 Welcome everyone to today's webinar, Next Steps Pathways to Permanent Residency After Graduation. My name is Kylie Maxwell and I'm a senior migration agent and a registered migration agent with the International Organization for Migration. Now before we move forward today, I'd just like to explain a little bit about IOM. IOM was established in 1951. It's a United Nations Migration Agency in over 150 plus countries and an additional 480 field offices. IOM has 166 member states and over 9,000 employees. So as you can see, IOM do understand migration and we understand migration pathways and the needs of the migrant. Migration services to Australia is a program within IOM and it provides migration advice, visa application assistance, travel services and post-arrival connect. Now post-arrival connect is a complementary service which IOM provide to support you in understanding your visa conditions and ensuring that when you arrive in Australia, you understand what those conditions mean. So the objectives for today are understanding relationships between visa classes, how current choices may impact future options, understanding risks with lodging incomplete, incorrect or inappropriate types of visa applications, understanding the importance of time planning. The outline for today is the possible migration pathway options after graduation, highlighting the key aspects of the subclass 485 temporary graduate visa, the subclass 189 skilled independent visa, the subclass 186 employer nominated visa and the subclass 457 temporary work skilled visa, which is soon to be the TSS. Also be discussing the importance of planning. Now looking at this visual representation of the expectation and goals of many students following the completion of their studies, on the left we have the student hat, the mortarboard hat and on the right we have the flag which is representing permanent residency. Now many of you out there will be wanting to apply immediately for permanent residency. However, this will depend on a number of factors. The first factor is firstly, if you have a skills assessing authority, which allows you to undertake a skills assessment without any work experience, for example, accountants and engineers. Secondly, you need to determine whether you have the time prepared to apply for that 189 visa given the number of steps and we'll talk about them shortly. Also perhaps if you have previously undertaken a bachelor's and undertaken work experience, you have been studying in Australia in a master's or a PhD. If you have that previous work experience, then you may be able to apply for your skills assessment. But for many of you, you will be looking at the subclass 485 temporary graduate visa. This is a visa with an 18 month to four year visa validity and it allows you to gain work experience in Australia. It also allows you if you really are unsure of what you want for the future. It helps you undertake that work experience and determine whether you want to stay in Australia permanently. Alternatively, there are a couple of other options for you. If you have an employer willing to sponsor you and you do have work experience, then perhaps the employer nominated subclass 186 visa is a possible option for you. Now an employer can nominate you for this visa and it is a permanent visa. You must have three years of work experience and have an occupation on the relevant list. Alternatively, you may be able to apply for the subclass 457, which is soon to be the TSS. If you have an occupation on the medium to long term strategic skills list, you must be starting in likely from March to June. You will be required two years of work experience as well for this visa. Now all of these visas have certain eligibility and the four key eligibility requirements are your age limit, your occupation, your English and your health and character. Each one of them has a maximum age limit. Each one of them has an occupational list relevant to it and you are required to have the relevant experience and qualifications associated with that. You must have confident English and you must meet the health and character requirements. So for the subclass 189, there are three key steps. We have the preparatory stage, we have the expression of interest and we have the visa application. Now the preparatory stage is where you identify the occupation on the medium and long term strategic skills list or the MLTSSL, which is relevant to you. Then you look to see whether you meet the points criteria. Then you look to obtain the positive skills assessment and undertake an English language test if required. Now some of you may come from a country where you are not required to undertake an English language test, for example the UK or Ireland. However, you may choose to do so to increase the number of points for your visa application. The second stage is the lodging the expression of interest or the EOI. And it's here you have to wait and see whether the government will accept your expression of interest and provide you with an invitation. The third stage is where you apply for the visa and you look to apply for your police clearances and undergo your health examinations. This is where home affairs assess individual applications and decide whether to grant the visa. Do remember that this third stage is when you're actually lodging the visa. So it's not until here that you are able to obtain a bridging visa while you're still waiting for a decision on your application. So ensure that you have enough time on your current visa if you're looking to apply for a 189. Some considerations on the subclass 189 is firstly, do you have the time for lodging this visa? Now that's the key one because for many of you, your visas will most of them finish within a particular timeframe after the completion of your studies. Given that you have to obtain a positive skills assessment and lodge