Australian Migration Agent Needed - good with Creative Industries
October 3, 2008 1:28 AM Subscribe
Where can I find an Australian migration agent who's good with the creative industries, or otherwise unusual career paths?
I'm finishing my Creative Industries degree (one month then it's over yay!) and am considering getting permanent residency. My main obstacle right now is declaring a Skilled Occupation for the General Skilled Migration visa.
My degree is an Interdisciplinary one, which essentially means it's a hodgepodge of stuff that doesn't necessarily fit neatly into one job title. My submajors are CI (Arts) Management and Creative Writing. My current work placements and past work experience were usually with non-profits and/or young people, so I'd love to claim Youth Worker as my "skilled occupation" - however, the accessing body only looks at your degree, nothing else, and I don't have a Social Work degree.
Most of the skilled occupations on that list don't even apply to my degree; the ones that do don't carry any points. Considering I need 120 points, and the job carries at least 40, this will be an issue. Even if I do opt for the temporary bridging visa (to make up for lack of points), I still need to declare an occupation to work in exclusively for a year.
What I need now is a good migration agent or lawyer that is experienced with dealing with unusual occupational/degree cases like mine. They would be able to look through my course transcript and figure out which high-value skilled occupation I best fit, or find some other way for me to fit in. My dad has a friend who's a migration agent but he proved to be useless. I'm not sure if my uni's Career Service would know much about visas and migration, but it's worth a try. I don't know of too many others that could help. The one person I can think of in a similar situation to mine (originally a German student, now the Marketing officer for the youth arts org I'm interning at) has a sponsored work visa - that's also an option, but that depends on a company willing to sponsor me for a while.
Where can I find such an agent? I'm Brisbane-based but anywhere in Australia is fine. Do you know of any good agents, or resources for agents? Would any artsworker websites be good with this aspect too?
I'm finishing my Creative Industries degree (one month then it's over yay!) and am considering getting permanent residency. My main obstacle right now is declaring a Skilled Occupation for the General Skilled Migration visa.
My degree is an Interdisciplinary one, which essentially means it's a hodgepodge of stuff that doesn't necessarily fit neatly into one job title. My submajors are CI (Arts) Management and Creative Writing. My current work placements and past work experience were usually with non-profits and/or young people, so I'd love to claim Youth Worker as my "skilled occupation" - however, the accessing body only looks at your degree, nothing else, and I don't have a Social Work degree.
Most of the skilled occupations on that list don't even apply to my degree; the ones that do don't carry any points. Considering I need 120 points, and the job carries at least 40, this will be an issue. Even if I do opt for the temporary bridging visa (to make up for lack of points), I still need to declare an occupation to work in exclusively for a year.
What I need now is a good migration agent or lawyer that is experienced with dealing with unusual occupational/degree cases like mine. They would be able to look through my course transcript and figure out which high-value skilled occupation I best fit, or find some other way for me to fit in. My dad has a friend who's a migration agent but he proved to be useless. I'm not sure if my uni's Career Service would know much about visas and migration, but it's worth a try. I don't know of too many others that could help. The one person I can think of in a similar situation to mine (originally a German student, now the Marketing officer for the youth arts org I'm interning at) has a sponsored work visa - that's also an option, but that depends on a company willing to sponsor me for a while.
Where can I find such an agent? I'm Brisbane-based but anywhere in Australia is fine. Do you know of any good agents, or resources for agents? Would any artsworker websites be good with this aspect too?
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posted by billtron at 4:11 AM on October 3, 2008