Australian Immigration - The DIY Guide

Pre-Amble

I went to a consultant in November 2013 inquiring what it would take to get an Australian Visa. I thought that the charges to do some of the legwork would be nominal but I wanted to opt for convenience over sitting down and filing documents.

I booked a free appointment with a consultant who slapped me a 2000 dollar bill. Now 2000 dollars is probably modest in most countries, but I realised that I would rather add this amount to an already planned out vacation (which also happened to be my honeymoon). The consultant was nice enough to tell about the stages of application which I'll cover in the following sections of this document.

I applied as a skilled migrant which is subclass 189 so I'm going to only describe the stages of my application using the options I had to take.

I'm writing this document to convince my younger brother and a dear friend of mine Arees (hopefully this will also motivate them both to move out of their couch). Maybe someone else will also be able to benefit out of this.

Step 0: Points Calculator

I call this step 0 because its the least important but most hyped up step. From my opinion its only to serve as a filter rather than a selection criteria. You can calculate your points on the following page "http://www.immi.gov.au/Visas/Pages/189.aspx". They have a points tab covering this. They also have costing information available on this page which you might or might not want to go through.

Step 1: Assessment Process

This is the first step of the process. Firstly you need to find out whether or not you're on the SOL(http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/pdf/sol.pdf). This is a tabulation of all the in-demand Occupations, the relevant codes and the assessing authorities. I'm a software engineer so naturally my next step would've been the ACS website.

Do have a look at the "Summary of Criteria document"(https://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/7324/Summary-of-Criteria-2014.pdf) and compute your odds.

Once this is done, there's a 15 page document available titled Skills Assessment Guidelines for Applicants(https://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/7319/Skills-Assessment-Guidelines-for-Applicants.pdf).

1. Certified Copy of your passport
2. Certified Copy of Academic Degrees
3. Certified Copy of Academic Transcripts
4. Certified Copies of Employment References built on the guideline found here(http://acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/7570/Skilled-Employment-Reference-Example.pdf)
5. A CV covering your skills, education data and work experience. You can use the data from the Employment references to build/rebuild your CV and keep it consistent.

Once you have this homework ready, head over to the ACS website and click their "For Individual Skills Assessment Applications" form. You should be able to fill the form in and upload all the necessary document(s). They'll charge you around 650 AUD for this phase and it will take 2-3 months for you to get your assessment result. The process itself is broken up into stages and if needed, the assessor could ask you for more documents, however for me this was not the case and my app flew through smoothly. I filed on 7th November 2013 and got a positive assessment on the 31st January 2014.

Step 2: Filing an EOI

In the next step you need to submit an EOI. You may do so at the skillselect web portal. https://skillselect.gov.au/SKILLSELECT/ExpressionOfInterest/PreReg/Start

This is essentially a simple form where you choose your visa type(Subclass 189 - Skilled Independent for me). BIO details, IELTS score, the applicants / family members in your application, your work experience and your education experience. This should be possible from the data that was compiled in Step 1 plus the IELTS test result for proof of english. I filed my EOI on 5th February, 2014 and an invitation to on 10th March, 2014. Unfortunately for me, the email was classified by one of the gmail filters as not necessary and I only noticed it a month later on 7th April, 2014. My advice to you folk would be to make a filter for gov.au in your inbox and keep checking it along with logging into skill select and checking the correspondence from there. Please note that invitations are time critical. I applied for my visa on 21st April, 2014 or 4 days before my wedding at which point my EOI got suspended.

Step 3: Visa Application

During this step you follow your invitation within skill select and start the visa application process. You need to submit the following documents in the online portal:-

1. Form-80. This is a very intensive form that took me 2-3 days to complete. A very good guide that I found is available at http://www.australiaforum.com/information/form_80 . It walks you through section by section and question by question.
2. Form-1221 (Much simpler form)
3. Marriage Evidence of / Attested Marriage Certificates (if applicable)
4. Birth or Age Evidence of / Attested Birth Certificates
5. Character, Evidence of / Attested Police Character Certificates for the last 10 years.
6. Skills Assessment, Evidence of / Attested ACS
7. Language Ability - English, Evidence of / IELTS certificate
8. Travel Document / Passport
9. Qualifications - Evidence of / Degrees & Transcripts
10. Work Experience Evidence of / Resume, Work References

Once these documents are filed, you're assigned a case officer(CO). This happens the moment you get correspondence from an email address like Adelaide Team 13(which was my CO). A few days later, you get a link for an Australian Health Examination which is basically an x-ray, a blood sample, etc. I got a booking for this on the 23rd of april. Most cities in the world have clinics that are associated with the Immigration Authority.

