This visa is a permanent residence visa, for expert personnel who want a job in Australia. This visa involves a two-step process. 

• First, a recommendation by an approved Australian employer. 
• Secondly, the visa application should be under the nominated stream. The visa application can only be made after nomination, and if the nomination has been accepted, the visa should be applied within six months of the approval. For the visa application to be accepted, the applicant must apply for the visa in the stream and occupation in line with the employer nomination.

General Skilled Migration Visa basically serves those experienced workers who are eager to reside and work in Australia on a permanent basis. This visa is also relevant to those individuals who can get sponsorship of an Australian employer. 

Some sub-categories of this visa include:

• Skilled Independent visa - subclass 189
• Skilled Regional sponsored visa - subclass 489 - This visa subclass has two different streams

 1) State Regional Sponsored 

2) Family Sponsored

• Skilled Nominated visa - subclass 190
• Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) Visa (Subclass 491)

If you are preparing to apply for Australian visa under GSM category, it is compulsory for you to undertake the “SkillSelect Program”. This online program has two steps: 

• first, submission of an EOI (Expression of Interest)
• second, the actual visa application.

The family visa in Australia permits partners, parents, children, and other family members to migrate to this country, subject to some pre-conditions. These visas are basically sponsored by Australian citizens, permanent inhabitants of this country, and entitled New Zealand citizens.

The visitor or tourist visa can be largely divided into two categories:

• For simply visiting, which could consist of vacationing, leisure activities, visiting an Australian inhabitant family member, medical treatment, etc.
• For business activities, which could include making common business or government enquiries, business consultations, government visits, attending conferences, seminars, job interviews, or professional examinations.

Apart from these, there are some other unique categories for visitor visas too, for example, medical treatment visa (subclass 602), investor retirement visa (subclass 405), transit visa (subclass 771), etc.

If you have received a Notice from Department of Home Affairs of deliberation to terminate your visa application, you may be entitled to appeal to the Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT) for re-assessment of your application. The Administrative Appeal Tribunal is the single organization that has power to appraise the virtues of a visa application. The AAT scrutinizes your application once again, re-examines the documents, evidences, forms, and all the information you have provided to the department.

These are the two possible results: 

• Affirm: Means, the AAT is in agreement with the department's verdict to reject or terminate your visa.
• Vary: Means, the AAT disagrees with the conclusion of the department to reject or terminate your visa, and resends your application with fresh directions and recommendation. Your application will be then forwarded to the Department of Immigration for additional evaluation.

If the result of AAT review is 'Affirm', then you have 2 more alternatives:

• Application to Federal Court: This can be done in stringently restricted cases, where there is some Legal Error in the decision by AAT.
• Application for Ministerial intervention: You can appeal to the minister for his special discretion to grant you visa by on condition of some compelling motive. The number of requests that are successful is very few. However, if by a stroke of good luck the Minister intervenes, then the decision is affirmative.