Much Advice needed - please

[Misplaced]

Hi All,

 

I was born in Adelaide and moved here with my parents and I am now considering moving back with my family.

 

We are in the early stages of considering the move but I do plan to get my kids Australian Citizenship and then Oz passports.

 

The High Commission has advised the above and that my wife could come on a Partner Visa.

 

We are lookig to move to the Adelaide area as I still have friends there - now for the questions -

 

What is employment like there at the moment - this is our main cause for concern?

 

How hard is it to arrange all the moving etc.?

 

Can electrical equipment bought here work in SA?

 

My Mother-in-Law will also be joining - do you know how easy it would be for to join us?

 

Any other advice you can give would be welcome.

[Guest Jadeyk]

Sorry i can't help you but i'm sure someone will be along to the rescue soon (i do know that electrical stuff can be used there at they use same voltage, however, you will need adapters for it all) x

[foxychick]

Employment, Hard to say without knowing the area you are looking at (job wise)

 

 

Moving, In the simplest terms - Pretty easy I thought, just sort through the stuff you want to bring and the shipper pretty much does the rest

 

Can electrical equipment bought here work in SA?

Yes, just change the plugs or bring some extension boards and just change that one plug

 

My Mother-in-Law will also be joining - do you know how easy it would be for to join us?

This is going to be the hardest bit for you I reckon, search for parent visas, Gollywobbler does some great, imformative posts.

 

 

It is pretty good that you and the kids will already be australian, should make your process easier, Good luck with it all

[Gollywobbler]

Hi All,

 

I was born in Adelaide and moved here with my parents and I am now considering moving back with my family.

 

We are in the early stages of considering the move but I do plan to get my kids Australian Citizenship and then Oz passports.

 

The High Commission has advised the above and that my wife could come on a Partner Visa.

 

We are lookig to move to the Adelaide area as I still have friends there - now for the questions -

 

What is employment like there at the moment - this is our main cause for concern?

 

How hard is it to arrange all the moving etc.?

 

Can electrical equipment bought here work in SA?

 

My Mother-in-Law will also be joining - do you know how easy it would be for to join us?

 

Any other advice you can give would be welcome.

 

Hi there

 

The only bit that I can help with is your M-i-L.

 

The best option for her is Parent Migration provided that she meets the Balance of Family Test and her health is reasonable:

 

Family - Visas & Immigration

 

Parent Migration Booklet

 

Would she be OK on the BoF Test?

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[Misplaced]

Thanks for the replies they have been useful.

 

One of my other concerns is making sure we are not putting ourselves in a financial hole currently we are ok and we don't won't to go back to struggling.

 

My whole career has been in the Civil Service and mainly in the project world as a Business Analyst but due to cuts in training I have not been able complete my diploma and the company that i was doing it through has gone bust

 

I am willing to do most jobs but obviously would need to weigh up the wages etc.

 

The other issue is that my wife is quite rightly concerned about whether we would be better off as a family. I know that I was a happy bunny when I lived there 30+ years ago but alot have things have probably changed.

 

Is anyone able to give some words of wisdom to my other half that may help her?

[Misplaced]

Hi there

 

The only bit that I can help with is your M-i-L.

 

The best option for her is Parent Migration provided that she meets the Balance of Family Test and her health is reasonable:

 

Family - Visas & Immigration

 

Parent Migration Booklet

 

Would she be OK on the BoF Test?

 

Cheers

 

Gill

 

 

As she has 2 daughters and one would be in the UK and one in OZ (hopefully) then the BoF test would seem to be satisfied - do you know whether my wife would have to be a citizen? If so when can she apply for citizenship?

[Gollywobbler]

As she has 2 daughters and one would be in the UK and one in OZ (hopefully) then the BoF test would seem to be satisfied - do you know whether my wife would have to be a citizen? If so when can she apply for citizenship?

 

Hi Misplaced

 

It sounds like the Aussie High Commission have established that you are an Australian Citizen by birth and your children are Australian Citizens by descent, via you.

 

Your wife could apply for Citizenship by conferral once she has lived in Oz for 4 years.

 

Australian Citizenship – Becoming an Australian Citizen

 

However she would NOT have to be a Citizen before your M-i-L could apply for Parent Migration.

