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Think moving to Australia is easy? What the visa figures show UK applicants

Visa guide · 2026-09-03 · 4 min read

Migration is a hot topic in Australia, and much of the argument rests on ideas that do not survive contact with the rules. If you are planning to move to Australia from the UK, it helps to know how the system really treats newcomers: how hard it is to get in, how closely you are checked, and how long it takes before you can use public services.

Six streams, each with a cap

Australia's migration programme is split into six broad streams: visitor, student, family, skilled (employer-sponsored and independent), refugee, and compliance-related visas. Every financial year the government sets planning caps for the number of places in each, and every stream has its own detailed legal requirements.

Applicants usually have to meet the criteria twice: when they apply and again when the visa is granted. On the skilled side, a competitive points test scores qualifications, work history and English, and only the top scorers are invited to apply. Partner applicants often have to document years of shared finances, a shared home and their history together to show the relationship is genuine. Family sponsorship is possible on only a small number of visas, mostly limited to immediate family, who must pass their own health and character checks.

Protection claims: lodged is not granted

Anyone in Australia, on any visa, has the right to apply for protection. Applying and succeeding are very different things:

Character checks you will meet from the UK

Every applicant, inside or outside Australia, has to pass a character test. Anyone who has lived in a country for 12 months or more must supply a police clearance from that country. For people from the UK, a UK police certificate comes from ACRO Criminal Records Office, and if you have spent a year or more working somewhere else, you may need one from there too. Any criminal record sends the file to a specialist internal review, which can take a long time.

Rules stay strict after arrival. The Department of Home Affairs has wide discretion to cancel visas and did so 37,033 times in the 2024–25 financial year. A charge alone can lead to cancellation and detention; a conviction is not needed. Cancellation is automatic for anyone serving a prison sentence of more than 12 months. Detention is expensive too: about $505,176 per person a year, more than three times the roughly $160,600 a year it costs to hold someone in an ordinary prison.

What migrants put in

The government's own figures point the other way from the claim that migration is a drain. A 2021 Australian Treasury study found migrants as a group make a positive fiscal contribution, paying in more than they take out. Visa application charges raised $4.15 billion for the department in the 2025 financial year, well above the roughly $1.4 billion collected from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax in 2023–24. Temporary residents, as the ATO classes them, are taxed on their Australian income, and between 2019 and 2022 this group earned $230 billion in personal taxable income. Whole industries, agriculture at harvest time being the obvious one, also rely heavily on migrant workers.

Healthcare and benefits come later

This is the part worth planning around if you are moving with a family:

• Medicare generally opens up once you hold or have applied for permanent residence, though some temporary visa holders also qualify. Australia's arrangement with the UK is reciprocal, working in both directions, so check what it covers for your situation.
• Centrelink payments such as JobSeeker or the aged pension are out of reach for most temporary migrants (refugees are the exception). Even after meeting residency rules, a waiting period of up to four years usually applies, on top of the time already spent on temporary visas, which for some people runs past a decade.
• Schooling: depending on the state and the visa subclass, temporary migrants may have to pay for public schools.

The takeaway for your move

Australia's system is detailed and leans towards caution. That is not a reason to be put off, but it is a reason to prepare well: have your police certificates, qualifications and finances in order, and budget for life without benefits in the early years. Your visa's own page on the Home Affairs visa list sets out what it requires, and you can browse jobs in Australia for UK citizens to see which roles are open.

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