7 Important changes for international students from 1st July 2022 in Australia
1st July means the start of a new financial year in Australia.
As the new financial year starts, usually there are plenty of updates that affect international students directly.
So in this article, we are going to discuss some key changes that are going to impact international students that came into effect from 1st July 2022.
1. Student Visa Fee Increase
Every july we see an increase in the student visa fees and this year is no different.
It has been increased from $630 to $650 for new visa applications.
So, for any new applications from 1st July 2022, there will be additional 20 dollars to be paid by the applicants.
You can see the complete list of fees here.
2. Minimum wage increase
From 1st July 2022, the minimum wage has been increased by 5.2 percent. So, the new minimum wage is $21.38 cents per hour or $812.60 per week. which will be roughly 40 dollars extra per week if you are working full time.
It is estimated that around 180,000 people will benefit from this increase
It is such a positive news for all the international students as most of the international students usually work on these minimum wage rates.
You can read the update from Fair Work Commission’s website.
3. Increase in Superannuation Guarantee
For those student, who don’t know what is superannuation, it is basically your retirement fund and your employer have to pay you a certain fixed percentage of superannuation on top of your salary depending upon how many hours you work.
If you want to know more about Superannuation, then check our article on that.
So that percentage of superannuation guarantee is increasing from 10 percent to 10.5 percent.
It effectively means you will have more funds in your superannuation fund account.
You can read the detailed update on ATO’s website.
4. Superannuation Guarantee for everyone
In the recent past, there was a condition that if you earn less than 450 dollars in a month your employers don’t need to pay you superannuation.
But that condition is now scrapped so basically everyone will receive these superannuation payments regardless of how many hours they have worked or how much money they earned during the month.
There’s only one exception to this that if you are under 18 and you work less than 30 hours then you’re not entitled to superannuation for that month.
Here is a complete information on this change.
5. Replacement Temporary Graduate visas
As some of you are already aware that some international students who had the temporary graduate visas got stuck overseas because of the COVID-19 pandemic border closures in Australia.
So these students who had this temporary graduate visa will be able to apply for a replacement temporary graduate visa from 1st July 2022.
With these new replacement visas students will be able to get the same length of stay as per the original Temporary graduate visa.
Australian government is definitely doing the right thing by giving these temporary graduate visa holders additional time to stay in australia because obviously it wasn’t their fault that they got stuck overseas because of the border closures
Check the details here.
6. Pathway to PR for Temporary Skill shortage visas
Temporary skills shortage visa holders (subclass 482) will have access to a new pathway for getting Australian permanent residency.
So this is a new pathway to PR for these temporary skill shortage visa holders who helped Australia during COVID-19 pandemic.
They will be able to apply for this pathway through TRT (Temporary Resident Transition) stream of the subclass 186 of employer nomination scheme.
These visa holders must have lived in australia for at least 1 year between 1st February 2020 and 14 December 2021.
This pathway will be only available for the next two years, so the people who are keen to apply for this visa they need to make sure that they apply within these two years.
More information on the update is available here
7. Course changes in Australia
From 1st July 2022, international students won’t be able to change their courses unless they get an approval from the minister of immigration.
There will be certain type of courses that you won’t be allowed to change without getting ministers approval.
The reason given behind it is the security issues for Australia due to “unwanted transfer of critical technology”
We suggest you to check Department of Home Affairs website (specially condition 8203 and 8204) for more details.
