News reports continually remind us that IT professionals are in short supply across the globe, so it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that Australia is one of the countries keen to lure new tech-minded individuals to their shores. However, the addition of the 'Computing Professional - .NET technologies' occupation classification to Australia's Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL) gives the indication that they're finally getting a bit smarter about enticing a broader range of developers and programmers.
The MODL is essentially a list of the occupations which are part of the country's ongoing national skills shortage, with workers in any of the listed occupations awarded extra points and put on the Australia visa fast-track. Simply put, there are few better indications that you're all set to migrate to Australia than having your occupation feature on the MODL. Historically speaking, the MODL has always featured a fairly broad range of IT-centric occupations… unless you were a .NET programmer / developer.
Some headway was made in rectifying this with the introduction of the occupation classification of ‘Computing Professional - specialising in C++ / C# / C’ in September, 2006. All very nice for those with C# experience, but not much use to programmers using any other .NET language.
However, with May's MODL addition of 'Computing Professional – specialising in .NET technologies', Australia's doors were finally flung open to .NET programmers of all shapes and sizes. Many Visual Basic.NET programmers, as well as those specialising in less common .NET languages like PerlNET and IronPython now have a path to the 'gold standard' of Australian permanent visas – the Skilled Independent visa (subclass 175).
So, if you’re a programmer working with .NET on a day-to-day basis, then chances are you’re 'in demand' by Australia. Certainly something to feel warm and fuzzy about, right?
- Tom Blackett is the Online Editor for the Australian Visa Bureau, and has a compulsion to make bad puns in blog titles
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