Immigration Forum / Australia and NZ / February 2005

Hi,

If your application is nice and straight forward then there is generally
no need. Mine was, but for peace of mind I went for an ozzie based
agent....and was very glad I did.

I used ASA www.australia-migration.com, but there are loads of others. A
few agents post on here as well. The fact you have found this website is
a great advantage in the process.

Good luck

SS

hi there
we have just started looking into aswell. we will be going with an agent
due to husbands job, but a lot of people do it by themselfs.

liza

Ours was quite a straight forward case husband is an accountant who is
very well organised but we still went with an agent.

I must admit it did take a lot of pressure off us as they know what to
do and in what format the information is required.  I think it cost us
about a ?1000 in total for the agent fees, so in the whole scheme of
things even though a thousand pounds is a large sum of money it is quite
a small amount of money in the whole immigration process, also if we are
not accepted (except for failing on the medical or police check) we will
get the agents fee back.  I think we started to look for agents on New
Years day 2004 and by the 4th March 2004 our completed application was
winging its way to Adelaide.  Hope this helps

Theresa

well i am very glad we used an agent, we almost certainly have balls the
tra up without, my trade as a chef/cook (it is 2 catergarys both quite
different) and having just made the 6 yrs exp, in nvq 1 and 2 , the tra
changed the rules on these trades in oct last year. even the agents are
puzzled as to what the tra expect!  it depends what job you are doinmg
and what exp you have but i would rather be told not good enough by an
exp agent than no from the immi! you can always keep adding to exp and
applywhen ready.
i think the tra is the hardest part, but we will still let our agent
continue our applictaion, dont wont to muck it up with one wrong answer,
they are the professional,m let them do there  jobs!  just get a good
one
mine is  concept australia, based in manchester and london, i'm with
manchester office, steve and martin are great, you talk to easither one
of them, they know your case inside out and are very honest!
www.conceptaustralia.co.uk
their fee is not over the top either!
under ?1000, some are ?3000
good luck, from michelle

Claire,

This is a tough question to ask of others, as ultimately you are the
one who has to decide whether you are comfortable dealing with forms
and Government authorities ... and of course you want to get it right
first time.

Ultimately, you have to weigh up the cost of engaging an agent against
the risk of getting it wrong and/or the worry of doing it yourself.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

Best regards.

Hi Claire,
It really depends on whether yours is straight forward or not, We went
it alone and found it fairly straight forward, although very stressful
at times. If you do decide to go it alone just make sure that you fill
out the form correctly as this has been the cause, for some of not
getting their Visa. This site is full of all the advice and information
you will need to be able to apply for your Visa. Just ask any question
and there is always someone who will help you out. Good luck with what
ever you decide and if you require any help just ask.
Dawn& Mark

I went it alone.  I took the SIR route into Queensland.  For the amount of
time I had to put in I felt the $2500 asked by the agent was way out of
line.  My total time for gathering the needed references, applying to the
TRA, applying to the regional agent, applying to the state, applying to
DIMIA, taking my medical exams and PC check amounted to no more than 20
hours of work and running around.  Mine wasn't all that straight forward I
only had 115 points.  The DIMIA website is very good and their operators are
beyond compare.  In fact I made a lot of phone calls and sent emails to the
TRA, regional agent, state agents, and DIMIA operators, and I couldn't
believe how kind and helpful they all were.  What was really funny was if on
the odd chance I encountered someone with a poor attitude they always had a
strong accent indicating they themselves were immigrants at one time.

In the beginning it felt a bit daunting but the more I read through the
documents available on the DIMIA website the more I realised how easy it
would be to do it myself