Various Visa Conditions

The following post describes various conditions which can be imposed on your student visa. You must know what visa conditions are on your student visa and what their implications are.

Most of the conditions explained in the post are on student visas. Conditions imposed on the family members accompanying students are also listed in the post.

8105

• You cannot work more than 20 hours per week* when your course is in session (other than work which has been registered as a part of the course).
• Note: No work limits apply during recognised periods of vacation offered by your education provider.
• You cannot undertake work until you have commenced your course in Australia.
• *A week begins on a Monday and ends on the following Sunday.
  

8202

• You must remain enrolled in a registered course (unless you are an AusAID/Defence student or secondary exchange student in which case you must maintain full-time enrolment in your course of study or training).
• Note: a registered course is one that is on the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS).
• See: CRICOS website
• You must maintain satisfactory attendance in your course and course progress for each study period as required by your education provider.
  

8501

• You must maintain adequate arrangements for health insurance during your stay in Australia.
• Note: Under policy, this means that you must maintain Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC).
  

8516

• You must continue to satisfy the requirements for grant of your student visa. This means, for example, that your main course of study must continue to be a course in the education sector that matches your student visa, and that you must continue to have sufficient financial capacity to support your study and stay in Australia.
  

8517

• You must maintain adequate schooling arrangements for your school-age dependents who joined you Australia on a student dependent visa for more than 3 months.
  

8532

If you have not turned 18 you must maintain adequate arrangements for your accommodation, support and general welfare for the duration of your stay in Australia.

To maintain adequate arrangements for welfare you must stay in Australia with:

• your parent or legal custodian
  or
• a relative who has been nominated by your parents or custodians who is aged over 21 and is of good character
  or
• accommodation, support and general welfare arrangements that have been approved by your education provider.

Note: You must not change those arrangements without the written approval of your education provider.

If your welfare arrangements are approved by your education provider you must not travel to Australia until your welfare arrangements are due to commence.

8533

• You must notify your education provider of your residential address in Australia within 7 days of arriving in Australia. You must notify your education provider of any change in your residential address within 7 days of the change. You must notify your education provider of a change of education provider within 7 days of receiving the electronic Confirmation of Enrolment certificate or evidence of enrolment.

8534

You are not entitled to be granted a further substantive visa, other than:

• a Student visa with Permission to Work
  Note: if you apply for and are granted Permission to Work, this will change only the work conditions on your Student visa, all other conditions will remain the same including 8534
• a further Student Guardian visa
  or
• a visa to engage Australia's obligations under the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees.
  

8535

You are not entitled to be granted a further substantive visa, other than:

• a Student visa with permission to work
  Note: if you apply for and are granted permission to work, this will change only the work conditions on your Student visa, all other conditions will remain the same including 8535
• a Student visa that is supported by the sponsoring government agency
  or
• a visa to engage Australia's obligations under the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees.

Note: The effect of this visa condition is that, except in extremely limited circumstances, it will not be possible for you to remain in Australia beyond the date authorised by your visa.

8101

• You cannot work in Australia.
  Note: You may apply for a new Student visa with Permission to Work when you have arrived in Australia and commenced your course.
  See: Working While Studying
  

8203

• You must not change your course, or your thesis or research topic, unless the department has granted approval.
  

8204

You must not undertake or change a course, or a thesis or research topic for a:

• graduate certificate
• graduate diploma
• masters degree
• doctorate
  or
• a bridging course required as a prerequisite to a course of study or research for a master degree or a doctorate. Unless the department has granted approval.
  

8303

• You must not become involved in any activities that are disruptive to, or in violence threaten harm to, the Australian community or a group within the Australian community.
  

8523

• Your family unit members must not leave Australia later than you.

8534

You are not entitled to be granted a further substantive visa, other than:

• a Student visa with Permission to Work
  Note: if you apply for and are granted Permission to Work, this will change only the work conditions on your student visa, all other conditions will remain the same including 8534
• a Graduate-Skilled (subclass 497) visa
• a further Student Guardian visa
  or
• a visa to engage Australia's obligations under the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees.

Note: The effect of this visa condition is that, except in extremely limited circumstances, it will not be possible for you to remain in Australia beyond the date authorised by your visa.

8535

You are not entitled to be granted a further substantive visa, other than:

• a Student visa with permission to work
  Note: if you apply for and are granted permission to work, this will change only the work conditions on your student visa, all other conditions will remain the same including 8535
• a Student visa that is supported by the sponsoring government agency
  or
• a visa to engage Australia's obligations under the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees.

Note: The effect of this visa condition is that, except in extremely limited circumstances, it will not be possible for you to remain in Australia beyond the date authorised by your visa.

"NO Further Stay"

If you have been granted a visa with the condition "No further stay" on it, then this article is for you to read.

Some times, when you are granted an Australian visa, whether it is student or visitor, a special condition called “No further stay, 8503” is imposed on your visa.

It depends upon case to case basis and the visa officer granting the visa. Just in case your visa carries the 8503 restriction, then you should know what your options are as you are in a little bit of trouble.


First of All: How to check if condition 8503 has been imposed on your visa:

If condition 8503 has been imposed on your visa, you will see the code '8503' listed under the conditions on the visa label in your passport. If you don't have a visa label in your passport there will be information in your grant letter advising that condition 8503 has been imposed on your visa.

What are the implications of condition 8503?

