Success Stories
Over the past 17 years, Ms. Pilmanis has helped hundreds of emigrants successfully migrate to Australia. Here are just a few of her many success stories:
Problem: Young Couple Lack Occupation Points
A young couple living in New York decided they wanted to migrate to Australia. The husband worked as an analyst in a bank, and his wife was a management consultant. While they earned a good living in the U.S., their occupations didn't score nearly as high on DIMIA's scale as they had expected. In fact, they earned just 50 points on the occupation assessment and only 5 points for their past work experience, leaving them short of the 120 needed for a successful application.
Solution: Count Education and Reclassify Husband's Job
During their initial assessment with Ms. Pilmanis, she discovered that the husband had a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, a field which would earn him 60 points for special skills. That was the good news. The bad news was that since he hadn't worked in this field during the past five years, he wouldn't receive any points for past work history in that occupation.
Then, Ms. Pilmanis discovered under the DIMIA "skilled occupations list" the job title of "business and information professional" that included all of the husband's present work responsibilities as a bank analyst. With the help of professional references from his employer describing the type of work he performed, the husband was able to earn an additional 5 points for work history in a skilled occupation. The additional 10 points put the husband and wife over the 120-point pass mark and qualified them for migration to Australia, where they live today.
Problem: Couple with too Little Work Experience
With a degree in industrial engineering and a nearly completed MBA, this 29-year-old client thought he would have no problem earning enough points for education, occupation and work history. His 24-year-old wife also had a desirable degree in chemical engineering, but had been working in the field for just over two and a half years. While their occupations earned them a combined 110 points, she lacked sufficient work history in chemical engineering to earn any points for work history. To earn the ten points available for work history, DIMIA requires that applicants work in a skilled field for three out of the past four years.
Solution: Wait Six Months
After Ms. Pilmanis assessed the couple's qualifications, she arrived at a simple solution. Merely by waiting six months - until the wife had three years of work history in chemical engineering - she would earn an additional 10 points for work history. That, plus her successful skills assessment, earned them the 120 points they needed to migrate to Victoria, Australia, where they now live with their young son.
Problem: Newlyweds Seek to Migrate
Call it a sign of modern times: a man living in Denver, Colorado, "met" a woman on the internet. When he visited her in Australia, they fell in love and married. Just two weeks into their marriage, the husband was determined to make his stay in Australia permanent, so that he could live with his wife.
But how best to do so? If he applied for migration status while he was in Australia, his application would take longer and would cost more.
Solution: Apply from the USA
Ms. Pilmanis advised them to apply in the USA, as the offshore processing times were shorter and the costs lower. To circumvent concerns that this was a sham marriage for migration purposes and not true love, she also drafted the statutory declarations for them, their friends, and their family that helped demonstrate the couple had a genuine and ongoing relationship. The application was lodged in Washington and approved in less than 3 months, so the happy newlyweds were able to build a life together in Australia.
Problem: Computer Programmer Doesn't Meet Skills Test
A young Indian couple living in California while the husband worked in the computer industry on an H1B Visa decided they wanted to migrate to Australia. Although they thought he would easily pass the skills test, it turned out that his one-year course of study in computers wasn't from an educational institution listed in DIMIA's Country Education Profile for India. As a result, he wouldn't be eligible for the skilled occupation points in the computer field.
Unfortunately, the wife's education and work history were similar to her husband's. Although she too worked in the computer industry, her university degree was in business, and she hadn't been working in the computing field for very long. That meant the Australian Computer Society - the assessing body that determines the requirements for skills in the computing field - would not recognize her as having sufficient education or work experience for the equivalent of and Australian computing degree.
Between the two of them, the husband and wife fell short of the necessary 120 points.
Solution: Use Family Connections, and Work Experience as his Qualifications for the Occupation Points
During her assessment of the couple, Ms. Pilmanis discovered that the wife had an aunt living in Melbourne. That meant the couple would be eligible for a different type of Visa: the Skilled-Designated Area Sponsored Subclass 139, which would allow the wife's aunt to "sponsor" their migration to Australia, with the wife as the main applicant. The 139 Visa had another advantage: it did not have a points test requirement.
A serious problem emerged, however: neither the aunt nor the wife's mother could locate birth certificates showing that the sisters were related.
Ms. Pilmanis overcame this obstacle by drafting statutory declarations affirming that the aunt and the wife's mothers were indeed sisters. She also supplied DIMIA with other supporting documents, such as the aunt's school records, passports, photographs and letters from the wife's mother to the Australian Department of Immigration dating back 20 years when she visited her sister in Australia.
To help ensure the couple could get a successful skills assessment, Ms. Pilmanis also carefully examined the husband's educational transcripts and discovered that his undergraduate degree included courses in Maths and computing. His computing diploma also required completion of additional computing subjects. With the details emerging from his college transcripts combined with his extensive work experience, he was able to get a successful skills assessment based on Recognized Prior Learning.
What first looked to be an unsuccessful application for migration to Australia turned into a success, when the couple's 139 Visa was approved. They are now living happily in Melbourne.
Problem: Older Couple Want to Retire in Australia but Lack the Funds for a Retirement Visa
After years spent working in the aerospace industry in the United States, a middle-aged husband and wife had set their sights on spending their retirement years as permanent residents of Australia. Problem was that as retirees they wouldn't be able to use their occupations to earn them points toward migration. They also lacked sufficient retirement funds of their own to meet DIMIA's requirements for financial assets for Retirement visas. Another strike against them: since both were over age 55, they were not eligible for any of the skilled worker visas.
Solution: Re-establish Wife's Australian Citizenship
Ms. Pilmanis quickly discovered a key fact that turned out to be the solution to this couple's migration dreams. The wife was a former Australian citizen, but she had been required to relinquish her citizenship so that her husband could obtain the security clearance he needed to work as an engineer in the U.S. aerospace industry. Because the wife had maintained close ties to Australia and returned for visits regularly, Ms. Pilmanis was able to help her restore her Australian citizenship. Once that was accomplished, the wife was able to sponsor her husband on a spouse visa. They are now both living in Australia and enjoying the retirement of their dreams.
Problem: Online Assessment Steers Couple Wrong
Using a migration Web site's online assessment, a married couple - both well educated professionals from Israel then living and working in the U.S. - thought they got the answer they were looking for: the Web site's assessment told them they would pass the 120-point pass mark for migration to Australia. To pass the points test, the husband had counted the fact that he was fluent in both English and his native language of Hebrew. But after spending thousands of dollars on their own trying to put together their migration application to Australia, they turned to Ms. Pilmanis for help when they discovered that the husband's proficiency in Hebrew would not be counted after all.
Solution: Replace Lost Language Points with a Capital Investment
Because the husband had obtained his engineering degree is South Africa, he was unable to earn the five points for his proficiency in Hebrew, as he would have been able to do if he'd completed his degree in Israel. Compounding his difficulties, he discovered that Australia doesn't offer a language competency test in Hebrew, as it does for some other languages. That left the couple five points shy of the 120-point pass mark for migration.
But when Ms. Pilmanis evaluated their financial summary, she noted that they had ample cash reserves. She showed them how they could recover those missing five points by making a one-year $100,000 capital investment in a qualifying account in Australia. The couple's financial assets - not the husband's second language - would help them make a successful application.