Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) Visa – Subclass 491

Who Is Eligible For This Visa?

General Requirements:

• You meet the required points for the visa (65 points is the minimum). Points are comprised of a number of factors such as age, qualifications, English fluency, work experience in Australia and overseas, qualifications obtained in Australia, state sponsorship and partner qualifications.
• At the time of the invitation, you cannot be older than 45.
• You have a valid positive skills assessment of your qualifications.
• Undertook an English language test (IELTS, OET, TOEFL, iBT, PTE Academic or Cambridge English: Advanced) and achieved the required score.
• All dependents who are 18 or older have to have at least functional English. Alternatively, $4,890 per person who does not have functional English will have to be paid.

Steps in the process

You have to be nominated by a state or territory or your relative who is your parent, child or step-child, a brother, sister, adoptive brother, adoptive sister, step-brother or step-sister, aunt, uncle, adoptive aunt, adoptive uncle, step-aunt or step-uncle, nephew, niece, adoptive nephew, adoptive niece, step-nephew or step-niece, grandparent or a first cousin. Your relative has to be an Australian citizen, Australian permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen and be at least 18 years old. Your sponsor also has to be usually resident in a designated regional area.

If you are sponsored by your relative your occupation must be on the Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List. If you are nominated by a state or territory your occupation must be on the Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List, Short-term Skilled Occupation List or Regional Occupation List.

• Lodgment of the Expression of Interest (EOI) – The EOI is a system which gives the Government the tools to prioritize and rank prospective migrants in order of merit, selecting the ‘brightest and best’ migrants and/or candidates to fill labour market shortages. It also gives the Government the tools to tweak the type of occupations most needed, curb those occupations where there are too many applications and manage the general mix of occupations accepted in each program year.
• Receive an invitation from the Department of Home Affairs;
• Lodgement of the Visa application within the period stated in the invitation.

About Skill-Select

It is important to understand that an Expression of Interest (EOI) is not a visa application and will not result in a bridging visa in Australia. Furthermore, any claims made in an EOI which cannot be substantiated in a visa application, for example, English fluency, qualifications, work experience, will lead to a refusal of the visa application.

What This Visa Lets You Do?

You can include your partner and children on your application. At the time of the decision, your children cannot be older than 23 unless they financially rely on you because they are incapacitated for work due to the total or partial loss of their bodily or mental functions.

This is a temporary visa. Once it is granted it allows you:

• to travel to, enter and remain in Australia for 5 years from the date of grant.
• live, work and study only in a part of Australia that was a designated regional area at the time the visa was granted.
• apply for permanent residence, if eligible, through the Permanent Residence (Skilled Regional) visa (subclass 191) – which commences on 16 November 2022.

Currently, the following postcodes are considered to be a designated regional area: