[AlexDemoted]

Hello. I'm a US citizen and am very eager to move to Australia but I'm concerned about being approved for a visa. I read on the immigration website that it is a total of roughly $7,000 for the visa (which is no problem since I've been saving for 3 years) but if I don't get approved what happens? Do I get my money back? I'm 23 and only have 2 associates degrees in Aviation technology. I feel I may not be good enough since I don't have a "Bachelors" degree. Also I'm not sure how much Australia is in need of Aircraft Mechanics and if the FAA license I hold will even matter over there since it is a US certification. If anyone could please shine some more light on the subject I'd be very grateful. Thank you!

 

[jb12]

Hi AlexDemoted,

What immigration website are you looking? Is this charge for one person? Or does this include a company to help you apply for this visa? It should not cost $7,000 for one person.

Check out Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship website: Department of Immigration & Citizenship
for more information about the different visas. If you don't get approved for a visa, there is no refund. Review the information and then post your questions for someone in the forum to answer if they are knowledgeable with the topic.

 

[AlexDemoted]

Hi AlexDemoted,

What immigration website are you looking? Is this charge for one person? Or does this include a company to help you apply for this visa? It should not cost $7,000 for one person.

Check out Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship website:
for more information about the different visas. If you don't get approved for a visa, there is no refund. Review the information and then post your questions for someone in the forum to answer if they are knowledgeable with the topic.

Yes, that was the website I was looking at. The official government one. Here is the page where I saw that it is roughly $7000 dollars. (Ugh, it wont let me post the link until I'm an active user =/
Is this correct and is it non refundable?

 

[Guest]

All your fees and charges are here.

http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/990i.pdf

The 175 independent visa is $2960

But you would need to check you even qualify What is the points test? - Workers - Visas & Immigration

Having qualifications alone is not enough, do you have enough work experience since qualifying? And are your qualifications good enough to pass a skills assessment? You need to read up on who would assess you and what their requirements are. A-Z Occupations List - Australian Skills Recognition Information

 

[Zultan]

Maybe you are adding the part 1 + part 2 costs of the visa? You only need to pay the part 2 bit if English is not your first language.

Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (Avionics) - is on the Skilled Occupations List:

Description
maintain and repair aircraft structures, and avionic and mechanical systems.
Tasks

dismantling, inspecting, testing, repairing and reassembling aircraft engines, ancillary motors and engine accessories, electrical systems, and subassemblies of aircraft frames
installing electrical circuits and equipment
testing aircraft communication equipment, aircraft instrumentation and electronic systems using electronic testing equipment and specialised test apparatus
replacing and testing aircraft oxygen system components
assembling parts and subassemblies of aircraft frames
conducting routine pre-flight inspections of engines, aircraft frames and mechanical systems
maintaining records of action taken
may manufacture aircraft electrical, instrument and radio hardware components

Skill Level
Most occupations in this unit group have a level of skill commensurate with the qualifications and experience outlined below.
In Australia:
AQF Certificate III including at least two years of on-the-job training, or AQF Certificate IV (ANZSCO Skill Level 3)

At least three years of relevant experience may substitute for the formal qualifications listed above. In some instances relevant experience and/or on-the-job training may be required in addition to the formal qualification.
Registration or licensing may be required.

no the fees, sadly are not refundable

 

[jb12]

As Zultan brought up, it looks like you are adding the 2nd installment payment. However, in your case, I don't think you have any dependents over 18 with English not being their first language.

Yes, it is true that the visa fee is not refundable. You don't necessarily just apply. You need to first make sure you qualify for the points. Depending on that will determine if you are eligible for the visa. Then next step is to you get your skills assessed to determine if your qualifications are recognized in Australia. If your skills are recognized in Australia then you will be eligible to finally fill out an application.

If you read some of the posts on this forum, people are being granted visas. Not being granted could be results of medical results/conditions or further questioning about your skills.

I don't know if you've read any further information but this skilled migration program will change in July 2012. It's called SkillSelect.


Professionals and other Skilled Migrants Visa Charges - Outside Australia


Important: Visa Application Charges are reviewed on 1 July each year, which may increase the cost of a visa, however they may be adjusted at any time.

The 1st instalment of the Visa Application Charge must be paid at the time of application.

The 2nd instalment of the Visa Application Charge for dependents aged 18 years or over with less than functional English must be paid before the visa is granted.

