State /Territory Nomination or Sponsorship

All business visas applications for subclasses 188, 888 or 132 will need a State or Territory government agency or Austrade’s nomination or sponsorship before they can be invited to apply for the relevant visa.

Although each State or Territory of may have specific requirements for different visa streams, they generally require the applicant to sign a statement or acceptance of State sponsorship to make commitment to the following in order to be nominated by that State or Territory:

• Invest their capitals into the nominated state or territory during a specific period of time. This time includes the period after a few years of the provisional visa being granted and until a certain time after the permanent visa is granted. One thing we need to draw our clients’ attention is the State nomination should not have been withdrawn at the time of the permanent visa application is lodged. Otherwise your visa may not be approved by the Department of Home Affairs.The mutually-agreed funds or capitals were not only invested in their business or businesses or in complying investments for a minimum of four years during the provisional visa time, but also the sponsoring State or Territory may request applicants to re-invest their funds into investments in any of the sponsoring Sate or Territory upon maturity of the complying investments.

  For example the Government of Western Australia (Small Business Development Corporation agency) has its own requirements for the State nomination for permanent residency stage of Invest stream visa subclass 888 and the Significant Investor stream visa subclass 888.Applicants must agree to reinvest their funds maturing from their complying investments into any Western Australia asset, although there is no specific amounts.

• The sponsoring State or Territory may request the applicants and the family members to reside and study in their State. The sponsoring State would welcome the nominated person to buy their residential property within the State in order to flourish the State economy. Generally applicants for the nominated State who have family members or relatives living or studying in another State or Territory of Australia, or investments in another State or Territory, will not be selected for State nomination.

Three steps to follow to apply for a State or Territory nomination.

Step 1:
Lodge the State or Territory application to a state office normally online. Pay a non-refundable application fee. The application will be accompanied by a lot of supporting documents especially the previous financials documents. Sometimes the application should come with a detailed business proposal.

Step 2:
Once the nomination is approved, applicant can proceed to lodge the an expression of interest (EOI) through the Department of Home Affairs’ SkillSelect portal.

Step 3:
Once your state nomination is approved through SkillSelect systems, applicant will receive an invitation from the Department of Home Affairs to lodge the visa within 60 days by using the Department of Home Affairs electronic lodgement systems.  In case the visa application is not lodged within the 60 days limit, applicant needs to submit a new State nomination application and pay another application fee to the State migration centre.