Welcome to the second part of the article – Immigrating to Australia as an Information Security Professional!

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who contacted me about the process with questions, comments and suggestions. Unfortunately I’m not able to answer to all of you, but rest assured I’ve read every e-mail received and I’ll do my best to address all concerns throughout the article.

So, as promised before, let me try to put down all the planning required to migrate. I’ll try to be as precise as I can, but since it’s been a few years ago, some things might have changed.

Migration to Australia

Planning

Ok, now we know why I’ve chosen Australia, so the next step was to further investigate the possibilities and also, as a Risk Manager professional (it’s in the blood:)), decide whether the cost/benefit would pay off in the short/mid/long run.

The first thing I’ve done was visiting Australia’s Immigration Department website, going through the point system and ascertaining that I was eligible to migrate. The pointing system evaluates aspects such as English Language Skills, Education, Profession, Age and some other parameters that gives you a certain number of points.

To be eligible, you must:

• be under 45 years of age
• have the skills and qualifications that meet the Australian standard for an occupation on the Skilled Occupation List (SOL)
• meet the Australian study requirement, or meet the recent work experience requirement (you must have worked for 12 months in the last 24 months in any occupation on the SOL)
• meet the English language requirement.

(extracted from 175 visa page)

The Skilled Occupations List mentioned above can be found here.

By the time I applied, 120 points (or more) were needed, and I was fortunate enough to have 145. Requirement 1 – CHECKED!

Profession recognition

The second step in the process is having your career recognized (in our case – IT Security Professionals) by ACS. Getting my career recognized cost me a considerable amount of money and time, since quite a few of the documents they require were in Portuguese (my native language),plus shipping costs, plus the process itself. The translation needs to be sworn, and the process alone cost 500 AUD. My rough estimation of cost to get the ACS letter goes around 800 AUD. And that’s just the beginning.

In my case, the process with ACS took 4 months from start to end. By that time, I’ve applied to the CISSP-Professional category, a certification I held for a couple of years already. I also had CEH, ISO 27001 Lead auditor, CISA and a few other certifications which I firmly believe helped to get my career recognized without any issues. Moreover, some reference letters from companies I’ve worked before closed any potential gaps. To save on costs, I’ve prepared the letters in English and asked my former bosses to sign and send back to me by post.

Side note: by the time I applied to the Australian visa I was living in Europe, so the process was far more expensive and lenghty that it would be in case I was back in Brazil. Everything had to be sent back and forth between continents to get done.

NOTE: During the 4 months “waiting” period I was still gathering all documents to apply for the visa, such as diplomas, translated IDs, etc. The visa process hadn’t started yet! You need to have the ACS letter (plus results of IELTS English test) prior to lodging your application!

IELTS Language Test

As for the IELTS test, I’ve spend around 300 AUD dollars to get it done in Europe. Since I had to speak English on a daily basis I decided to sit for the exam without studying at all (NOT RECOMMENDED). Fortunately I was able to achieve a good mark and didn’t need to retake the exam. I had to wait for 2 months for the first available exam date, plus 2 weeks to get the results. Advice: try to arrange it during the ACS waiting time. Don’t wait for the letter to arrive otherwise you’ll be wasting time.

Seems complicated, doens’t it? But sit down and relax because the real complication starts now.

Lodging the visa application

Wow! After painstakingly going through all this effort we must be almost done right? W-R-O-N-G.

I’ve initiated the whole process in March/2008 (by the time we discovered my wife was pregnant), and got all the paperwork arranged and ready for the application by October (when our lovely daughter was born). It was a very exciting experience since March has really been the beginning  of a whole new life for us, and we already started preparing our minds for the wonderful changes to come.

So, with all the paper needed in hands I’ve lodged the application. My wife had sat for the IELTS and also got the required mark for migrating without a mandatory english course (that would cost 2000 AUD ). When you lodge your application you’ve to pay a fee of cca. 2500 AUD. That can be a ” showstopper” for many candidates.

After lodging the visa, a series of other documents will be required from you, some of them which will imply into even more expenditures, such as the medical examination (for you and your whole family). In my case, each exam cost around 220 AUD, so be prepared!

In total, I guesstimate that you’ll need around 6000.00 AUD to get the visa. Sounds like a lot of money, but if you plan adequately, this money can return to your account very fast after you get a job in here.

After 8 long months after applying, an e-mail came and changed my life. My grant letter was issued and I was officially recognized as a welcome migrant to Australia!

If you are going through the process or just planning to, I leave here an advice that might relief the agony of waiting for the visa: DO NOT STOP LIVING YOUR LIFE. Some people I’ve talked to didn’t enjoy being where they were and couldn’t wait to leave their country. Keep in mind that once you lodge your application it’s just a matter of time until you get the visa, and by then your departure date clock starts ticking. Do apply for the visa, but carry on with your life and enjoy it to the most, so you won’t have any regret after arriving in the land Down Under!

End of part 2. To be continued!

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