Skilled - Independent (Migrant) visa (subclass 175)

Charge Type Charge Amount
1st instalment

$2960
2nd instalment
$4110
See: Skilled - Independent (Migrant) visa (subclass 175)

Skilled - Sponsored (Migrant) visa (subclass 176)

Charge Type Charge Amount
1st instalment

$2960
2nd instalment

$4110
See: Skilled - Sponsored (Migrant) visa (subclass 176)

Skilled - Regional Sponsored (Provisional) visa (subclass 475)

Charge Type Charge Amount
1st instalment

$2960
2nd instalment

$4110

 

[Gollywobbler]

Hello. I'm a US citizen and am very eager to move to Australia but I'm concerned about being approved for a visa. I read on the immigration website that it is a total of roughly $7,000 for the visa (which is no problem since I've been saving for 3 years) but if I don't get approved what happens? Do I get my money back? I'm 23 and only have 2 associates degrees in Aviation technology. I feel I may not be good enough since I don't have a "Bachelors" degree. Also I'm not sure how much Australia is in need of Aircraft Mechanics and if the FAA license I hold will even matter over there since it is a US certification. If anyone could please shine some more light on the subject I'd be very grateful. Thank you!

Hi Alex

Australia definitely needs Aircraft Mechanics. Because of the vast distances, often unsatisfactory roads etc, it is often better to fly than to use any other sort of transport. Think about why the Royal Flying Doctor Service began and why it is still a vitally important service in some of the remoter parts of Australia. (I've heard it said that the RFDS mechanics more or less tell the pilots, "You bend it, we'll mend it," because the pilots often have to land on highways that aren't really wide enough, on remote pieces of terrain that are only more or less flat - and so forth.)

According to ASRI, you are probably some type of Aircraft Maintenance Engineer but please tell me which type from the list below:

A-Z Occupations List - Australian Skills Recognition Information

I'm female and the only technical things I know about a plane are that it has wings and hopefully it also has wheels and brakes. What is Avionics? I'm sorry to be thick but I need your help with this bit!

If you are an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (Mechanical) [she says intelligently, choosing the middle one on the list!] then you do not need a Bachelors degree. An AQF III or AQF IV is a trade skills qualification, therefore the visa skills assessment authority is Trades Recognition Australia.

CASA is the Australian equivalent of the FAA:

Civil Aviation Safety Authority - Home

I imagine that you would probably have to get a separate CASA licence but that bit wouldn't have anything much to do with your eligibility for a visa, usually.

Let us start by sorting out which skill you would nominate for visa purposes and then we can build up the rest of the picture from there.

Cheers

Gill

 

[AlexDemoted]

Hi Alex

Australia definitely needs Aircraft Mechanics. Because of the vast distances, often unsatisfactory roads etc, it is often better to fly than to use any other sort of transport. Think about why the Royal Flying Doctor Service began and why it is still a vitally important service in some of the remoter parts of Australia. (I've heard it said that the RFDS mechanics more or less tell the pilots, "You bend it, we'll mend it," because the pilots often have to land on highways that aren't really wide enough, on remote pieces of terrain that are only more or less flat - and so forth.)

According to ASRI, you are probably some type of Aircraft Maintenance Engineer but please tell me which type from the list below:

I'm female and the only technical things I know about a plane are that it has wings and hopefully it also has wheels and brakes. What is Avionics? I'm sorry to be thick but I need your help with this bit!

If you are an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (Mechanical) [she says intelligently, choosing the middle one on the list!] then you do not need a Bachelors degree. An AQF III or AQF IV is a trade skills qualification, therefore the visa skills assessment authority is Trades Recognition Australia.

CASA is the Australian equivalent of the FAA:

]

I imagine that you would probably have to get a separate CASA licence but that bit wouldn't have anything much to do with your eligibility for a visa, usually.

Let us start by sorting out which skill you would nominate for visa purposes and then we can build up the rest of the picture from there.

Cheers

Gill

Haha! Wow Gill! You guess right! I deal mostly with Mechanics. Avionics is just the electronics portions of the aircraft. They don't get messy basically. They just deal with wires and electricity and what not. I deal with all the mechanical parts and messy fluids of the aircrafts. I don't know what the AQF Certificate III is but I have about 6 years of aircraft experience so I think that might be enough. Thank you for that link! It's very informative and links to many places where I can learn more but I'm still overhelmed and don't know where to begin. Lol.

