Sponsoring a fitter in WA

Sponsoring a fitter in WA rarely turns on whether the occupation is available. It almost always turns on one fact that has nothing to do with the candidate's skill: which country issued their passport. For fitter (general) and metal fabricator, that list runs to eleven countries — the widest attached to any occupation in the mechanical trades — and whether your candidate sits on it decides whether a mandatory skills assessment sits between an offer and a nomination the Department will accept.

This page sets out how the occupation code is settled, which candidates the mandatory skills assessment actually catches, the advertising the Department requires before a nomination can be lodged, the sponsorship obligations that follow approval, and the salary requirement — each identified against the specific provision it comes from, not against what a labour hire agency or a recruiter has told you.

Which visa pathway this page covers

The requirements set out below are those of the subclass 482 Skills in Demand visa, the pathway most WA mining, resources and engineering employers use to sponsor a fitter or metal fabricator. Two further employer-sponsored options exist, and which one actually suits a given hire is a question of fact, not of preference.

• Subclass 482, Skills in Demand. A temporary visa. The occupation, advertising, obligation and salary requirements described on this page are those of this pathway.
• Subclass 186, Employer Nomination Scheme. A permanent visa, and usually the pathway an employer has in mind for a tradesperson it intends to keep on. It carries its own nomination criteria, not the criteria set out below.
• Subclass 494, Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional). A provisional visa for a position in designated regional Australia, which is specified by instrument. Whether a Pilbara, Goldfields or South West site qualifies is a question to confirm, not assume, and this pathway has criteria of its own.

The choice carries commercial consequences as well as legal ones — different charges, different processing times, different ongoing obligations — and the advertising requirements are not identical across the three. Settle the pathway before any advertisement is placed. Our employer sponsored visas page compares them in more detail, and if you would rather the pathway and the nomination were handled for you, see how we run employer sponsorship for WA businesses.

Sources: Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 2, Parts 186, 482 and 494, compilation F2026C00667, 1 July 2026. Migration Act 1958, section 140GBA, compilation C2026C00232, 4 June 2026.

What the instrument specifies for a fitter or a fabricator

Neither "boilermaker" nor "maintenance fitter" nor "shutdown fitter" is the name of a recognised occupation. Employers on a mine site or in a fabrication shop use those terms freely, but the Core Skills Occupation List specifies the position against an ANZSCO code, and the code has to match what the person will actually do, not the title the roster uses for them. The occupations most relevant to WA mining, resources and heavy engineering employers are:

• Fitter (General), ANZSCO 323211, item 338
• Metal Fabricator, ANZSCO 322311, item 332
• Fitter and Turner 323212, Fitter-Welder 323213, Metal Machinist (First Class) 323214

An occupation applies to your nominee only where the tasks they will actually perform correspond to the tasks specified for that occupation under the relevant ANZSCO code. A role built around fitting, aligning and maintaining mechanical plant and equipment is properly described by one occupation. A role built around cutting, forming and welding structural steel and plate is properly described by another. Where a position genuinely spans both — common enough on a WA shutdown or construction crew — the code has to follow whichever set of tasks actually predominates, not whichever code is easier to source candidates against.

Write the position description from the roster and the actual scope of work first, then select the code that corresponds to it. Selecting the code first and writing the description to fit it is the reverse of what the instrument tests for, and it is the more common source of a weak nomination.

Source: Migration (Specification of Occupations—Subclass 482 Visa) Instrument 2024 (LIN 24/089), subsections 6(1)(c) and 6(3), Compilation No. 3, compilation date 7 November 2025, F2025C01064. Made under subregulation 2.72(9) of the Migration Regulations 1994.

The eleven-country passport list for fitters and fabricators

A separate instrument specifies which occupations attract a mandatory skills assessment for this visa, and for which candidates. The requirement is not uniform across the mechanical trades — each occupation on the list carries its own specified class of passport-issuing countries.

For fitter (general) 323211 and metal fabricator 322311, the assessing authority is Trades Recognition Australia, and the assessment is mandatory for a candidate holding a passport issued by Brazil, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Macau, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam or Zimbabwe — eleven countries — unless that candidate is an exempt applicant.

Four circumstances take a candidate out of the requirement as an exempt applicant: the candidate already holds a 457 or 482 visa granted on the primary criteria and is employed in Australia in the nominated occupation; the candidate is employed overseas by an established business in the same or a similar occupation and is nominated by that company or an associated entity as a standard business sponsor; the candidate holds a qualification commensurate with the ANZSCO qualification for the occupation, obtained by study or training in Australia or in a country not named in the class for that occupation; or the candidate has met the standards Trades Recognition Australia sets under its Offshore Skills Assessment Program.

A further exemption applies where the occupation itself requires a licence, registration or membership to be performed, and the candidate already holds it.

