CTO of the Newstars Group and Gold Medal study and migration consultant at the Melbourne branch, pen name Mitu Weiyuan.
He has extensive experience handling migration and study-abroad matters, enjoys using migration law to resolve all kinds of visa issues, and specialises in tackling the trickiest “hard cases”. He has authored dozens of in-depth migration and study-abroad articles for Newstars, helping applicants understand not just what to do, but why.
Recently we’ve received quite a few enquiries from people who graduated at the end of 2020, are currently offshore, and were also offshore between 1 February and 19 September 2020 (attending classes online), asking whether, within 12 months of graduating, they can apply for the Subclass 485 visa.
The answer is: absolutely not!
Under the migration law, only people who, because they were offshore for some or all of the period from 1 February to 19 September 2020, were unable to apply for the Subclass 485 visa, are permitted to apply for the Subclass 485 visa within 12 months of graduating.
The provision under the migration law —
according to the migration law, only people who, because for some or all of the period from 1 February to 19 September 2020 they were offshore, and were therefore unable to apply for the Subclass 485 visa, are permitted to apply for the Subclass 485 visa within 12 months of graduating.
Whereas, those who graduated at the end of 2020 — although they were offshore for some or all of the above period — the reason they could not apply for the Subclass 485 visa during that time was that they simply hadn’t graduated yet, not because they were offshore! This means they don’t meet the migration law’s definition, and therefore, they must apply within six months of graduating!The original wording of the migration law is as follows:
As shown above, under part (a), the normal requirement is to “meet the Australian two-year study requirement within the six months before lodging the Subclass 485 visa application”.Whereas under part (b),“unless the applicant was offshore for some or all of the period from 1 February to 19 September 2020 and was therefore unable to apply for the Subclass 485 visa, in which case they are permitted to apply within 12 months of graduating”.
Those who graduated at the end of 2020 or later —
none of them can meet the requirement under part (b) above, and therefore must apply within six months of graduating as required under part (a). Furthermore, everyone who graduated after 19 September 2020 must apply within six months of graduating, without exception!
The people who can currently still apply for the Subclass 485 visa within 12 months of graduating —
are, roughly, only those who graduated in June or July 2020 and left Australia immediately afterwards. Because these people had, on the one hand, already graduated, and on the other hand, genuinely spent part of that time (June/July to 19 September) offshore, and genuinely could not return to Australia to apply for the Subclass 485 visa before their visa expired (usually 30 August). They therefore meet the requirement to apply within 12 months of graduating.
Of the people who contacted me at the start of this article, some have already been out of their studies for more than six months and have lost their eligibility to apply for the Subclass 485 visa!So, when it comes to visa applications, never assume anything!!
End of article ~
If you have further questions or need help with migration or study-abroad matters (student visas / Subclass 485 visa, skilled migration 189/190/491, partner migration, parent migration, visitor visas, citizenship, and more), please contact the author via the QR code:
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