For Malaysians interested in the Work and Holiday visa (WHV), there are some things that you can try to put together while waiting for the opening date to be announced.
Let’s take a look at the basic requirements to fulfil. The Australian immigration website clearly spells out all the requirements to apply for the Work and Holiday visa in an organised manner. So, it is always best to use their official website as your main source of reference. Information that you get from other sources should be treated as additional info. Only because some of us who have gone through it would like to share our tips, and hopefully some tricks. However, as requirements get updated every now and then, the official source is still your best bet.
So what are the basic requirements for the Australian Work and Holiday visa?
- Be a Malaysian citizen holding a valid Malaysian passport
- Age : Between 18 – 31 years old (you must lodge your application before you turn 31)
- Education: Hold tertiary qualifications (you will need a degree)
- Money : Minimum AUD5,000 (yes, you need to prove this during your application)
- English : Functional level (so long as your tertiary education was taught in English, you can use your degree to prove this. Else, you can take the IELTS/PTE exam. I used my degree to fulfil both the Education and English requirements)
- Have a letter of support from the government (more on this later)
Most of the basic requirements stated above are relatively easy to meet. Some may find the AUD5,000 requirement a tad bit difficult but trust me, it is highly important that you have enough savings before venturing off to a foreign land for a year or two. It is not necessary to literally have AUD5k. You can just provide Malaysian bank statements to show an equivalent amount to AUD5,000.
As for requirement No.6 – Letter of support from the government, you can prepare this beforehand but try not to apply for it way in advance. In Malaysia, the letter is known as the Certificate of Good Conduct (COGC). This certificate can be obtained online from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website.
What do you need to apply for the Certificate of Good Conduct?
- A valid passport (make sure you use the same passport as the one you will use when applying for the visa)
- A scanned copy of your passport photo (Requirements: Max size 200kb, Format: .jpg .jpeg .png)
- RM20 (pay upon collection of your COGC)
The process of applying online makes everything so much easier. The only issue comes with the waiting time and the collection of the COGC.
The official processing time is stated as one to two months. However, I got mine within 10 days from the date of my application. The processing time varies from person to person as some have gotten theirs faster and some much later.
The annoying part is having to go all the way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ office at Wisma Putra, Putrajaya to pay for and collect your certificate. You can opt to get the certificate posted to you but I found the process too tedious and time consuming. I’d have to buy a bank draft, mail it to them, then wait for them to send the certificate to me. Because I had a rough idea of when the applications would open, I gave myself enough time to apply for it and went to self collect my certificate.
Note: I was told that the immigration department may not accept certificates dated more than 6 months. Hence, I would advise not to apply for the COGC waaay in advance (anytime in June would be good).
I believe that should be it! If you meet the basic requirements and you want to go on a 1 year adventure in Australia, best be prepared early!
I’ll put together another post on the application process itself.
Until next time, shine bright everyone!