Where any of these applies to your candidate, raise it at the outset. It changes both the sequence of the matter and the shape of the first three months, and it is far cheaper to establish before an offer is made than after.

Source: Migration (IMMI 18/039: Mandatory Skills Assessment—Subclass 482 Visa) Instrument 2018, sections 5, 6 and 7, Compilation No. 2, compilation date 14 December 2024, F2025C00062. Made under subregulation 2.26B(1) and paragraph 1240(3)(g) of Schedule 1 to the Migration Regulations 1994.

Nothing about a mining or engineering site excludes these occupations

This is not true of every occupation on the list. The Core Skills Occupation List attaches an applicable circumstance to some occupations, and where a listed circumstance describes the position being nominated, the occupation does not apply to that nominee at all — not as a matter of discretion, but as a matter of the instrument. A chef employed in a limited service restaurant is excluded on precisely this basis, before any other criterion is even reached.

Fitter (general) 323211 and metal fabricator 322311 both have that column left blank. Whether the position sits on a Pilbara mine site, in a metropolitan fabrication shop, or on a FIFO shutdown crew makes no difference at the threshold stage. Your operating model does not exclude the occupation.

This is a fact about the instrument. It says nothing about how any individual nomination will be assessed on its own merits.

Source: LIN 24/089, subsections 6(2), 6(3) and 7(2), Compilation No. 3, compilation date 7 November 2025, F2025C01064.

Advertising a fitter position before you nominate

Labour market testing applies in the ordinary manner, and the available exemptions are narrow. The period, manner and evidence of advertising the instrument requires are set out on our labour market testing page.

For an operator recruiting against a shutdown or a project ramp-up, this requirement rarely fails in substance — the role has usually been genuinely advertised. It fails on paper, where a standing job-board listing is treated as continuous advertising rather than as the two discrete, dated advertisements the instrument actually asks for.

Source: Migration (LIN 18/036: Period, manner and evidence of labour market testing) Instrument 2018, sections 6 to 9, Compilation No. 5, compilation date 7 December 2024, F2024C01268. Made under section 140GBA of the Migration Act 1958.

The sponsorship obligation that bears on a multi-site tradesforce

Once approved as a sponsor, Division 2.19 of the Migration Regulations 1994 imposes ongoing obligations that continue for as long as the sponsorship remains in force. The one that bears most heavily on a mobile trades workforce is the nominated occupation obligation, regulation 2.86.

A fitter sponsored into a fabrication role who is redeployed for a substantial part of the year to general maintenance, or to work that a different code would properly describe, presents a compliance exposure rather than an ordinary staffing decision. Where a business moves tradespeople between a workshop, a client site and a rostered mine or project site, the nominated occupation has to remain accurate against what the person is actually doing, not against the position description at the time of lodgement.

The approval itself, and the full set of obligations that comes with it, are covered on our becoming a standard business sponsor page.

Source: Migration Regulations 1994, Division 2.19, regulations 2.77 to 2.87C, compilation F2026C00667, 1 July 2026.

What you are required to pay, and the wording that governs it

A minimum salary level applies to the nomination, and the position additionally has to be remunerated at the annual market salary rate — the earnings an Australian citizen or permanent resident earns, or would earn, for performing equivalent work on a full-time basis for a year in the same workplace at the same location.

"The same workplace at the same location" carries real weight where an employer runs both a metropolitan workshop and a regional or FIFO site. A rate that is at market for a Bibra Lake or Kwinana workshop is not, without more, at market for a rostered site role, and the comparison a nomination has to withstand is against your own Australian tradespeople doing equivalent work in the same place. Where an enterprise agreement or an award already fixes the relevant classification, that is generally the answer, and generally the more straightforward version of this question.

The charges and levy that come with a nomination are covered on our cost of sponsoring an employee page.

Source: Migration Regulations 1994, regulations 1.03 and 5.42A, compilation F2026C00667, 1 July 2026.

What we would ask you at the outset

Six matters generally decide whether a matter of this kind proceeds without complication:

• what this person will do in an ordinary week, task by task, and which ANZSCO code that corresponds to
• which passport your candidate holds
• whether they already hold a 457 or 482 visa, are employed by a related business overseas, or hold a qualification from a country not named in the class for the occupation
• where the position is based, and whether it moves between a workshop, client sites and a rostered project or mine site
• whether you have advertised, where, and when applications opened and closed
• what an equivalent Australian tradesperson earns in that same workplace at that same location

Those six matters generally settle whether the matter can proceed on its current footing or whether something needs resolving first. That conversation costs nothing, and it commonly prevents a skills assessment being commenced against the wrong occupation.

Questions WA employers ask

Speak with a registered migration agent

We cannot tell you what a decision will be, and no registered practitioner will. We can tell you what the criteria are, what your position has to satisfy, and where the risk sits before you commit expenditure to it.

This page reflects the law as at 21 September 2026. It is general information, not advice about your circumstances.