Australian Permanent Residency Visa & Citizenship Requirements

You can become a permanent resident of Australia by applying for an Australian Residency permanent visa that allows you to remain there indefinitely. The most common permanent visas include some skilled work and family visas.

The dream of many immigrants and international students who come to Australia to work or study is to get a permanent resident visa and, ultimately citizenship. There are several reasons for this; one is that Australia has a robust economy with a high standard of living.

Other reasons include security, a stable political system, cultural diversity, a high standard of education, and beautiful weather that encourages outdoor activities.

The government has now introduced new regulations to get a work visa, citizenship, and permanent residency visa. The new rules are stricter and would surely make it more difficult to get a permanent visa to Australia.

So relax and read on to know about the Australia permanent residency visa and citizenship requirements.

Australian Permanent Residency Visa
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Australian Permanent Residency Visa

Australian permanent residents are residents of Australia who hold a permanent residency visa but are not citizens of Australia. A holder of a permanent residency visa may remain in Australia indefinitely.

A 5-year initial travel facility, which corresponds to the underlying migration program, they will give you alongside the permanent residency. Until the travel facility expires, the visa holder may leave and re-enter Australia freely. After that period the visa holder needs to re-apply for the travel facility.

They will revoke permanent residency at the discretion of the responsible Minister, for example in cases of criminal misconduct.

Permanent residents enjoy many of the rights and privileges of citizens, including access to free or subsidized legal and health services.

They do not have the right to vote in federal-state/territory elections, unless they were registered to vote prior to 1984, but may vote in some local government elections. As permanent residents, they are not entitled to an Australian passport.

The stricter requirements for skilled workers.

One of the easiest ways to get a permanent residency visa to Australia is through the Skilled Migration Program. This program is open for highly skilled worker below the age of 50.

The set of workers who would be most affected are workers in the medical, restaurant/hospitality, and IT industries. Apparently, Australian citizens believe that immigrants from these industries are depriving them of work.

That is another way of saying there should be a filtering system to prioritize areas with inadequate Australian manpower.

So what are the recent changes?

First, the new permanent residency visa would last either two or four years in the first instance. It used to be four years for all categories of applicants/visa.

For the two-year visa, they will reduce the number by 200 eligible jobs on the list of eligible for the visa.

Currently, there are about 650 eligible professions on the list. This effectively blocks many people from applying.

The news is even worse for those to be granted the four-year visa as a higher number of eligible professions would be culled from the list.

To make it harder, they will tweak other requirements for getting the visa. These include:

A stricter English language proficiency test. Now applicants would have to show a higher degree of English language communication and comprehension.
A rigorous background checks to make sure the applicant has no past criminal records. This could make it longer to get a visa. Or it could be used as an excuse to deny the visa to somebody even with no available criminal records.
Applicants would have to undergo labor market testing to determine their level of experience and expertise. There is no clear guideline of how they will do the test or how they will grade it as of now.

This leaves applicants at the mercy of visa officials.

Australian Permanent Residency Visa

You can follow a stepwise process to apply for a PR visa in Australia. Once you have collected all essential documents and decided on the visa category, submit an expression of interest (EOI) to Skill Select.

Skill Select is an online system that processes requests, or EOIs received for Australian visas. Your submitted profile will be given a definite point score, which needs to be at least 60 points.

Now, wait for the response from authorities. If your profile is selected, you will get invited to apply for the desired visa. Now, you need to gather all your key documents and attach them same with the application form.

Submit the accurately filled application and essential documents to the immigration office within 60 days of invitation receipt.
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Australian Citizenship requirements

For many immigrants with a permanent residency visa, the next logical step is to apply for citizenship after a while. That is if they love the country and want to continue living there as citizens.

According to the Government, the new rules for Australian Citizenship requirements were introduced to make sure only suitable people who believed completely in want they called ‘Australia values’ are granted citizenship.

One of the obvious changes is that people applying for Australian Citizenship requirements must have lived for at least four years in Australia with a permanent residency visa. This effectively eliminates those on a two-year permanent residency visa.

Other changes include:

A stricter English language proficiency test to include good grades in writing, reading, and speaking.
Candidates must show clear evidence of having fully integrated into the community in which they are living. Integration factors in employment history, enrollment in educational institutions, and being active members of community organizations.
Show evidence of belief in religious tolerance.
They must show that they respect the rights of everybody, especially women and kids. They must also prove they respect women completely.
Applicants can apply for citizenship only three times. And any applicant caught cheating on a test is disqualified automatically without recourse to any form of appeal.

These new rules only apply to new applicants.

CONCLUSION

I hope this article on Australia’s permanent residency visa and citizenship requirements is an eye-opener for you to know more about Australia’s permanent visa. Also, I believe it gives you want you are searching for about Australia’s citizenship requirements.

Australian Permanent Residency Visa and Citizenship requirements

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Australian Permanent Residency Visa