News & InsightsWell a new year has arrived and the South Australian and Victorian Governments have been quick to announce some welcome changes to their sponsorship programs. Lets start the year off with news from South Australia.
South Australia
With the Department of Immigration and Border Protection now accepting an expanded range of English language tests (finally), Immigration South Australia is now also accepting the Pearson Test of English Academic (PTE Academic) and Test for English as a Foreign Language, Internet-based test (TOEFL IBT) for General Skilled Migration state nomination. The traditional International English Language Test System (IELTS) and Occupational English Test (OET) is still an option.
To coincide with these changes, the Immigration SA website has been tweaked to explain the minimum English language scores for each test system. The online application no longer requires applicants to submit a copy of their tests provided that they provide CORRECT reference numbers for their results so that Immigration SA can verify the details online.
We are very pleased to see that Immigration SA has decided to expand the South Australian Graduate List requirements to include Vocational, Education and Training (VET) graduates from South Australia. Previously, only university graduates from South Australia could access the occupations on the SA Graduate List.
VET graduates of South Australia will need to be:
- currently working for 12 months or more in their nominated or a closely related occupation in South Australia (min 20 hours per week); or
- currently working for 6 months or more in their nominated or a closely related occupation in a country region of South Australia (outside of Greater Adelaide) (minimum 20 hours per week).
VET graduates will need to meet all other sponsorship requirements including English language requirements in addition to the employment conditions.
Victoria
The Department of State Development, Business and Innovation has announced that it will accept applications for a range of ICT occupations from 5 January 2015 that had previously been temporarily paused. The occupations now available are:
- 135112 ICT Project Manager
- 261111 ICT Business Analyst
- 261112 System Analyst
- 261311 Analyst Programmer
- 261312 Developer Programmer
- 261313 Software Engineer
- 261314 Software Tester
- 261399 Software and Applications Programmers NEC
- 262111 Database Administrator
- 263111 Computer Network and Systems Engineer
Sources: www.migration.sa.gov.au www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au