The Australian Computer Society should be disbanded

Luckily, it still does though the visa has changed from 1 July 2012. It's now a ENS 186. The relevant portions [1] are below. This visa costs 3060 AUD along with 540 AUD for the employer nomination, but that covers the entire family.

"Temporary Residence Transition stream

If you apply for the Temporary Residence Transition stream, your skills do not need to be assessed because you have already worked for your nominating employer for two years in Australia.

You must have at least vocational English.

This stream is available only to people who hold a subclass 457 visa. People who hold other 400 series visas may qualify to apply for a permanent residence visa through the Direct Entry stream."

[1] http://www.immi.gov.au/skills/skillselect/index/visas/subcla...

You, your employer and your agent are all having a harder time of it than me, an individual with no assistance at all, that managed to get through for about a third the cash and in far less time. I managed to navigate the system, why can't you?

Singapore is a business, not really a country, they want as many immigrants as possible. They have a stated aim to use immigration to massively increase the population. This is not the same situation as Australia at all.

And refugees don't have to apply for skilled visas, they come under other rules.

Good luck with your visa, but don't assume that everyone finds the system as hard as you seem to be.

Matt here. Turns out I've been talking to myself for the last year with a hellbanned account! lol.

The ACS just issued a media release: http://www.acs.org.au/news-and-media/news-and-media-releases...

Delimiter has posted an article as well: http://delimiter.com.au/2013/02/01/morons-freelancer-ceo-wan...

I find it humorous that the ACS's response is "the ACS Foundation has nothing do to with the ACS". It just happens to be an organisation they set up and uses their name that their members promote.

Some interesting emails came in overnight:

"The ACS is run by a whole bunch of accountants and lawyers who can't believe their luck that people associate them with the technology industry"

"You’re right that the ACS has to go.

Back in 2001 I contacted the ACS to discuss some policy things and was horrified to discover the “experts” I was talking to were nothing more than accountants. Later they elected a lawyer as president, and then a recruiter, prompting me to publicly condemn the ACS as a fake during the period 2004 – 2006.

The ACS is actually an anti-professional organisation. Their agenda is not to promote computer science or engineering expertise, but rather to allow pretenders to hide in the generic vagueness of “ICT Professional.” They actually work to devalue real expertise, since engineers and computer scientists pose a threat to accountants, MBAs and lawyers who want to claim membership of the technology professsions.

I think the solution has to be a formal inquiry into regulation of the IT professions, with a view to government stepping in and, as you put it, disbanding the ACS. At the moment, the ACS has insinuated itself too strongly into formal regulation. Simply starting a rival organisation for software engineers, say, would not work. Government has to dissolve existing ACS influence and leave the way open for new specialist organisations."

I've been here since 1995, and have renewed 18 times, always at YVR. Approximately 20-30% of the time I run into a guy taking that position with me. (100% male TN inspectors over 17 years - that's some weird gender bias in a job which really doesn't have any particular need for men vs women) Sometimes, they go so far as to say, "I don't think there's anything temporary about your stay, you're planning on renewing again next year, right?" [note - I love how they try to close me on that. ]

Regardless of what they say, you always calmly reply with the following mantra, "My period of employment is for a period of up to 3 years [note: used to be one year]", at which point my plan is to return home to Canada.

Every statement you make with immigration must be some variant of that, and you must never, ever, suggest that there is the slightest thought/plan of staying past your limited visa, even if you plan to do that by re-applying.

With the exception of the first couple years (where I was rejected twice), I've never had to spend more than 10 minutes at immigration. I will admit the confrontational attitude does get your heart racing...

haha, Frankston... explains a lot.