If you wish to make your move to Australia permanent, there are several ways to apply for a permanent resident visa in Australia. Obtaining a visa allowing for permanent residency in Australia is challenging but can be done through specific streams with the most common three listed below.
Family-stream permanent resident visa
The Family-stream permanent resident visa is for partners, children, parents or dependent relatives of an Australian citizen, permanent resident of Australia, or eligible New Zealand citizen. You can check the Home Affairs family page for what visa suits best (there are 36 visas) by answering specific questions that outline if you are joining a partner, family member, child/children, caring for a sick relative, or to live with your parents. Each has different requirements and costs associated with it and depends on whether you are applying in or outside of Australia. Once you narrow down your search, the visa usually breaks down into a number of streams to suit you.
Work-stream permanent resident visa
The Work-stream permanent resident visa is for workers who have an Australian employer to sponsor them to work in Australia or have skills that Australia needs. Similar to the family visa, you can answer specific questions to gain knowledge of the best visa for you (there are 38 visas). With this visa, you will likely need to do an occupation that is on the skills shortage list. Work includes, air or sea crew, represent a foreign government or teach a foreign language, participate in a research project, post-study work training, highly specialised work, working holiday or seasonal work, exchange program, or Pacific labour scheme specified industry.
Important:
Please note the skills shortage list was recently updated in March 2019 and a lot of skills were removed so as not to disadvantage Australian workers. Always keep an eye on the above skills list to be informed of what is included.
Business or investment-stream permanent resident visa
The Business or investment-stream permanent resident visa is much like the above work-stream visa with 38 visas to choose from. It includes the same question list as the work visa, and depending on what you choose, has different paths, requirements, and costs associated with it.
Other options
The Australian Government has recently created some further visas for permanent residency. These include:
Retirement visa pathway which provides options to long-term residents who have contributed to and are well established in their community. To be eligible for this visa, you must hold a retirement visa (subclass 410) or investment retirement (subclass 405) and be in Australia when you apply for permanent residency. The visa also allows further pathway options, which include parent visas and contributory parent visas.
Former resident visa. This allows former permanent residents and certain people who served in the Australian Defence Force to live in Australia permanently. It also allows you to enrol in Australia's public health care scheme. You must meet age and long residence requirements, or defence service requirements and apply on paper. It costs AUD 3,670.
Distinguished talent visas are for people with an internationally recognised record of exceptional and outstanding achievement and are broken down to two subclasses; subclass 124 and subclass 858. They both cost AUD 3,810.
Refugee and humanitarian visas are for people who have left their country due to persecution and can be applied inside or outside of Australia. They include the visas under, protection, temporary protection, and safe haven enterprise for applying inside of Australia, and refugee and global special humanitarian for applying outside of Australia.
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