How permanent residency in Australia actually works

People search for "the PR visa" as though there is one form to fill in. There is not. Permanent residency in Australia is the end point of several separate systems that barely resemble each other, and choosing the wrong one costs years.

The four families of routes

Almost every permanent residency grant falls into one of four families. Understanding which family you are in narrows everything else down.

• Skilled and points-tested: subclasses 189, 190 and 491. You compete on a score. Your occupation, age, English and experience decide everything.
• Employer-sponsored: subclasses 482 leading to 186. No points test. An employer decides whether you get in.
• Family: partner visas, parent visas, child visas. Your relationship decides. Occupation and points are irrelevant.
• Talent: the National Innovation visa. An internationally recognised record of achievement decides. Very few people qualify.

Provisional is not permanent

This trips up more people than anything else. The subclass 491 and 494 are provisional. The 482 and 485 are temporary. None of them are permanent residency. They are staging posts, and each has its own conversion requirements that you must plan for from the day you are granted, not the year you apply.

The pass mark is not the target

The points test pass mark is 65. Almost nobody is invited at 65. For the subclass 189, recent rounds have skewed heavily toward much higher scorers. Treating 65 as a finish line is the most expensive mistake in Australian skilled migration - people submit an Expression of Interest, wait two years, and it expires without an invitation.

What actually decides your route

In rough order of impact: whether your occupation is on a current list, your age, whether you have an Australian partner, whether an employer will sponsor you, and whether you will move regionally. Everything else is optimisation around those five facts.