Thanks for the advice, sgentle. You're right on the masters thing. I checked again, and that is, in fact, what I was looking at - the university department I was looking at just didn't offer a doctorate.

Do you know if a company needs to sponsor my visa in the same way the U.S. sponsors H1-B's? Do you think that would cause any difficulties after my wife's student visa expires?

There are two main kinds of "Skilled Migrant" visa. The sponsored kind, called a 457, requires a specific employer and is valid only during your employment: http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/skilled-workers/sbs/ - it's probably closest to the US H1-B Visa

There is also an independent (ie, non-sponsored) permanent work visa, which has a points-based assessment depending on what skills you have: http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/175...

And additionally a permanent "employer nominated" (essentially sponsored) visa which is easier to get than the independent kind if you have an employer willing to sponsor you: http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/skilled-workers/ens/

Your wife, when she finishes her degree, might be eligible for this one: http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/885... - it's also point-based assessment, though, and I'm not sure if "University Lecturer" is on the list. Most engineering disciplines are, though (including software development and software engineering), so if that's you then you should be fine.

The visas generally include a provision for family, so if your wife gets a visa you should be okay, and if she can't and you can, that should be okay as well.

I'm getting a bit out of my depth at this point, since I've only been involved in student, working holiday, and partner visas before. I hope I've given you useful general advice, but it may well be only a partial picture of the skills-based immigration situation.

You can get a lot of information from the immigration website: http://www.immi.gov.au/immigration/ but if you're serious about this I would consult an immigration lawyer or a migration agent. The latter are usually a lot cheaper than the former. Make sure your agent has a MARN number (that means they're certified by the Australian Government and actually know what they're talking about). I don't have any specific recommendations, but my girlfriend talked to visafirst.com when she was getting her student visa and said they were nice.

Awesome. Thank you so much for your help. If you need anything, drop a line.

>As educated white people, you'll be fine.

Does that response change if the OP and his wife were educated, in the US but not white? (I am not asking for the heck of it, seriously interested in your thoughts)

Ha, sorry. I should have said educated people from a mostly-white country.

It's funny, immigration is a big issue here (see this, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detentio... or this video of our last federal election debate, where two people fall over each other for 10 minutes talking about how much better they'll be at stopping The Boats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUBrpzRPMf4) but Australians really only worry about a horde of Southeast Asians and Chinese (and lately Arabic countries too).

As a slight digression, the African-American situation in the USA is quite unique. We have a dark-skinned indigenous population, but they are more similar to Native Americans in terms of proportion, perception and public policy. 12% of Americans are African-American, vs 1.3% Native American; 2.5% of our population is indigenous.

We never really had anything like the USA's race riots of the '60s. Affirmative Action based on race never really happened here except in a quite minor way (special government grants and university positions). No Martin Luther King, but we did have Eddie Mabo, who fought and won a famous native title claim.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that, while race is certainly an issue for some Australians, we are, as a culture, much less aware of the distinction between ethnicity and country of origin. We're not worried about "Americans", we are worried about "Chinese".

As far as I know, there's nothing even on the immigration forms about skin colour, so even if the government were prejudicial in that way there'd be no way for them to know. When we discriminate, it's by country of origin. You can check out this hilarious table that categorises student visas by "immigration risk": http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/assessment-levels.pdf - note, for example, that a Puerto Rican studying a PhD gets a level 2, while an American doing a hairdressing course gets a level 1 (highest).

I should say as well, lest I give a bad impression of Australians, that the majority of people you're likely to meet are fine. As you get further away from the city centres, you get lower incomes, less education, more babies, and more racism. I think that's probably the same anywhere though. Unfortunately, politicians need their votes as much as ours, which means some crazy immigration grandstanding sometimes.