want to see some back-up in the PAMs confirming that this liberal notion is allowed under Policy because the liberal notion is logical in one sense but illogical in another. However Tony might well be right (in which case I stand corrected) because he is very good at ferreting out this sort of peculiarity in the legislation. (It is not possible to get access to the PAMs without paying for a subcription to them, which costs about £750 a year and I'm too stingy to get one because I only muse about this stuff as a hobby, not as a job.)

 

It is logical if, say, the primary holder of the sc 475 visa is a woman but she then has a succession of babies which means that she has to stay at home. Australia is very keen on the idea of its population occupying themselves by growing little Aussies!

 

However it is not logical in the sense of saying what is the point of one of the holders of the sc 475 visa having to leap through the hoops of the SOL and a skills assessment if that whole idea gets defenestrated as soon as the family reaches Australia? S887 seems to say that their subsequent Permanent Residency can depend on the person who was originally only a secondary holder of the sc 475 visa, who has been doing unskilled work in Australia.

 

I suppose that thrashing out what seems to me to be a conflict of logic depends on the Parliamentary philsophy that invented the sc 475 visa in the first place. The philosophy is that some parts of Oz are under-developed and under-populated at present. They won't become developed unless they become populated first. If the areas remain underdeveloped, they won't contribute much to the overall development of the Aussie economy.

 

Theoretically, a couple could move out to Oz on a sc 475 visa with the Wife as the main visa holder. They head for the Backofbeyondup where the only available job at the time is working as an offsider for a farmer whose farm is so marginal that its contribution to the Aussie food chain is virtually nil. Nonetheless, he's the only other person in the Backofbeyondup, he's getting old and he needs an offsider with plenty of brawn, to go and help him to till soil, mend fences, chase sheep and so forth.

 

Hubby gets the offsider's job. With a bit of luck, he and his wife will also breed little Aussies, which will help to populate the Backofbeyondup and who knows? In years to come one of their children might find gold under the earth on this farm and that child might exploit the gold, which would do no harm at all to the Aussie economy.

 

(The world and his dog would then go roaring off to the Backofbeyondup as well!) However this has happened within the last 200 years when gold was first discovered in Ballarat and later in Bendigo and Kalgoorlie. It is not impossible that it could happen again, simply because Australia is so vast and so much of it is under-explored if not more or less unexplored as yet.

 

The average Aussie, sitting in his comfortable home in Melbourne, won't go to the Backofbeyondup unless he hears that someone else has found gold there first. So if you want to populate the Backofbeyondup, your best bet is to persuade new immigrants to go there.

 

That is the philosophy behind the sc 475 visa and it is unfair to knock it because this sort of thing has gotten Australia from being a pretty good hell-hole of a place in which for a settler to try to exist to being the enormously wealthy country that it has become in the last 200 or so years.

 

So I'm inclined to think that Tony is probably right because he does have a lot of experience and this is the sort of thing he is particularly good at. However I would still want to double-check, just to be sure, so I'd ask DIAC for a copy of whatever it says in the PAMs about this.

 

Cheers

 

Gill

 

[Guest james185]

Thanks Gill, I have asked Maryanne at True Blue to confirm and also get it in writing from DIAC along with the confirmation of the 487 1 year from grant visa extension..

 

If it is the case that I can work and gain the 12 months employment needed to gain PR when not the main applicant (and I really hope that it is the case!) then it seems that a lot of these things are open to interpretation and I am sure that many people have missed out on opportunities when reading through the confusing visa conditions!

 

I will let you know how I get on, thanks again for taking the time with a detailed reply. it is much appreciated.

 

Thanks

James

[Gollywobbler]

Hi James

so far i have communicated from my agent regarding the working conditions to apply for PR is, its the main applicant (your wife in case of you) who has to work for 12 months not the dependent member. (pls dont quote this as i have just informed from my agent...i dont have any ref against this)

And for your 2nd query, yes main applicant can work in any relevant field.....

But few days back, i have heard a horrible things from one of my friend, currently living in Adelaide. As per him, DIAC has changed this policy and that is "Main applicant has to work only the Job she had been applied during the VISA application ("office manager" for your wife)"

 

I am also looking for this answer (though i dint get any info on this by googling any site). Please let us know the issue if any one knows......

 

By the way......I am at the final stage of my VISA application...please wish me luck

 

Hi there

 

Who did your friend talk to at DIAC concerning their alleged recent change in Policy, please? Was it a telephone call to their general Helpline (answers guaranteed to be inaccurate at least 80% of the time) or did your friend go into the DIAC office in Currie St and speak with someone intelligent?

 

DIAC publish something on the Agents Gateway if they change their Policy as dramatically as your friend has been told:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/gateways/agents/news/2011/

 

I haven't read any of the links but none of the links for 2011 seem to refer to the thing your friend has been told? Please check the Agents Gateway entries in 2010 as well.

 

Is your friend a Student in Oz? The rules about what a graduate Student has to do in order to become eligible for a GSM visa in due course have all been changed and I wonder whether that has something to do with it?

 

Please clarify.

 

Cheers

 

Gill