 

You would not have had time to read Booklet 3 before replying to me. However, in that, at around Page 18, there is a section about the Sponsor. Because you are your wife's cohabiting Partner and you are also (or soon will be) an Australian Citizen, you would be deemed to have become sufficiently "settled" in Oz after you have been living there again for 3 - 6 months, therefore you could sponsor your M-i-L for her visa.

 

Since you have children, it is likely that your wife would be granted Permanent Residency in Oz from Day One:

 

Partner Visa: Offshore Temporary and Permanent (Subclasses 309 and 100)

 

Partner Migration Booklet

 

How old is M-i-L, please? The next question regarding M-i-L is which of the possible Parent visas she should apply for.

 

My own mother lives in Oz along with my only sister. I live in the UK. Elaine (my sister) is married to an Aussie. Mum has a Contributory Parent subclass 143 visa. She got it in 2006 and at the time, they were only taking about 9 months to process applications for the sc 143 and 173 offshore Contributory Parent Visas. They are now taking between about 18-24 months to complete the processing because the majority of applicants apply for the offshore CPVs, of which DIAC are prepared to grant about 6,900 visas a year. They have about 10,000 applicants for the offshore visa at any one time, hence it now takes more than a year to process each application.

 

If M-i-L is 65 (or within a whisker of that) or older, then it might be possible and desirable for her to apply for the onshore Contributory Aged Parent visa instead. (Aged = Onshore in this context!) DIAC grant about 600 of the onshore CAPVs every year but the demand for them is about equal to the supply of them, so it only takes about 6 months for them to process an application for one of the onshore CAPVs.

 

That said, although it is possible for a Parent to apply for a Temporary CPV or CAPV to begin with, the Parent must apply to convert it into a Permanent Residency CPV 143 or CAPV 864 within 2 years of the grant of the Temporary visa.

 

At the point of applying for Permanent Residency, the migrating Parent needs someone to provide an Assurance of Support. That bit is done via Centrelink and up to 3 people can club together to provide the Assurance of Support but the important thing to remember is that the Assurer(s) is/are means tested. (Centrelink is the Social Security Department in Oz.)

 

Centrelink - assists people to become self-sufficient and supports those in need

 

Assurance of Support

 

9.4 Assurance of Support Scheme

 

The third link above is to the Social Security Guide, via which you can figure out how much of an income you (and possibly your wife as well) would need to have been earning in order to provide an Assurance of Support for M-i-L. Very roughly, about $45,000 AUD should be enough, I believe. They've changed the details of how to calculate the Assurer's income since we got the AoS for Mum. Working it out from the Social Security Guide is tortuous, but asking Centrelink is even more tortuous and whatever figure their staff guess at over the phone is 99% likely to be wrong. The staff actually don't know how to calculate the Assurer's income - they just rely on the idea that they will input the data from the Assurer's tax-return into the Centrelink computer and then the computer will do the calculation for them. Working it out from the Social Security Guide is less painful than an expensive phone call to Centrelink only for them to get it wrong.

 

Changing the subject, you say that you are a Civil Servant in the UK. I spent 2 years with the UK's Maritime & Coastguard Agency, on a fixed term contract, doing a specific project for the MCA a few years ago. That is one of the Agencies that "belongs to" the Department for Transport, so I know a little bit about how the Civil Service functions in the UK. Somebody from DIAC once told me proudly that the Aussie Public Service - as it is called - is closely modelled on the British Civil Service. (What have the Aussies done to deserve to have that idea inflicted on them, one wonders?!)

 

I think that before you finalise any plans for moving to Oz, the first thing would be to investigate whether or not you would be able to walk into a job in the Aussie Public Service in Adelaide. That might pay you better than trying to get into the realms of private enterprise in Adelaide?

 

APSjobs - gateway to the Australian Public Service

 

Now, you say that you are a Business Analyst in the UK. Within the MCA, that is a pretty lowly job description and only an EO grade. (I know a lady in the MCA whose job-title is Business Analyst and she is only an EO. She told me that she doesn't have any qualifications apart from the exams that she passed at school but she just keeps an eye on the MCA's Budget every month, in order to keep the MCA's Directors informed.)

 

However you also say that your job is project-related and it sounds to me like your actual occupation is a good deal more sophisticated than Claire's. Does it mean ICT-projects in your case? If not, what sorts of projects are you involved wth and which Department / Agency do you work for in the UK, please?

