Getting the ball rolling

[Guest jonathanvalentine]

My very first post, of many i guess. Hi, my name is Jonathan, my wife Helen and children Oliver and Katy. We are considering a move to Australia and feel Adelaide would suit us best. My main area of concern is whether to use an emmigration agent or to go it alone. I am 37yrs old qualified chef with 20yrs experience so i would like to think my application would be quite straight forward? But i have been running my own catering business for 4 yrs and wonder if this changes which visa to apply for or complicates my trade recognition. Any advice would be welcome and thanks in advance.

[Guest Django]

Hi Jonathon,

 

Welcome to PIA. We haven't used an agent but with Tracey being a nurse the skill assessment was a doddle. It was just copying transcripts. How about having a few free consultations with some agents to talk through a few things? The TRA or skill assessment is the hardest hurdle. Having spoken to a few people on here that have done it they reckon they wouldn't have been able ot do it without an agent. They want so much detail explained like you were talking to a 3 year old.

You could always get quotes for help with the TRA bit then do the visa application yourself online.

I was amazed how not straight forward the process is. There is no reason why you can't do the whole thing yourself so long as you check, double check, triple check everything.

 

Good luck

 

Pete

 

Forgot to add have a look at these websites they may help you loads on your quest,

 

http://www.adelaidebound.com/

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/immigration.htm

[cormcvcr]

Hi there,

 

welcome to PIA, we are using an agent, as we felt this was a better option for us, but everybody is different. Good luck either way x

[Guest suejohndan]

Hi Jonathan and family,

 

Welcome to the site, we are quite new to it as well. We are using an agent and have been happy with them (4corners). The only thing is is that it can be very expensive. I am glad they were there to help us through the TRA skills assesment as they wanted a very indepth essay of what my husbands job as a gas fitter entailed. We wrote it out and the agent changed the wording of some things as to the Australian standard.

As mentioned before everyone is different and as said I would go to some free consultations and get the free advice.

If starting the process again I don't know if I would use and agent or go it alone.

 

Best of luck in your choice.

Sue:)

[Guest cornish Busdriver]

Hiya Johnathan.

We were glad we used our agent.

He took care of everything and kept us fully updated, not just by e-mail; he calls you as well.

http://www.austimmigration.com.au

We realy recomend him

[Guest jonathanvalentine]

Thanks for the info so far it is nice to hear from people that are in a similar position

[Guest louiesmum]

Hi Johnathan

We didnt use an agent but like django I'm a nurse, we have now got our visa & I feel like saying it was easy, but there was some stressfull moments in there, mainly choosing the right visa for us as I only work part time lots of visas weren't suitable. But we got there in the end so it is definately do-able, you certainly get used to form filling & checking & double checking!! I'd def get a free consoltation from an agent & take it from there. Good Luck & welcome to PIA

[Guest mOZzy]

hello jonathan and family and welcome

 

a tricky question and especially with the new system i can't give you an answer really.

we used one pre sept and we are glad we did!!!

true, we had to do all the research and gathering and phoning and writing and rewriting but the agent helped us with examples and wording and with filling in all the forms (which is a science in itself ) - probably for the visa itself we wouldn't have needed them but then again they did provide some usefull information which saved us some time and money! - i guess it depends on how straight forward your whole application is and what's involved. deffo go for a free consultation and take it from there ...

 

good luck!

[Guest katsmajic]

Hiya,

We went it alone - oh is a toolmaker, got to say the TRA is the hardest part - you can get agents that will just take on that part of your application. Thankfully we didnt feel we needed an agent, it took us quite a while to gather all the information - you have to do the info gathering whether you use an agent or not...and then write everything up in very simple language - we explained everything right down to turning on the machines etc - application was 120 pages long...but we got it in 3 weeks.

Saying that though we did ours before all the changes...

Good luck whatever you chose to do.

Kat x

[Guest jonathanvalentine]

Thanks for all the replies. I have contacted some agents and will maybe just get help with the tra as suggested. It all feels a little bit daunting at the moment but you have to start somewhere! We are hoping to do a recky in october as we havent been to Adelaide for 12yrs(and that was only for a week) so it may have changed a bit!. Thanks again for your help, Jon