redundancy looms

Well its been a worrying week, the Corporation I work for employing 10,000 people decided to make 10% of its staff redundant last week, blaming the recessions and the need to cut costs. Unfortunately the team I was on was earmarked to take a 50% cut in staff.

It was a scary few days while the decisions were made and the potential to be sent packing really made us realised just how much we didn't want to go back to the UK.

Being on a 457 really is a risky business, no company is truly safe and once you are made redundant you have 28 days to find another job and not just any job but a job that will sponsor your 457. At the end of 28 days if you fail to find another sponsoring job you have to leave Australia or face deportation. Its a worst case nightmare scenario, you lose thousands of pounds getting your family and things back to the UK, we would go back to the UK with a 12 month rental contract still to pay for in oz. our home in the UK is being rented out to someone else. The kids would have to move school just as they are settled in.

Fortunately I survived the cut and live to work another another day, but its made us realise we really do need to get permanent residency.

So now we are going through the visa immigration process again (with an immigration agent), this time a skill based sponsorship visa, which can take as little as 2 months to process. The pre-requisites are that your employer will sponsor you and that you have a degree in a required skill and have worked in that skill for 3 or more years.

Cost of Emigration

We emigrated to Brisbane from Scotland 3 months ago and even though my new employer paid for much of it its still a costly experience.

Heres our costs (in uk pounds), obviously a lot of them are optional :)

1. £6150 to ship our stuff over door to door (40 foot container, they packed)
2. £300 maritime insurance
3. £300 customs inspection fee
4. £4000 flights for 7 (estimate, company paid)
5. £300 2 nights stop over in Singapore (money well spent)
6. £450 7 day people carrier rental.
7. £275 per week 3 bed holiday apartment rental (for 3 months)
8. £13000 Buy a car (we bought a car our first week here)
9. £1000 Buy electrical items we left behind
10.£900 Paying a months mortgage back home before finding someone to rent it
11.£600 Medicals/xrays for 457 visa for 2 adults 5 children
12.£250 Ordering UK passports for all the ones that had expired
13.£250 Buying a big gas barbecue (not optional, you need one!)
14.£500 Buying a big glass patio table that sits 8 (very optional) :)
15.???? Visa application and agency fees if used (company paid ours)

The Company who employed me paid for the flights and the removal costs, and the visa fees. They used an agent who was able to get the visa very quickly so its probably well worth investigating using one, ours handled the whole thing for us even booking the medicals in Scotland for us.