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The Trades Recognition Service (TRS) is a domestic skills assessment service offered by Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) for tradesmen actively engaged in various engineering trades.

For many years prior to October 2013 thousands of tradesmen migrated to Australia and underwent a skills assessment provided by Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) and attained a trade qualification known as the Australian Recognised Trade Certificate or ARTC.

At the time the ARTC was widely accepted by Australian employers and Industry Groups as an accepted benchmark that the tradesman had been assessed to industry standards. However, the ARTC was never the equivalent of the nationally-recognised AQF Certificate III or IV trade qualification.

Subsequently, as Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) and insurance liability became increasingly stringent for employers, particularly large national employers, many migrants found to their surprise and frustration that they required re-assessment to achieve the AQF national standard.

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When it comes to migrating to Australia, if you do the research, you’ll know exactly what you need to budget for. Usually it’s the big ticket items – visas, medicals, English tests, skills assessments, agent fees, flights, and shipping are the common expenses associated with moving to Australia.

But what about the hidden expenses of moving to Australia? The things you didn’t know you even had to budget for?

Here are some of the hidden expenses of moving to Australia so you can make sure you plan for them well in advance.

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If you’re just starting to investigate the process of moving to Australia, you’re probably just as overwhelmed as I was at the number of hoops you need to jump through in order to get here.

From medical tests, English exams, and skills assessments, it’s really not the simplest process at all. What’s worse is that, depending on what skills you have and what specific visa you’re applying for, the criteria and supporting documents required can be totally different from one person to the next.

In order to help you understand more about the skills assessment process, I’ve partnered with Australian Construction Training Services (ACTS) and will be bringing a series of blogs out which should help you get your head around it. This one is all about how to get an Australian skilled visa assessment for trades. Continue Reading

If you’re anything like I was when we migrated to Australia, you’ll have about a million lists of things to do either written down, on your phone or just constantly going around in your head. What to do before the movers come, what to do before you leave, what to do as soon as you arrive and what to do once you’ve settled in – DO ALL THE THINGS!

To help you with yet another list, here are 6 things you can arrange before you leave and 6 things to do after you arrive. Continue Reading

I’m hearing so many stories lately of families who have used migration agents that have turned out to be not as reputable as they were led to believe, or who have completely messed up a visa application. I wanted to write a blog about why you need to find a reputable migration agent, to try and save some of you from going through the same thing. 

These days there are so many people wanting to move to Australia – not just South Africans, but there are plenty of us who are in the process of making the move, or deciding if they can move. I get heaps of emails every week asking me where they can start the process, what it involves and some asking for personal advice. 

I’m not a migration agent, I’m not MARA registered, so I cannot give advice to anyone. My blogs are written to give you practical and emotional information to equip you with the skills and resilience to make the move to Australia and survive. If people ask me for advice, I refer them onto migration agents that will be able to answer their questions about their individual circumstances. 

A few months ago I heard about a family who is facing ministerial intervention as their very last resort to try to remain in Australia. All because their visa applications were not thoroughly done by a migration agent. 

This family have lived in Australia for almost a decade but due to circumstances beyond their control, they were never able to apply for PR until recently. But when they did, their world fell apart. Here is their story.

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