186 Employer Nomination Scheme(ENS)

About The SC 186 Visa (ENS):

Features Of The Visa:

This visa is a permanent residence visa for skilled workers. It allows you to work in Australia under one of three streams:

• the Temporary Residence Transition stream
• the Direct Entry stream
• the Agreement stream.

This visa is for Australian employers who want to sponsor highly skilled workers for a permanent visa to work in their business. The employee can be either a highly skilled worker from overseas or a highly skilled temporary resident currently in Australia.

The biggest advantage is that if you do not have an employer who will nominate you, you can submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) through SkillSelect. Prospective employers and state and territory governments can then view your details and decide whether to nominate you for skilled migration.

You can apply for this visa only after you have been nominated by your employer in Australia. You must lodge your application within six months of the nomination being approved. You must apply for the visa in the stream and occupation in which your employer nominated you, or your application could be refused.

Application Process:

The application for a company sponsorship visa consists of 2 parts:

Nomination: The employer must then apply for permission to sponsor an overseas resident to certain nominated position(s). The main criteria here are that:

• The position is in an occupation on the CSOL (Consolidated Sponsored Occupations AND
• The applicant is to be paid a base salary of at least the TSMIT;AND
• Terms and conditions of the employment are no less favourable than for an Australian in an equivalent position - in particular, the salary paid is at least at the market

To sponsor employees for ENS visas, employers must to apply for approval of the position to be filled - this is called a nomination.

Visa application:The employee would then apply for a visa to work in Australia to fill the position. This would involve providing the following evidence:

• That the employee has the required skills to fill the position and is eligible for licensing or registration
• The employee meets the English
• That the employee meets the health requirements for the visa.

An employing entity must satisfy the following criteria:

Application Pathways:

Migration hub's Expertise

Migration Hub has significant expertise in obtaining the ENS visas for the employers, even in some complicated scenarios.

One of the main benefits of using Migration Hub to assist with your ENS application is that we mostly lodge a "decision-ready" applications and this leads to noticeably faster processing than when lodged directly with the Department of Immigration.

Migration Hub has a significant amount of experience in assisting employers to sponsor for ENS visas and to ensure ongoing compliance with sponsorship obligations. If you would like to discuss sponsoring employees for ENS visas, please contact us on +61 8 6114 9670.

Requirements of the Visa

Common Issues with ENS Visas

What this visa lets you do

Benefits of the ENS (SC 186) Visa

Combined current list of eligible skilled occupations