Month: July 2021

In enquiries about part-time study or skills courses, massage courses come up quite often. Anyone who’s spent time in Australia will have picked up, to some extent, that massage therapists are in high demand across Australia, and that the barrier to entry doesn’t feel especially high. But practising in Australia is very much about “having the certificate” — a certificate that proves you’re qualified and that you’ve genuinely studied for it.

As migration timelines keep stretching out, many students are finding that a single 2-year Subclass 485 visa after graduation simply isn’t enough. Once the 485 ends, another visa is needed to keep pushing forward — student visas come with work-hour restrictions, and landing a second 485 as a secondary applicant is rare. So instead, we’re recommending a different route: the Subclass 407 Training visa.

This afternoon the Victorian State Government held its first state nomination briefing session for this financial year. Since last financial year, it’s clear the Victorian Government has been working to make the invitation process more systematic and transparent — last financial year already saw a summary of invitation data compiled for each ROI round, and this year a briefing session has been added.

Compared with investor migration programmes in major countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, Ireland’s investor migration programme is the only one that grants approval before investment — making it especially suitable for applicants with no English requirement, no business background requirement, and no long-term residency requirement.

Even throughout the pandemic, it never stopped — and you’ve probably heard at least a little about the Northern Territory MINT program, which is open to overseas applicants. This article covers this one-of-a-kind Northern Territory MINT program in full detail.

Although Subclass 189 has fallen out of the mainstream of Australia’s skilled migration program, with its PR quota repeatedly cut over recent financial years — the 2021-22 financial year keeps the same underwhelming allocation of 6,500 places (which must also be shared with the New Zealand stream) — some students haven’t given up hope, holding onto even the smallest chance, and we’re still getting plenty of questions about 189 this new financial year.

For international students in Australia, visa issues are often the biggest concern after academics. Study naturally comes first, but living far from home alone isn’t easy, and many students don’t have enough information about their visas. This, combined with recurring student visa issues and poor guidance from unqualified and irresponsible agents, often leads to student visas being cancelled or refused when renewing onshore.

Among the new-financial-year migration policy changes, the parent migration visa — a major focus for the Chinese community — has taken a significant hit, with backlog wait times growing ever longer. What was originally a 2-to-3-year wait for grants under the paid migration stream is now, based on calculations of the backlog and the annual quota, expected to take well over a decade.

Facing one of life’s turning points, the choice of undergraduate degree after the Gaokao is undoubtedly the first and most important one. Using the same Gaokao score to gain admission to a higher-ranked university in the world is surely a dream every student wants to achieve.