your expression of interest and then wait for the invitation, you have to consider whether you will have the time to lodge your visa application within your current visa validity. If you can't complete the application within the visa validity or your application is refused, a couple of considerations you should look at are firstly the lost money, but also the lost opportunity to apply for another possible visa such as the 485. So whilst the subclass 485 is a temporary visa and you may be looking to apply for permanent residency, it is important that you understand that this may be a possible option for you, particularly to undertake that work experience and perhaps in the interim period to allow you the time required. The temporary graduate visa subclass 485 is a temporary visa and it allows you to live and work in Australia for a period of between 18 months and four years and you must apply within six months following the completion of your studies. The temporary graduate visa subclass 485 has one application, one visa, which equals one chance. And what this means is that this is an application that can only be applied for in Australia, so you are unable to apply for this offshore. So if you are refused this visa in Australia, firstly you are unable to apply for another one in Australia and secondly you are unable to fly offshore and apply. So there is one application, one visa and one chance. So what this means is if you have any concerns regarding the criteria, I do suggest you seek professional advice. The temporary graduate visa subclass 485 eligibility is for international students. It's for international students who have completed their studies in Australia for at least two academic years, be under 50 years of age and meet the English language requirements. The temporary graduate visa subclass 485 has two streams. It has the graduate work stream and the post-study work stream. Now under the graduate work stream you must nominate an occupation on the medium and long-term strategic skills list, the MLTSSL. You must also have applied for your skills assessment. Now you don't have to have received the decision on your skills assessment, but you must have applied for it. So you can lodge your application with as long as you have the evidence showing you have lodged your skills assessment. You are able to apply for the graduate work stream if you have undertaken a trade certificate, a diploma degree, graduate diploma master's or PhD in the last six months. For the post-study work stream you must have applied for and granted your first student visa on or after the 5th of November 2011. During the previous six months completed a bachelor's or master's or a doctorate. For both streams you must have completed two years of study in Australia be under 50 years of age, have required level of English proficiency and adequate health insurance for the duration of your stay. Now for the graduate work stream there is a flexibility here in terms of what study you undertook. So if you undertook a trade certificate for example and you have an occupation on the list then this allows you to apply for the graduate work stream. The post-study work stream has more flexibility however if you have a bachelor's or master's or a doctorate you don't need to nominate an occupation on the list and you don't need to undertake a skills assessment. So each one has some level of flexibility depending on what you have studied and your requirements. The temporary graduate visa subclass 485 graduate work stream has a visa validity of 18 months whilst the post-study work stream has a visa validity ranging from two to four years. So for a bachelor, a bachelor with honours a master's by coursework, a master's extended it's a two-year visa validity. For the master's by research it's a three-year visa validity and for a doctorate it's a four-year visa validity. So as you can see there's enough time to obtain relevant work experience for your required occupation. One key requirement of this visa is the Australian study requirement and in the six months before you apply you must have completed one or more qualification at a crime cost registered educational institution. You must have undertaken two academic it's 92 weeks, 16 calendar months studying in English and it must be on a student visa. So if you are currently studying in Australia on a dependent subclass 457 on your parents 457 you are ineligible to apply you must be on a student visa. Another key criteria is the completion date. This is the date that triggers the six month period during which you are able to apply for the subclass 485. It's the date of notification of all course requirements that have been met. Now for the graduate work stream it's also the date when you can begin lodging your skills assessment. Now this completion date, whilst it says here that you can completion date as a notification of final exam results in a letter on the internet on the educational institutions bulletin board in reality you are likely to have a letter from your course provider and it's called a letter of completion and this is what you are lodging your visa application with. The temporary graduate visa subclass 485 has a number of fees and charges associated with it. So the Department of Home Affairs for lodging a primary application charges $1,500. For migration agent fees these do vary currently IOM charge $1,500 however it can be 2,000, 2,500 fees do vary. There are also ancillary fees associated with the application and these include medical, police checks and if you come from a country where English is not the language of your documentation you will require translations. Currently the official processing times are two to four months however recently we've been obtaining decisions between three to six weeks so do keep an eye on the processing times and it is officially two to four months processing