 

I think that from your point of view, you should consider what sorts of APS jobs might be possible for you if you move back to Adelaide. There might be work in the Federal Goverment's APS, or you might find something involving the State Government of South Australia instead, or it might be something at Local Government level. (For the latter, please consult Google Maps and find out what the various suburbs in Adelaide are called, then Google them to find the relevant Local Authority, I suggest!) Meanwhile, the State Government's jobs website is below:

 

Home

 

For the purposes of foreigners migrating to Oz, South Australia is keen on attracting people called Health Information Professionals. My guess is that there is a Federal Government outpost of empire in Adelaide but I don't know which one. It might be a section of the Department of Health & Ageing, or it might be to do with Health Insite:

 

www.healthinsite.gov.au/

Or it might be something else altogether but I would be inclined to phone Immigration SA in your shoes, and pick their brains about what sorts of possibilities someone like you would expect to be able to find in Adelaide:

 

State and Territory Migration Sites - australia.gov.au

 

Immigration SA assist returning Aussies as well as everyone else.

 

You have also mentioned that you had intended to do a Diploma in the UK but that the Government clobbered the training budget for Civil Servants. (That caused mega-angst in the MCA whilst I was there. I needed to write to the French equivalent of the MCA and it seemed polite to write to them in French. A chap called Keith was ex Royal Navy and he was the only person in the MCA who would write and speak fluent business French. He agreed to do me a favour when I went down on bended knee but he grumbled that if the MCA wanted him to be an translator then he ought to get a proper Translator's qualification - his application for that had been rejected because of the cuts in the training budget. I just crawled to him to keep him sweet in order to get his help with the letter!)

 

What sort of Diploma do you have in mind? If it is a general one then you might be able to get a suitable Diploma from Orion Training in Brisbane, via distance learning:

 

www.otpm.com.au/

If you needed spmething specific like a Diploma in Computer Sciences, have a look at the website for the Australian Computer Society, I would suggest. On the Project Management front, I am told that Prince II is very highly regarded in Oz although not for the purposes of foreigners who want to emigrate to Oz because the Prince thing is a properietary qualification, apparently. However, look at the jobs websites and see what the Person Specifications are, I would suggest. Doing that would also give you an idea about salaries and www.realestate.com would give you an idea about house prices.

I don't know why this wretched machine has defaulted to italics and I can't make it swtch the "i" button off. Just live with that, please, and I hope that the content of this post is of some assistance, even if the font/formatting is not!

Cheers

Gill

[Misplaced]

Hi Misplaced

 

 

However you also say that your job is project-related and it sounds to me like your actual occupation is a good deal more sophisticated than Claire's. Does it mean ICT-projects in your case? If not, what sorts of projects are you involved wth and which Department / Agency do you work for in the UK, please?

 

What sort of Diploma do you have in mind? If it is a general one then you might be able to get a suitable Diploma from Orion Training in Brisbane, via distance learning:

 

Cheers

 

Gill

 

 

Gill,

 

Many thanks for such a comprehensive reply it has definitely helped.

 

You asked what type of Project work I work in - basically I was firstly a requirements writer and then became Requirements Writer/Business Analyst within the DWP. The most recent project I worked on was getting Jobseeker's Allowance Online (the first Release was done in record time for a DWP Project and I was on it from the start ) I am now working on the Universal Credit job and I was one of the few to get through an interview process - the panel must have felt sorry for me Within these projects I basically look(ed) at what the Business Requirements and assessed the impact on the business and other systems. Just to note for the Universal Credit we are using AGILE which all new to me but seems to make sense.

 

The Diploma I was doing was an ISEB for Business Analysts and Requirements. i am in looking to do PRINCE2 in the next couple of months and then if I can a qualification that would be transferrrable to Oz (if there is one in the UK) and get work to pay for it without them being aware of my intention to emigrate.

 

Hope this answers the questions you have raised and any further advice pointers will be greatly received.

 

Craig

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Craig

 

I've sent you an e-mail. Not a Private Message but an ordinary e-mail, with some names and contact details of people who might be able to help you further. It should show up in your e-mail in-box as being an e-mail from Poms in Adelaide. There will definitely be something to give you a clue but you might have to check in your trash/spam bin.

 

Cheers

 

Gill