Australian Immigration Daily News

Peru has joined the list of 22 countries listed in the legislative instrument specifying countries that are eligible to apply for Subclass 462 Work and Holiday Visa.  According to the new instrument, from 1 October 2017, Peruvian nationals will be able to apply for Subclass 462 work and holiday visa provided they have not turned 31 at the time of application, have tertiary qualifications; or successfully completed at least two years of undergraduate university study.  Peru is the latest country to join the 462 Work and Holiday arrangement with Singapore joining the program in August.

 The aim of the Subclass 462 Work and Holiday visa is to provide an opportunity to holiday and work in Australia for up to a year. It is a temporary visa that encourages cultural exchange and closer ties between Australia and eligible partner countries.

Where an applicant obtains a Subclass 462 Work and Holiday visa, they are able to:

Bridging Visas for many remains a tricky area in the Australian immigration law for a number of reasons.  For example, an applicant may be granted a Bridging Visa, however this Bridging Visa may not come into effect until certain event/s occur.  An applicant may be granted a Bridging Visa ranging from Bridging Visa A to Bridging Visa R.  In general, the further you work down the alphabet, the less beneficial will be the Bridging Visa (with exception to Bridging Visa B) becomes in terms of ability to travel and/or work.

What is a Bridging Visa?

A few years back, DIBP has made a major announcement to overhaul Australian visa framework to align this framework to our international counterparts.  The goal was to make certain visa requirements redundant for example, the requirement for an applicant to be in or outside Australia on lodgement or grant of the visa, the need for original documents and of course, paper based applications.

Since the announcement, we have seen visa subclasses collapsed and condensed into different categories.  We now have visas with different streams such as the 400 visa which and the 402 visa (rather than separate subclasses for each activity), we have seen the removal of the onshore/offshore requirement for ENS applications and so forth.  This process has in turn benefited both agents as well as visa applicants as it has become much easier to understand and more importantly meet requirements for a particular visa.

Public consultations were instrumental in this simplification process and the consultation process concluded last week on the 15^th September.

Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) have published statistics on latest number of invitations issued for General Skilled Migration (subclass 189/489).  The last round of invitations took place on 23 August 2017 with the next round of invitations expected take place between 6^th and 20^th September.

Some interesting facts to take away from the invitations issued on 23 August.  Approximately 1133 invitations were issued in total, with 1000 relating to subclass 189 visa.  This is consistent with the around of invitations issued in July with a slight increase in the number of invites for the 489 visas.

Overall the financial year to date demonstrates the number of invitations concerning 186/489 visas remains steady which must be a welcoming relief to many applicants waiting for the invitation.

Over the past 12 months there has been substantial increase in compliance and monitoring exercises conducted by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.  A monitoring exercise conducted by the Department is not just limited to business sponsors, individual visa holders are also being targeted.

What is monitoring?