 

[Riza2012]

Hello. I'm a US citizen and am very eager to move to Australia but I'm concerned about being approved for a visa. I read on the immigration website that it is a total of roughly $7,000 for the visa (which is no problem since I've been saving for 3 years) but if I don't get approved what happens? Do I get my money back? I'm 23 and only have 2 associates degrees in Aviation technology. I feel I may not be good enough since I don't have a "Bachelors" degree. Also I'm not sure how much Australia is in need of Aircraft Mechanics and if the FAA license I hold will even matter over there since it is a US certification. If anyone could please shine some more light on the subject I'd be very grateful. Thank you!

hey man i think u too young maybe too early to apply not enough experience but chk da points test link if you pass then start to apply also chk list of profession

 

[Guest]

He might not be too young, depends on when he qualified? Though you should know alex that experience gained prior to or during your training prior to gaining your qualification won't count for the work experience requirement for DIAC for independent migration. They will only count professional experience gained after.

 

[Gollywobbler]

Haha! Wow Gill! You guess right! I deal mostly with Mechanics. Avionics is just the electronics portions of the aircraft. They don't get messy basically. They just deal with wires and electricity and what not. I deal with all the mechanical parts and messy fluids of the aircrafts. I don't know what the AQF Certificate III is but I have about 6 years of aircraft experience so I think that might be enough. Thank you for that link! It's very informative and links to many places where I can learn more but I'm still overhelmed and don't know where to begin. Lol.

Hi Alex

Thanks for your reply. At the moment, it is too soon to leap to conclusions, my son! (I'm allowed to patronise you because I'm 55 and female whereas you're only 23 and male, gedditt?!)

In simple terms, and for Australian visa purposes only.....

......DIAC will only accept that you are a 323112 Mechanic IF you have been trained in the right way to be one for the purposes of the relevant visa. You have been talking about GSM visas (sc 176.) Proving your skill for a GSM visa depends first on satisfying TRA about the nominated skill. Proving the skill to TRA depends on production of an American trades-skill qualification that is at least equivalent to Australia's AQF III and it also depends on production of proof that you have undergone a period of formal or informal Apprenticeship that is again at least equivalent to the type of apprenticeship that an Aussie would be expected to have done if he wanted to claim to be a 323112. If you cannot prove both of these elements to the satisfaction of Trades Recognition Australia then they will not give you a pre-migration skills assessment for a GSM visa as a 323112.

1220.0 - ANZSCO - Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations, First Edition, 2006

Your six years of hands-on relevant work-experience is irrelevant for TRA's visa-purposes because the work-experience has not been obtained in Australia.

Your actual academic qualification is that you say you have a couple of Associate Degrees. So were these Associate Degrees exactly what you needed to do in order to become a fully-qualified Aircraft Mechanic in the USA? Is there any other way to become a fully-qualified Aircraft Mechanic in the USA, please? (Note that 'fully-qualified' does NOT mean the same thing as 'fully-skilled.')

In Canberra, there is a guy called Roger Laws. He used to work for TRA but he is now an independent consultant. Roger would be able to look at your detailed CV since the day you left school and, within 30 seconds, he would be able to say whether or not TRA would agree that you are a 323112 for the purpose of a visa-related skills assessment.

If Roger said that you are not a 323112 for TRA's visa-skills assessment purposes, that is not necessarily fatal to your wish to emigrate to Australia. It would still be possible for you to emigrate to Australia via an employer-sponsored visa without necessarily having to go anywhere near TRA.

However, since you (presumably) need an FAA licence in order to work as an Aicraft Mechanic in the USA, I would guess that you would also/instead need a similar/equivalent licence from CASA if you wanted to work as an Aircraft Mechanic in Oz?

If I'm right about this bit then you would not be able to bimble along to an airfield in Oz saying, "Gissajob as an Aircraft Mechanic, Guv," because Guv would say, "Where is your CASA licence, my boy?" I would imagine that this is how "the system" works with Civil Aviation?

This tends to be the weak link in the chain for someone like you because it is probably only possible to get the CASA licence if you have actually been working in Oz as a Trainee Aircraft Mechanic or similar?

However, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage-looking, my son! I don't know anything about aircraft or Civil Aviation but I am a fully-qualified and experienced lawyer in England. So I understand how Australian immigration law works even though I don't know anything about your own profession, if you see what I mean.

Now. You are only 23 and you are an American Citizen. Have you already had a subclass 462 Work and Holiday visa for Australia, please?

Visa Options - Working Holiday - Visas & Immigration

Would 12 months on a W&H visa be long enough for you to do whatever would be necessary with CASA? I suspect that sorting out CASA and getting the relevant ticket off them might be the way to unlock the eventual visa-door for you and that at the moment, thee and me might have been on the wrong track about the possible visa-strategy here.

