Australian Citizenship

Last week Andy and I officially became Australian Citizens!

A quick look at our journey to get here...

It’s been four years and nine months since we landed in Melbourne as temporary residents on a 457 working visa. We were sponsored by my school, and at the time “secondary school teacher” was on the list of eligible skilled occupations that could apply for this type of visa. The list is updated every year and consists of occupations where the government has deemed there is a shortage of Australians who could fill the roles. We applied for this in October 2012, and it was a relatively straightforward process, taking less than a week to process. Since then, the current government has tightened requirements for getting a 457, and in April it was announced that the 457 will be replaced by a new Temporary Skills Shortage visa in March 2018.

Our 457 visa was valid for four years, expiring in December 2016. However, less than a year later we ended up applying for Permanent Residency through the Employer Nomination Scheme (186) visa. The primary reason for us applying for Permanent Residency (PR) was that Andy had to retrain as a teacher here, as his English teaching qualification (the GTP, for those from England/Wales), was not recognised by the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT). Without VIT registration it would be nearly impossible for him to find a job in teaching. Retraining (or leaving Australia) seemed like the only options, however as temporary residents the university fees were about 4 times more than a resident would pay. Luckily my employer agreed to sponsor us for the 186, and everything worked out for us in the end. We became Permanent Residents one year after first arriving in Australia, in January 2014. I wrote more about our path to PR here. It was a pretty long and involved process.

We were able to apply for Australian Citizenship in January 2017 - four years after we first arrived in Melbourne. At the time, the requirement for citizenship was four years living in Australia, with at least one year of PR. In April 2017 the government announced changes to citizenship requirements, most notably that you would now need a minimum of four years as a Permanent Resident, instead of just one. If this had been the case for us it would have delayed our citizenship by a year. This legislation has not yet been passed, so there is still time to apply under the old regulations.

Nearly six months after applying for citizenship we had an appointment for our Citizenship Test and Interview, which I wrote about here. After the interview, we were told it could take anywhere from 3-12 months for the Citizenship Ceremony, which is when we would officially become Australian. Luckily, it was only three months before we received a letter inviting us to a ceremony at Coburg Town Hall.  The ceremony was at 6:30pm on a Thursday night, so we opted to leave Ella at home with our friend April.

The ceremony itself was quite short, only about 45 minutes. There were welcome speeches by the Mayor of Moreland and a Wurundjeri elder, and the song “I am Australian” performed by a local choir. We then had to say the following pledge:

From this time forward, under God,

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people

Whose democratic beliefs I share,

Whose rights and liberties I respect, and

Whose laws I will uphold and obey.

Once that was done, we all repeated the words “I am Australian”. I was actually a bit emotional at saying these words. I think that was when it really sunk in that I was becoming a citizen of another country. Being Canadian has always been such a huge part of my identity, so it is somewhat overwhelming to think I am something other than just Canadian.

There were refreshments after the ceremony (though no alcohol... very un-Australian if you ask me!) but we didn't stay long. Instead we got a bottle of Chandon on our way home and had a drink with April to celebrate. It was a school night, so celebrations were a bit muted!

The biggest differences between citizenship and residency are:

• We can now vote. In fact, we now have to vote; it is the law in Australia. (Unfortunately we are too late to register for the marriage equality vote, which is currently being held by post in Australia. I will be pretty embarrassed to be Australian if the result is a no vote.)
• Citizenship can’t be revoked, a PR visa can be. So we are free to commit a crime without fear of being deported… haha. (Terrible joke. Sorry.)
• We can leave the country for extended periods of time and come back to live here whenever we want.
• We don’t have to pay thousands in visa fees every five years.

Our 186 visa is now void; so we will need to get an Australian passport if we want to travel internationally. We don’t have any immediate plans to do so but we will probably apply for a passport within the next few weeks to avoid any issues. We’ve been scarred from our experience getting Ella’s passport, which you can read about here.

During the ceremony we were given an Australian native plant, a Woolly Tea Tree, which Ella helped Andy pot on the weekend.

The next day at school our teacher friends surprised us with an Aussie lunch, complete with a meat tray raffle. It was very sweet and made us feel quite loved here in our adopted country!