I applied for my visa on 21st April, 2014 and I knew I had a CO on 3rd June, 2014 when they asked me to fill in Form-1221 which I earlier did not know how to submit. I then asked them what I need to submit in order to add my wife into the application. By 12th June, 2014 I had added in my wife into the system but I was able to completely upload her documents by 24th June, 2014 since her IELTS result took some time. Right now I'm waiting for her HAP ID to come in and its the 27th of June, 2014. I'll update this post when I actually get my visa invitation just so that you people can have an idea of the timelines involved.

I'd like to thank Mansoor, a dear friend of mine who answered all the questions I had when I had them from his experience migrating.

[Update 13th August, 2014] Received a request for more information for 1) Form 80 for my wife, 2) HAP ID for my wife, 3) Polio Certificates for both me and my wife (This is a requirement for some countries). My assumption going forward is that it should only be a month or two after I submit these docs.
[Update 24th August, 2014] Submitted aforementioned documents.
[Update 18th September, 2014] Got a response to timeframe enquiry stating that timeframe can not be provided and that often character and national security checks are carried out by external agencies.
[Update 24th September, 2014] It is 5 months, 3 days since visa application and 10 months, 17 days since EOI submission.
[Update 4th February, 2015] Got the Grant. Have to fly by 7th July, 2015

Best of luck

In other news, Rehman Malik gets an Honorary Doctorate

Today when I stumbled across this link, I was like, whaaaat! This btw is the guy who came up with this theory for Karachi's instability. And then I came across the news of a govt. girls school laid under siege by a group of people armed with crowbars, here. And whats even worse is that the police are not taking any action, that caused my mind to wander and what came out as a result is a bard song, you know like the ones they had during the medieval times, with robin hood and role playing games and all. Here goes:

The Dunce was awarded a doctorate degree
Launching anyone with a hint of sanity into melancholy 

The Dunces theory, absurd as can be
Wives and Girlfriends, not politically and ethnic rivalries 

Loony Laureates went lauding,
While the Thugs and goons went on marauding, 

You may say that This is a joke,
where are the decent folk? 

This is where you my friend would absolve yourself,
so that you may live your life like a sheep in disguise,
leaving the old and weak, the destitute and the youth
to dwell in a pool of their own misery 

and the nation itself lies at the brink of a knife
there is no legacy without identity
hmm hmmm humm hummm
hmm hmmm humm hummm
la laa laa la la laa laa laa

Speaking of Bard Songs, if anyone here is Monty Python fan, you must surely remember the bard song about brave and bold sir robin.

Molly Malone -- The Graphics Card

So I was bored the other day and I was listening to The Dubliners - Molly Malone  on youtube "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdxLxnhGnvo"

And just having bought a new rig, I thought why not have a version of this where Molly Malone is a graphics card. Well this is what I came up with, I intended to make a recording using some karaoke track, but have been quite lazy about it.

So here goes, hope you enjoy it.

In electronic City, where the rigs are so pretty

I met a graphics card, called Molly Malone

While she churned out some hashes, other systems were in crashes

with their flicking transistors, going high and then low

going high and then low

high and then low

with their flicking transistors going high and then low

as she churned through the seasons, rendering landscapes and regions

working harder and longer than ever before

she was so much stronger, than the versions before her

but it wasnt a wonder that even she'd have to cope

computational vectors

non rational spline selectors

rotations, transformations 

each one took its toll

she died of a fever

while rendering a grim reaper

who poured down with his minons and collected her soul

now she's way up above

rendering constellatoins with starfish and doves

all the other systems going high and then low

The cost of life

It is a widely accepted belief that life is invaluable and sacred. In order to test this claim, let us consider a small thought experiment. If you were to go to a hospital and came across a patient unknown to you, except that your contribution is vital in ensuring that he comes out alive. What would be the maximum amount that you would be willing to contribute if it meant life or death for the person in question. I asked myself this question and I found my own response disturbing. The mere notion that I could quantify life in a number expressed as a percentage of my monthly savings seems to dispel the belief that there is nothing more valuable than life.

Only by removing the veil of indifference can we surmount the obstacles that lie ahead of us as a race.

The Spirit of the Sea

Astrogeranimo waddle daddle beezlebub napkins with honey bee wax. Sparkling springwater, cast upon by the image of the midnight moon. An impression so smooth that it makes the forest green with envy. In the blink of an eye your essence flashes by. An eternity, a calm serenity. Time slows down, like a lazy dog at an abandoned yarn. Such an effect is cast upon me. The thought of your presence makes me quiver not unlike the turbulence in a river which is lonely until one day it meets the sea. I am like a mirror, but I do not shatter. Instead I tear and batter, drowning among the waves. As I drown into the sunset, such a fragile balance unset, some said. I will always remember thee my love.

Sighed, The lonely Spirit of the sea.