A guide to cracking the code for Immigration as an International student

Moving from your home country to another country with a desire, an objective to seek long term stay or permanent residency often involves long and complex procedures with many issues that can occur along your journey. While it could be a smooth pathway without any obstacles for some but, it could result in a tough, challenging task requiring a long tiring path demanding a lot of hard work, patience, and frustration to reach their goals.

Australia is a country that has its doors open for studies or any other higher education. A significant number of international students come to Australia with different academic and practical knowledge-based skill sets. Their uncertainty starts from the arrival in Australia, which comes from choosing the course while they were overseas in their home countries or for some who were already onshore (in Australia). It also relates to having the right skilled work experience that someone may already have. Skilled work is having the right knowledge about their craft.

The migration program in Australia offers various incentives to the international students; based on a variety of factors ranging from higher English language skills, academic background, studying, living in a regional area, having a relative living in Australia who is a citizen or a permanent resident and many more.

Although, these incentives may depend on a lot of factors which could be internal or external. We can see an example of this as recently the Australian government has made a lot of changes towards their regional migration by encouraging people to choose regional areas, which in turn helps with developing the regional areas, prioritising important occupations in the skilled workforce to deal with the Covid-19 recovery of Australia, which involves the health sector and the economy.

As an international student, the focus is to develop the required skills that is in demand in Australia, to utilise the existing skills and academic knowledge requires a detailed plan and strategy in addition to a lot of hard work. It maximises the chances to convert the opportunity of a temporary visa into a positive migration outcome, which is a permanent visa or a visa which can in future pathways to permanent visa.

The candidates should focus on multiple options if they are not a part of the skill sets which are not in demand.

• Studying, living, and working in regional areas itself provides an advantage among the pool of competitive candidates.
• Working in your area of study or occupation further enhances the probability of becoming eligible for various visa options and potentially a pathway towards permanent migration.

In addition to this there are certain areas towards which the candidates can enhance their scores like improving English language skills, Professional Year, Credentialled community language (NAATI). These can be done or prepared beforehand and not leaving them to the last minute will pay towards a less stressful migration journey and putting the candidate at an advantage and getting the benefits of any favourable migration policy changes that may occur.

In nutshell, it appears that the inclination of the Australian government is to focus on a skilled workforce, high calibre candidates and people who are willing to start their journey in regional areas and settle in rural Australia. Candidates should seek some advice at their arrival in Australia, this will help them in knowing their options, getting the current assessment of their situation, and exploring various possible options to shape their future course of their journey towards their end goal.

Written by: Rahul Kumar (Registered Migration Agent)

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**The Views and opinions on this blog solely belong to our Registered Migration Agent Mr. Kumar Rahul these views do not represent those people, institutions or any organisation. It is based on knowledge and information gathered and it should not be relied upon as such.