Visa For Living In Australia – 457 Visa

If you’ve been looking to extend your time in Australia, you might want to consider finding an employer to sponsor you on the temporary 457 visa. There are over 30,000 approved employer sponsors and over 100,000 457 visa holders in Australia today, with tens of thousands being applied for every year.

The 457 visa is recognised as a fast track way to getting settled in Australia, with visa processing usually taking just a matter of weeks, and many 457 visa holders go on to become permanent residents of Australia.

Where do you begin?

There are three stages to the process and they have to be completed in order; you can’t apply for the visa before the employer has done their part. It pays to check that each of these parts will stack up, before making any application to immigration; a good migration agent can help you assess this.

1. Employers have to be, or apply to immigration to become, an approved sponsor.
2. The employer then needs to make a ‘nomination’ application to get the job (occupation) approved for the employee to fill.
3. The employee then applies for the 457 visa.

To be approved as a sponsor, an employer has to show that they are either spending money training their Australian staff or willing to pay a training levy to an industry fund such as a TAFE college. The training levy is a great option for Sole Traders. The position also needs to have been offered to Australian residents and workers before it can be available as a nomination application.

For the nomination, the job on offer needs to match up with the duties of an occupation on the government’s Consolidated Skilled Occupation List (CSOL). This list has 600 occupations including all the major trades along with hundreds of professions such as medical, engineering, marketing, HR, sales, customer service and more. See www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/consolidated-sponsored-occupation-list

The job has to be full time and the employer must offer a ‘market salary’ above $53,900 per year. Shift allowances and other guaranteed payments can be counted towards the salary but overtime or superannuation payments can’t be counted towards meeting this minimum pay rate.

On your part as the visa applicant, you need to have the skills to do the job and must be able to prove you have them, either with qualifications or work experience relevant to the job offered. For trade occupations this means either having the equivalent of an Australian AQF certificate III, which is a UK NVQ 3 or Irish FETAC level 6-7 cert. If you don’t have a formal qualification, at least three years full time experience in the occupation can be accepted, but you will need strong proof of the work history.

For many of the other professions, a degree-level qualification or at least five years’ work experience is needed. There are a few non-trade occupations that need only Diploma level or three years’ experience. If you are lucky, your employer is already an approved sponsor, and only the nomination and visa application are needed and can be completed pretty quickly if you and your employer are organised.

When lodging your applications, allow enough time to get all the documents ready; these include identity, qualification certificates, health insurance and character evaluations. You need to make sure everything is lodged with immigration before your current visa expires.

As with every visa and such great rewards, there are costs for the 457 visa which include:

• Employer Sponsorship application: $420 of which one fee covers a three-year approval.

• Employer Nomination application: $330 for each new employee.

• Employee 457 visa application: $1,035 per adult (so double if you have a partner on the application).

• Subsequent Temporary Application Charge (STAC): $700. This applies if you have already had a temporary visa granted while in Australia (eg your second WHV) and you apply for another temporary visa while you are in Australia.

To improve your chances, here are some tips on finding a sponsoring employer:

• Focus your job search on non-government roles – government bodies rarely sponsor.

• Approach employers directly rather than through agencies.

• Call anyone you know that might help with an introduction to an employer

• Get involved in local sports, social or business networks as these are great ways to meet people.

• At the job interview stage, ask if the employer is willing to/open to/has sponsored before.

• Many employers want employees to work a probationary period before they will commit to sponsorship, this means you might need 2-3 months to prove yourself. If the employer is not willing to sponsor, better not to waste your valuable working holiday visa time with them – keep looking.
For more information or advice log on to

www.arriveaustralia.com.au