It is said that 50,000 Chinese are waiting for Australian working holiday visas this year.
Today, there was a wail on the Internet - the applicant received an email from the Australian Department of Immigration: the working holiday visa draw for Chinese passport holders is temporarily closed for the 2023-24 year.
Someone said: After 10 months of waiting, the hanging heart finally died.
01
I thought I was in the "lottery pool", but it was emptied
Australia's Working Holiday Visa 462 is a type of visa that allows young people to travel, work and experience life in Australia.
This visa provides an opportunity for young people to earn a certain income by working while exploring Australia.
Usually, the age limit for applicants is between 18 and 30 years old, and the stay in Australia is usually 12 months, but by going to work in a specific area, sometimes the visa can be extended to 24 or 36 months.
Australia currently implements a lottery system, applicants register and submit a pre-application when the quota is open, enter a "pool", and at a certain point in time, the Australian Immigration Department randomly selects some of them and issues invitation emails. Invitees can obtain a working holiday visa by submitting relevant visa information and paying the fee.
Australia's 2023-24 working holiday visa opened for pre-application from July last year, and it is said that 50,000 Chinese have registered and submitted a letter of interest, while the quota is 5,000.
However, just today, netizens received an email from the Australian Immigration Department, and these submitted working holiday visa pre-application deadlines.
The content says:
"This registration is no longer eligible for the random lottery.
"If you wish to participate in any future random lottery, you will need to submit new registration information. ”
In other words, last year, everyone who pre-applied for the "pool" hoped to be drawn, but today the Australian Immigration Department not only did not draw any of them, but emptied the "pool".
Netizens predict that it is very likely that Australia's application for a working holiday visa to Chinese mainland will be suspended this year.
02
"Australia doesn't keep its promises!"
Last week, there was a divine prediction: this year, Australian WHV will not be smoked.
As for the reason, the most speculated is that there are too many Chinese applicants, and there are too many working holidaymakers in the past, so a large number of people are stranded in Australia.
In July 2023, the website crashed when the channel was opened, and by September, due to the huge number of applications, the Australian immigration department had to close the application channel early.
The number of applications circulating online is more than 40,000 and 50,000.
According to the website of the Australian Department of Immigration, the deadline for the draw for this financial year is April 30, and the deadline will expire if the application is not drawn.
But there has been no movement, and all kinds of speculation on the Internet continues.
Some applicants said that they had been mentally prepared to fail in the lottery, or that Australia might notify the extension and then "regret canceling", but they did not expect it to expire directly without saying a word.
Some people have begun to complain that Australia is "not trustworthy", which makes everyone happy.
At present, the Australian immigration department has not issued an announcement for the time being, and the working holiday visa situation for the next year is unclear.
03
WHV was drawn in 2022
"Scared and happy"
There are also people online who do not understand why so many young Chinese people are so fanatically pursuing working holiday visas.
To this end, we interviewed Sisi, a Chinese girl who was selected for an Australian visa in 2022, and listened to her story of applying for an Australian working holiday visa.
Sisi plans to go abroad in 2022, and after collecting some information, he has locked in the working holiday method.
She submitted her EOI application in March 2022, and the procedure is not complicated, just log in to the website and enter her name, email address, passport number, etc. At that time, the closure time of the EOI channel was also extended for a while to allow more people to sign up for "entering the pool".
Then she began to wait for a long time, during which she also joined groups of people who had submitted applications and were waiting to be selected.
On October 12, 2022, the Australian Immigration Department drew the first wave, and probably less than a thousand people were invited.
Pictured: The first wave of invitees share the good news
Those who receive the invitation email only need to submit the required documents to obtain an Australian holiday visa.
The people who are selected in the group will send messages to share, and occasionally someone will send red envelopes to spread the joy to others. The selected friends will enter the lottery group to discuss matters related to the English test, physical examination, personal certificate and other materials for visa application.
Those who are selected will be assigned different visa officers, and there are also groups of different visa officers at that time, so it can be said that you can find corresponding friends at every step of the application, and everyone can communicate with each other.
Sisi was drawn on November 10, 2022, and she was super excited after receiving the email, because she had been looking forward to getting this opportunity for a long time, and then resigned and went abroad, and this email gave her the opportunity and confidence.
Pictured: Invitation letter for Australian working holiday visa
Now she is working in a restaurant in Australia on a working holiday visa, and she found that she was interested in cooking at work, and she plans to save up for tuition and transfer to learn Western cooking, and then immigrate through work.
Pictured: Sisi's favorite restaurant in Melbourne
"After seeing the news that everyone was discussing the non-lottery for this year's working holiday visa, I felt very scared, and I felt that I had just been broken off on the shore bridge. If I'm a year late, I won't be able to get out through this route. ”
Sisi said that if he didn't have an Australian working holiday visa, he might still be working in the county where he was working for less than 3,000 a month. Although life in Australia is also difficult now, she feels lucky to be able to "save some money and see the world".
Picture: Netizens discuss "What are you doing if you don't have WHV."
The working holiday visa is open to young Chinese people aged 18-30, and for younger applicants, closing for a year is nothing, and waiting another year is a big deal.
For applicants who are older and have no money on hand, it is a big blow, because if they wait for another year, they will be overage, and they will never have the opportunity to go abroad through a working holiday in their lifetime.
04
Applicants are moving to New Zealand?
This year's working holiday visa circle is really not peaceful, not long ago the well-known "visa grabbing" company announced its withdrawal from the New Zealand WHV market, a large number of applicants panicked.
At present, only two countries in the world, Australia and New Zealand, are open to working holiday visas for Chinese mainland applicants.
Before covid, not many people knew about this visa, so it was not difficult to get this WHV visa for Australia.
However, in recent years, with the unprecedented popularity of working holiday visas, this track has become more and more volatile.
Unlike Australia's lottery system, New Zealand's working holiday visa is based on an application system, with 1,000 places available each year on a first-come, first-served basis.
This also gave birth to the service of "grabbing intermediaries", which sat on the ground and caused the website of the New Zealand Immigration Department to collapse, and the degree of chaos was worse than that of Australia.
If Australia really no longer draws working holiday visas for Chinese mainland this year, many of the 50,000 applicants will surely turn their attention to New Zealand.
This year, the opening time of the New Zealand working holiday visa is July 2, and the eager intermediaries, Chinese young people who are willing to spend money to go abroad, hit it off.
At that time, it will definitely be a "vicious battle".