Australia welcomes highly skilled Indians, with Indian degrees

Australia has welcomed highly skilled human resource from India and those with outstanding abilities to the country through its new reformed immigration policies, aimed at boosting its economy. This will enable highly skilled human resource from India with Indian degrees in the fields of health care, IT, engineering to apply for immigration to Australia under its Global Non-discriminatory Immigration programme, Peter Speldewinde, Assistant Secretary, Labour Market Branch of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship of Government of Australia told reporters in Mumbai today.

“We have brought in a fundamental shift in the immigration process, focusing on medium and long-term skill needs for Australia and the age limit for immigration of such human resource has been increased to 50 (from 45 yrs),” he said.

Those who apply from July 1 this year will come under the new point system for a direct visa application. While the proposed system of skilled migrant selection model will be based on an Expression of Interest (EOI) and will be launched from July 1, 2012, he said.

For the 2011 application, once the threshold English language requirement is met with, the applicant can claim points under a range of different factors (Indian degrees are now recognised by Australia) and must meet the pass mark of 65 points to be eligible for a points tested visa, he said adding that the highest points were for PhDs.

The EOI is an on-line application form for skilled migration to Australia and once selected under the merit list the candidate will be invited to apply for visa, he said.