Please let me know what you think.

Cheers

Gill

 

[Gollywobbler]

Clarification

Hi again, Alex

I found my last reply to you very difficult to write because I knew what I wanted to say but lack of clarity kept creeping in to my attempt.

Particularly, I said:

Your six years of hands-on relevant work-experience is irrelevant for TRA's visa-purposes because the work-experience has not been obtained in Australia.

What I meant to say was this:

If you have the wrong type of paper-qualification (ie you have an academic qualification rather than a trades skill qualification that has been obtained via Australia-typical methods of training a tradie) then your six years of work experience will not rescue you as far as TRA are concerned.

The ANZSCO Dictionary is used for Immigration purposes but it is also used for loads of other purposes that relate to the Aussie workforce in Australia. So an Aussie might not have any paper qualifications but he might have sufficient work experience to be able to count him as a proper 323112 Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (Mechanical.)

This does not apply to a prospective immigrant who wants a GSM visa, though. For him to claim that he is a 323112, he must get a pre-migration skills assessment from TRA, which TRA will only provide if they can see that he has a trades-skill qualification that is as good as or better than the Aussie AQF III AND he has been trained in the right way.

For you, I suspect that an employer-sponsored visa is going to be the best strategy in the long term but that means finding an Aussie employer who is willing to give you a job and is also willing to sponsor you for an employer-sponsored visa:

Visa Options - Employer Sponsored Workers - Workers - Visas & Immigration

At the moment, it might not be possible for an Aussie employer to hire you as a 323112 unless you first get yourself the necessary licence from CASA. If I'm right about this bit then a sc 462 Work & Holiday visa might solve the CASA problem provided that you could get a suitable licence within the 12 month stay permitted by the sc 462 visa.

Obviously, I know nothing about how civil aviation authorities test people's skills or whatever they do before they will issue licences. It could be that CASA would give you a CASA licence very quickly once they see your FAA licence but I need you to investigate that bit and then say whether or not my idea of the possible visa strategy would be realistic, please.

Cheers

Gill

 

[AlexDemoted]

Hi again, Alex

I found my last reply to you very difficult to write because I knew what I wanted to say but lack of clarity kept creeping in to my attempt.

Particularly, I said:

What I meant to say was this:

If you have the wrong type of paper-qualification (ie you have an academic qualification rather than a trades skill qualification that has been obtained via Australia-typical methods of training a tradie) then your six years of work experience will not rescue you as far as TRA are concerned.

The ANZSCO Dictionary is used for Immigration purposes but it is also used for loads of other purposes that relate to the Aussie workforce in Australia. So an Aussie might not have any paper qualifications but he might have sufficient work experience to be able to count him as a proper 323112 Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (Mechanical.)

This does not apply to a prospective immigrant who wants a GSM visa, though. For him to claim that he is a 323112, he must get a pre-migration skills assessment from TRA, which TRA will only provide if they can see that he has a trades-skill qualification that is as good as or better than the Aussie AQF III AND he has been trained in the right way.

For you, I suspect that an employer-sponsored visa is going to be the best strategy in the long term but that means finding an Aussie employer who is willing to give you a job and is also willing to sponsor you for an employer-sponsored visa:


At the moment, it might not be possible for an Aussie employer to hire you as a 323112 unless you first get yourself the necessary licence from CASA. If I'm right about this bit then a sc 462 Work & Holiday visa might solve the CASA problem provided that you could get a suitable licence within the 12 month stay permitted by the sc 462 visa.

Obviously, I know nothing about how civil aviation authorities test people's skills or whatever they do before they will issue licences. It could be that CASA would give you a CASA licence very quickly once they see your FAA licence but I need you to investigate that bit and then say whether or not my idea of the possible visa strategy would be realistic, please.

Cheers

Gill

Oh ok. I understood that one a little better. It's just kind of a strange situation. I guess I'll have to look into whether or not my training meets Australia standards. I'm going to look into CASA right now and see if an FAA license helps me out there. I would hope so. I would prefer that when I move to Australia to have a visa that grants me permanent stay. I wouldn't like to have to leave again and apply for another visa. So the work/holiday visa would grant me 12 months to try to accomplish everything I want to do right? (Find a residence, try to become CASA certified and find a job) That worries me a little =/

 

[Vikky&Matt]

That is how we are going over to Aus. WHV and hope for sponsorship. I know LOTS of people that have gotten PR through this method, if all else fails its worth a try and it is a lot less expensive

Good Luck!