Pendragon Straight Talk: Episode Fifteen

 
TRANSCRIPT
 
JOHN GLOVER: Hello and welcome to this week’s Pendragon Straight Talk. Once again, we’ve been inundated with questions around the 457 visa. This week’s question is can I get permanent residency under the new TSS, Temporary Skills Shortage, System, which is basically taking over from the 457.
 
The TSS program has two streams to it basically, and those two streams are listed as the medium and long term strategic skills shortage list and the short term skilled occupation list, and depending on which one of those lists – and here are those lists here, they’re quite big as you can see, quite a lot of qualifications, so the old 457 has been split up between the two – so depending on which one you fall under will mean what your rules are you can abide for a 457.
 
Under the Medium/Long Term list, the answer is yes, you have the ability to obtain permanent residency after you have worked with a company for at least three years. You don’t have to worry about anything else as long as the company themselves want to offer you the option of doing it, you can.
 
When you move to the Short Term Skilled Occupations List, this gets a bit more complicated. You cannot get permanent residency, no longer how long you work for [a company], in other words you can’t get it through the three-year system. So, if you’re in the 2 year STSOL list, short term list, you will not be able to just get permanent residency by staying there and working there for three years. However, you may be able to apply for PR under the Employee Nomination Direct Entry Stream, which is a different system, where you have to go and get your skills assessed by your assessing body and see if they think your skills are suitable for permanent residency or have a level of skill for permanent residency. Most bodies look for qualifications to assess not the number of years you have worked somewhere. So, basically, you’ll get PR if you’ve got some qualifications and they assess them to be suitable for Australia.
 
Alternatively, if you have a degree or relevant qualification and are under 40, or 35 really when you look at age brackets, then you can look at getting permanent residency through the skill select route, e.g. if you have a degree and are under a certain age, you pass the English test and you get enough points to send in an expression of interest to the government, and then within twelve months they request for you to apply for permanent residency.
 
If you are on an existing 457 visa, I would suggest to you to look immediately at the two years if you have done the two years then try to talk to your company now about getting permanent residency through that route, cause that will be changing as of March next year.
 
So, to recap, if your skill falls under the MLTSSL list, four year visa, you have the option to gain a PR after three years working on that visa. If your skills fall on the STSOL and you don’t have the relevant qualifications and you only have years of experience, then you’ll never be able to get PR. If you have the relevant qualifications that your assessing body deems to be equivalent to the Australian qualifications required for PR, then you may be able to under the Employee Nomination Scheme Direct Entry if the company wants to go down that route.
 
Hope that assists a bit further, I look forward to talking to you next week.