There is a lot of debate going on in Australia about how many migrants to take in each year, and who should be given priority for visas.

The two main political parties are arguing over the issue of how many migrants per year is sustainable in Australia.

Business is very concerned that the intake not be reduced so that they cannot find the skilled workers they need if their demand for certain skills exceeds what is available to them from the local employment market.

There is another issue to - the aging population. In 40 years the project more than 8 million Australians will be aged 65 of more. Right now only 3 million are aged 65 or more. So that is a very big increase and it raises concerns as to how aged care will be financed out of taxation if there are not enough younger people in the work force paying tax.

Most commentators agree that Australia cannot afford not to take in at least 180,000 migrants a year.

So this is good news for potential migrants IF you have the right sort of skills needed by Australia now and into the future.

There is also a much bigger emphasis now on having good English speaking skills.

The indications are that the most favored skills needed now and over next decade will be more white collar than blue collar and will favor professionals in manufacturing and administrative roles.

Demand will continue to strengthen for temporary 457 visas.

Australian Visa Experts is offering a paid service to help match qualifying skilled workers with employers to sponsor them under a 457 visa.

If you are interested in such assistance please use our special enquiry form by using FIND A SPONSOR from our Menu.

We look forward to helping you.

AUSTRALIAN VISA EXPERTS

On 1 July 2009, the policy relating to the senior manager provisions of the State/Territory Sponsored Business Owner (Provisional) visa (subclass 163) will be amended.

The current senior manager provisions are covered by clause 163.111 and subclause 163.212(b) of the Migration Regulations 1994 and are defined in Section 9 of PAM3 Sch2 Visa 163.

The policy amendments will assist agents to compile quality visa applications for clients who do not own a business but have the necessary qualifications and management experience to establish a successful business in Australia.

The amendments clarify and define:

• a senior manager
• management experience
• appropriate experience in absence of formal qualifications
• the decision-making, day to day responsibility and management hierarchy requirements relating to sound and continuous employment.

For more information about these changes contact Australian Visa Experts. Just go to our home page and submit your enquiry to us. Australian migration agents

The English language requirement has been recently increased for this visa class.

The Migration Regulations have been amended to require all people applying for sponsored temporary residence work visas under subclass 457 IN A TRADE OCCUPATION to obtain an average band score of 5 in the IELTS test unless they have been given an EXEMPTION.

You do not need to get a 5 score in each subject - JUST AN OVERALL SCORE OF 5 in your IELTS results.

This change to the Rules applies to all applications lodged on or after 14 April 2009.

Any questions about this please let us know and we can elaborate further.

AUSTRALIAN VISA EXPERTS

Welcome to our blog.

Let me start off my outlining the intentions of this blog.

We will be using this blog to keep you updated about what is happening with Migration government policy as it relates to the visa types that we specialize in - Business Visas, Skilled Migrant Visas, Sponsored temporary visas and Student Visas. Law and Policy is constantly changing as the Government grapples with a very complex economic situation and political demands and lobbying from both business and from unions who represent the interests of workers, many of whom are now losing their jobs.

In the pages of our website you will find a lot of general information the different visas that we are able to assist you with - but it would be impossible for us to keep you fully up to date in those web pages unless we were updating those pages every week. It is just not possible to have our web technicians constantly changing the main pages to include the latest changes or policy updates. SO WE WILL DO THIS ON THE BLOG.

Once you become a client of ours we will be advising you to keep reviewing our blog to stay up to date. If you are not yet our client but are thinking about seeking our assistance to see if you qualify for a visa and then to have us take care of the visa application for you - you can also use this Blog to keep up to date with what is happening with australian migration and visa law and policy.

Things have changed quite a bit since just 6 months ago when the government was publicly announcing that it was throwing its doors wide open to new migrants and encouraging overseas students to come here to study and then apply for permanent residence if they had obtained a skill that Australia needed.

Now Australia, like most other countries, is experiencing a Recession and thousands of local workers are losing their jobs. This has led the government to move to RESTRICT grants of temporary working visas and permanent skilled migrant visas to just those whose skills remain in short supply in Australian and hence are still in high demand.

In the current situation it is more important than ever for anyone wishing to come to Australian to work and/or wishing to migrate here to use the services of a highly skilled migration agent. The chances of self-prepared applications or ones prepared by less experienced agents being rejected by the Department of Immigration is higher than it was before. They are reviewing all applications very carefully to make sure that only the strongest applications are accepted and approved.

Finally, we wish to let you know that we will be regularly publishing interesting and informative ARTICLES about Australia, Australian Culture , places of interest, local events and of course on various aspects of Migration policy that we think that may be appealing to you. The purpose of this is to help you know more about Australia and what you might expect when you arrive here.

PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO LEAVE COMMENTS TO OUR VARIOUS BLOG POSTS. WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO DO THIS. We would love to hear your views and particularly we want you tell us what further information you would like us to publish on our blog to keep you well informed.

So again, we welcome you to this Blog and we hope we can be of service to you.