Hello Pieter.. I"ve asked you this question before , but if you could clear up a couple of things for me , I would be most grateful.. here goes.. My sister and her husband are planning to immigrate to Australia.. She plans to sell everything here (U.S) and to start living in Melbourne (sp?) by the end of the year... She doesn;'t have any special skills nor does her husband..(he just got his degree)but she says he "likes" and is "good at" Web Design..I thought that Australia has tough immigration policies.. she says that they have passports in hand and are ready to go....What do you say?????

-- peter pan (up up@way.com), April 30, 2000

Answers

Peter Pan,
You'd have guessed that I am a migrant who arrived in Australia in the second to last migrant-hostel ship before planes took over. We were free migrants having paid our own fare. Most post war migration was subsidized by the government, thus bonding the arrivals to hostel camps and two year work contracts. With us we had a distant aunty who sponsored by offering a surety of care when we arrived. We assimmilated into OZ provincial life quickly because of our family contact. Work was easy to find in the 1960s.

This sponsorship thing - family reunion stuff - is rather important. Most migration to OZ is like that. Families pay for their people to come too. Work is found somehow within the family ties.

Another way to get to OZ in the fast lane is to arrange a marriage. I know this sounds a bit drastic but more preferrable to having frostbite in Eastern European Gulags or a dose of re- education in South East Asian Camps.

These days lotsa boatpeople arrive via Indonesia. They risk everything to get here and pay huge sums to smugglers. These migrants are mostly from the Middle East. Australia is taking a hard line and I don't recomment the idea. Considerable loss of boatpeople by drowning are frequently talked about. Hard to proof because they just vanish in the ocean somewhere.

'IT' work is easier to find on the Eastern seaboard of OZ. About 30,000 vacancies exist in the industry. Jobs are advertised in all sorts of websites. Do a wildcard query.

There are lotsa backbackers travelling OZ. They get a working visa to try their luck. In tourist resorts the work is easy and seasonal. Visa applications are not hard to find. Often my European family breeze by on such arrangements.

Australia is a free country. Many simply disappear off the radar screen to pop up years later.

Australia is also a very lonely place if you are a migrant without contacts. I think if your mob wants to get here and do it successfully being American helps. If you've got money that even better. If you have someone to sponsor that's real good.

The fastest way to get here is as a businessman. Buy into OZ business and the doors open. You need to have $500,000 to get the green light.

Poor people need not apply, unless you've been bombed into refugee status. Even then we're getting compassion fatigued.

Check out how the South Africans, and now Rhodesians, get themselves here. It's an education that plays on pommy heartfelt bloodlines. Most of them seem to join the Liberal Party where there appears to be an investation of persons with funny accents.

As always, which ever way you look at it, it costs money. No money no go.

Get a sponsor or marry an OZ surfer, get a visa and go feral - everyone else does.

Melbourne is a huge joint that blackens and bruises the mind. I personally hate the bloody place and it's full of ethnics who jingle and jangle in their own lingo, and some 'born-to-rule' Liberal Party freakzzz - a pot-pourri of duds. For the rest they are quite normal and even pleasant sometimes. Learn to talk Ozzie Rules Football and you're in. Talk cricket helps too. Try and loose the Yankee twang because of distant memories when the Americans servicemen came on R&R and nicked all our sheilas. Still a bit of a sore point... Regards from Down Under - it's a big place!

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), April 30, 2000.

Yes, we do have tough immigration laws - I suspect they are fairly similar to those in the USA. I think your sister and her husband should visit an Australian Embassy before they start selling up.

-- Kerry Maszkowski (masz@southcom.com.au), April 30, 2000.

Peter pan,

E-mail me, it's real, and I will hook you up with some people I have gotten to know in OZ. They can communicate with your Sister and Bro-in-law and maybe provide them a place to stay for a bit..or not, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

Cheers

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), April 30, 2000.

Thank you so very much.. each of you for the answers... you guys are great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-- peter pan (up up @way.com), April 30, 2000.