time. Now we have looked at the subclass 189 skilled independent visa and we did briefly talk about the 457 and the 186 but these are two alternative pathways that many people don't think of they usually think about the 189 and the 485 but not perhaps the 457 or the 186 as a future migration pathway. So subclass 186 has two steps it has the nomination and the visa application so in the nomination the business nominates an occupation and the person proposed to fill the position. Now the Home Affairs, Department of Home Affairs assesses the position and accepts the nomination based on the information provided by the business. The visa application is about you this is about your qualifications and background and experience and the nominated employee which is yourself lodges that application and Home Affairs assesses the individual and decide whether to grant that visa. Similar the subclass 457 soon to be the TSS has three steps but they're quite similar to the 186 the sponsorship, the nomination and the visa application. The sponsorship is where the business applies for the standard business sponsorship and the Department of Home Affairs assesses business and grants business sponsorship. For the nomination the business nominates the occupation and the person proposed to fill the position and the Department assesses the position and accepts the nomination and then for the visa application this is about you the nominated employee where you launch the subclass 457 and Department of Home Affairs assesses your individual application and decides whether to grant the visa. Now the medium and long-term strategic skills list, the MLTSSL is an occupation list which is relevant to the 457, the 186 and the 189 visa as well as the 485 visa. Do remember however but different visas have different lists. So even though we talk about the MLTSSL the 457 list for example is different to the 189 list so it is important that you look at the correct list for your visa application. Now the occupation the qualifications and the work experience are what are determined of this occupation. So firstly you look to see if your occupation is on the list do you have the qualifications to match that and do you have the work experience? That's then the step you need to move forward. So the migration pathway plan there's a relationship between visas and IOM will work with you to develop a migration plan which takes into consideration your personal goals and circumstances. Then we look at the timing and how to develop a migration pathway plan that incorporates each step in the migration process and a time plan to support you to achieve your migration goals. So in looking at that I'm just going to give you an example here of Elizabeth's story. Elizabeth studied a master's degree in Australia and had experience as a petroleum engineer and granted a 485 in March 2016. Now she actually in the November 2016 discussed with me an application for a subclass 189. Now after that I followed her regularly but however her business was very busy and she couldn't get back to me in time. So what happened in April 2017 petroleum engineer was removed from the list of occupations for the subclass 189. Now Elizabeth also worked in Sydney and could not be nominated under the regional skilled migration scheme subclass 187. So Elizabeth was pretty well running out of options and it's important that in looking at this story that we understand that IOM is there to assist you in ensuring that such a similar situation based on a pathway a migration pathway plan is unlikely to happen to you. Now it is of course we can't determine when occupations this change but we can assist you in ensuring that your time plan is on track and that you're working towards lodging the application in the timeframe that you determine. So IOM will discuss with you all possible migration pathways and work with you to start on the most suitable pathway and develop a timing plan for you. This timing plan we first look at becoming eligible to apply and this is essentially now once you've received a letter of completion. Then we understand the timing of completion of the visa application and preparation steps. Then we look to apply for the next visa before the current visa expires. It is important to understand this is a crucial one because you do not want to be unlawful. Then you begin planning for the next visa if it is required. So in summary the key points we've looked at today is the importance of a migration pathway plan and how current choices can impact on future applications. We've looked at the temporary graduate visa subclass 485 and also the 457 as well as sequoias to possible permanent residency and takes time to lodge all visas correctly to mitigate against incorrect or incomplete visa applications. And we've looked at the possible permanent residency options for you. Now IOM services and process are here as you can see on the screen and the steps in the process are that if you contact us via email contact you back within 48 hours we schedule an initial consultation where there is a charge but that charge then should you choose to lodge a visa application with us is absorbed into the professional fees. Then we ask you to bring along your plans, your goals, copy of your passport, copy of your student visa grant letter and course length details. We discuss your short and long-term goals or migration pathway options and assess your situation and develop a migration plan. At this stage should all your documents and your background meet the criteria and you are happy to proceed then IOM offer a letter of engagement of services. So on the screen we now IOMs contact details. So the website is www.IOMosmigrationservices.com Free call 1300 921 811 and email IOMosmigrationservices at IOMint. So thank you for joining me today and should you have any questions please feel free to contact me. Thank you.