I just met a new friend at where I am going to be working out who is a woman who wants to move permanently to
Australia. She will be retiring of sorts, so she won’t need a job.
But she is at the first part of getting things in order and I knew we had dopers Down Under or who are ExPats who can offer advice.
Her target area to live is Adelaide.
Any advice is welcome.
Thanks.
I suppose the most important piece of information which your friend needs to know is that getting permanent resident or citizen status in Australia is a long and expensive process.
You can find more details about the process here.
Your friend’s ability to support herself will be a very important factor in the success or otherwise of her application, as will be her state of health.
Adelaide is a nice city, although somewhat distant from anything else. It’s the kind of city you either love of hate.
Here’s a more direct link to information on the various migration streams.
Information about Retirement in Australia can be found here (most of it’s in .pdf format, I’m afraid).
It might be that your friend is elgible to apply in more than one category, in which case she needs to consider very carefully which category of visa she applies for. Retirement visas require applicants to have a substantial amount of assets and to maintain comprehensive health insurance.
Okay, please keep in mind that this is entirely a “Your Milage May Vary” situation.
I was seriously looking into immigrating to Australia not too long ago (still am, actually) while working in Melbourne on a teaching visa. Here are the insights I got during my stay:
Australia has a very generous social benefits system. So generous in fact, that it attracts immigrants from all over the world. Especially from their highly impoverished, overcrowded, neighbor the Philippines. They are understandibly very, very selective, and competition is high.
Citizenship is awarded to prospective immigrants upon a point-system (which a quickie web-seach on my part has failed to turn up in better detail than this, you probably could do better). Points are awarded for things like education, age, dependants, ablility to speak English, if you have experience in a desired field (engeneering and nursing experience I understand are a great plus), etc.
Also, there are special (unspoken) provisions for people in high-tech industries. If you are under thirty-five and in a high-tech field, you are on the fast-track to citizenship. Bieng over fifty is a serious drawback.
Oh, and bieng cough white doesn’t hurt.
Now, keep in mind this is just the hear-say I picked up from a friend who worked in Health and Human Services, and not immigration, but somebody of retirement age with no Australian relations is not a wonderful prospect for citizenship because of the aforementioned gererous social benefits system. Citizenship-via-marriage is highly scrutinized, and don’t even think of quietly overstaying a work visa, as the penalties are hard-core and rigorously enforced.
Inky, retirees are given temporary visas - they have no access whatsoever to either our social security system or our Medicare system : they are required under the terms of their visa to have substantial assets and to maintain comprehensive private health insurance.
I’m not sure how long ago you were here, but our whole immigration system was overhauled in 2001 and a great deal of information on the net is now inaccurate.
I’m not sure from where you got this idea, but you might find that these fact sheets address some of the more common misconceptions about our intake of immigrants. It can be quite difficult for people from other English-speaking countries to gain citizenship here, as the skills base in their country of origin is often very similar to our own.
General information about the requirements for each specific category of visa can be found here.
I’m sure she will find these links useful.
Thanks everyone.
Good advice so far. I can’t think of anything to add offhand (but I’m sure I will). Just give us a holler if you need to know anything. The Aussie Dopers are geographically diverse and come from a broad cross-secrion of society - we’ll be happy to advise you or our friend on anything at all. Just let us know.
Apologies for Toohey’s*- induced typos:
*Hey, at least it ain’t Foster’s. 
Probably got the idea from Pauline Hanson – she got a lot more international media coverage than she deserved.
I just received my visa to emigrate to Australia about a month ago! I can’t give much advice on your friend’s situation (I’m married to an Australian citizen, so the category under which I applied is different), but I will say that the application itself and the “customer service” I received from the Australian Immigration Department was a million times better than anything that my husband received from the INS during his past almost-ten years dealings with them. I’ve dealt with the people at the Australian Embassy, Immigration Section, in Washington, D.C. I have my own case manager, whom I know by name and have spoken with several times. The main phone number to their office is 202-797-3000. They’ve been extremely helpful and friendly throughout the process, which only took me 4 months (even though I had a couple changes in circumstance during the time my application was being processed). In contrast, after completing an extremely convoluted application process with the INS almost 4 years ago, my husband still hasn’t received his greencard. The application says that if you call them, your case will be delayed and the times he’s visited the office in person have been exercises in futility.
So, we’re out of here and off to sunny Australia! All I need to do now is “check in” at the Immigraton office in Sydney sometime before May and I’ll be good to go. We won’t be quite ready to actually move by then (our house STILL hasn’t sold - it’s been on the market for 10 months!!!), but they said I can fly over there even for as little as one day just to activate my visa and I’ll be fine. Yay!
The INS I would imagine does have many, many more cases with which to deal – and has been the subject of intense bureaucratic scrutiny since September 11th – to be fair.
Those factors can be used as excuses to an extent, but don’t explain things like the “greencard” application that had two people with three college degrees between them consulting a lawyer to make sure we filled the thing out correctly. I mean, really, it was absolutely ridiculous and made an itemized tax form look like a 2nd grade reading comprehension test.
Anyway, I don’t mean to hijack this thread with my complaints (and there are TONS of other threads on this board that have been devoted to the hell that is dealing with the INS)…
I just wanted to point out that dealing with Australian Immigration was a pleasant and easy process. Their forms are color-coded, easy to follow and come with a booklet explaining what you’ll be able to expect as far as healthcare, job opportunities, etc. in Australia. The immigration personnel I’ve dealt with have all been friendly, helpful and never rude.