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