If condition 8503 has been imposed on your visa, it means you cannot apply for another visa or ask for your visa to be extended while you are in Australia. Once you depart Australia, condition 8503 will not prevent you from applying for other visas.

For more information read the following document.

Department of Immigration: No Further stay 8503

A-Z of Offshore Migration

In my previous posts, I have mainly discussed onshore migration visas. You can find related posts for onshore migration here, here and here.

Just to recap once again, following are the different categories for offshore migration visas.


Offshore immigration. If you are outside Australia

Skilled – Independent (Migrant) visa (subclass 175)
A permanent visa for people with skills in demand in the Australian labour market. Applicants are not sponsored and must pass a points test.

Skilled – Sponsored (Migrant) visa (subclass 176)
A permanent visa for people unable to meet the Skilled – Independent pass mark. Applicants must be either sponsored by an eligible relative living in Australia or nominated by a participating State or Territory government. Applicants must pass a points test lower than that for the Skilled – Independent visa.

Skilled – Regional Sponsored (Provisional) visa (subclass 475)
A three (3) year provisional visa for people who can meet the lower pass mark for this visa. Applicants must be either sponsored by an eligible relative living in a designated area of Australia or nominated by a participating state/territory government. After living for two (2) years and working for at least one (1) year in a Specified Regional Area, applicants can apply for a permanent visa.

Skilled – Recognised Graduate (Temporary) visa (subclass 476)

An 18 month temporary visa for graduates of recognised overseas educational institutions who have skills in demand in Australia. There is no points test for this visa.

There are some other offshore migration visa options but all of them come with strings attached. Which means there are conditions attached to them.

Obviously, every one would be interested in the visa subclass 175 which doesnt place any restrictions of any sort. You can live and work any where in Australia. The rest of the visas have their conditions like living in a particular area etc.


How to Apply for offshore migration

Step 1.


The first step in applying for an offshore migration visa subclass 175 is to chose a profession which is listed on the Skilled Occupation List, SOL, or the Most on Demand List, MODL.

If your profession is not listed on the SOL/MODL then you cannot apply for skilled migration. There might be other ways but this post only deals with skilled migration.

Also, you must satsify some basic criterias for being able to apply for offshore skilled migration. For example, you should be under 45 years of age AND you must have post-secondary (such as university or trade) qualifications (in a small number of occupations substantial relevant work experience may be acceptable) and your skills must have been assessed by the relevant Australian assessing authority as suitable for your nominated occupation.


Check what the is current pass mark for your visa sub class 175. And see that provided you get a positive skills


Step 2.

The second step is to make sure that you have, in the past 24 months before you lodge the application, at least have 12 months of experience in the profession you have selected on the SOL/MODL.

Please note that this is only the immigration departments work experience requirement. You might need more work experience depending upon who your assessing body is.

For example for IT professionals the work experience requirement set by the Australian Computer Society, ACS, is 4 years, whereas the work experience requirement set by Engineers Australia for engineers is zero years. Yes, engineers Australia require an engineer to write a competency demonstration report. If you write a good report perfectly, you get a positive skills assessment. If you write an unsatisfactory report, you get a negative skills assessment. So basically you can get yourself assessed from engineers Australia right after your undergrad degree and then work for one year and then apply for immigration.

In order to get a positive skills assessment from ACS, an IT professional must have 4 years of work experience. If you do not have 4 years of work experience, ACS will not give you a positive skills assessment. Which means the Immigration department will not be able to consider you for immigration as the ACS doesn't consider you a qualified IT professional.


Step 3

Get yourself assessed by your assessing body. The name of each assessing body is listed next to the profession on the SOL/MODL.

Different assessing bodies have different criterias for giving overseas applicants a positive skills assessment.

For example, an IT professional, must have studied in a degree which has 75% of core computer science subjects AND also have 4 years of paid professional experience in the IT industry.

For engineers, the Australian Engineering council requires writing of a Competency demonstration report, CDR, by the candidate as well as 3 years of professional experience.

Most assessing bodies consider undergraduate degrees PLUS work experience as the criteria for giving a positive skills assessment to a candidate.

The process of getting a positive skills assessment takes any where between 8 to 12 weeks.


Step 4

Appear in the IELTS exam. You must be at least at the "competent" level in the IELTS exam to be eligible to apply for occupations other than trade occupations. You should have a high enough level of English that would enable you to score at least a "6" on all four components of the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) examination. However, if your nominated occupations is a trade occupation, a score of "5" (vocational) will suffice.

From Sept 1, 2007, any one getting 7 and above in all bands of IELTS is awarded bonus points and an applicant can gain 25 points if he/she scores 7 or above in all bands of IELTS in either academic or general version of the test.

Step 5

After having acheived a positive skills assessment and a score in IELTS exam, you should lodge an application with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, DIAC.

While applying online, you will realize how many points you are scoring. It is better to calculate your points beforehand using the points calculator which you can access at the following link.

Points calculator

If you are falling short of points, it would be advisable to contact a lawyer.

It is better to lodge the application online as that speeds up the process.

The online process is pretty straight forward. Once the application is lodged online, you might be asked to send original documents by post.

The process takes between 10 to 16 months.


Bonus Points

You can gain bonus points for getting 7 and above in all bands of IELTS, for having a spouse whose profession is also on the SOL/MODL. Note that to claim points for spouse skills, the spouse will also have to proove his/her skills by getting a positive skills assessment from the relevant assessing body.