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CHANGES FOR SKILLS VISA By Lance Fee,Director Live Downunder UK CHANGES have been made to the Migration Regulations to allow for the assessment of overseas skills for purposes of making an application for a visa under the skills stream to be made in an Applicant's home country. At the present time all the assessing bodies for these visa classes are situated in Australia. This means that in most cases the assessments are done on the papers, and the times taken to complete the assessment can vary between four to 12 weeks. The assessing bodies are appointed by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship following a tender process and are generally associated with the profession for which they assess. Their role is to determine if a persons qualifications and/or experience equate to Australian standards, allowing them to carry out their nominated occupation. The changes follow on from the recommendations by the Council of Australian Governments to streamline the offshore skills assessment process, by having certain skills assessments handled by assessing authorities responsible for assessments according to the country of residence of the applicant rather than by one centralised assessing authority. The changes will provide for the Minister to act on the approval of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations as an alternative to that of the Minister for Education, Science and Training. This is because the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations will select through a tender process the persons or bodies who will conduct skills assessments for specified occupations in respect of applicants residing in specified countries. The commencement date of July 1, 2007 will facilitate the tender process by having the actual regulations in place under which the appointments will be made. The new changes should allow for a quicker and more efficient assessment process, it will be interesting to see if it will also facilitate on the job assessments in the case of trade skills. Hopefully, this may also see the process of registration and licensing by the various State government bodies in the electrical and plumbing trades be carried out in some overseas countries. Apart from the fact that the States do not have a central registration scheme, trades-people in these areas can often wait for months before being permitted to work as fully licensed trades-person. |
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