Migration Agent Jennifer Welcomes Clients in the Heart of Perth’s CBD
Meet Jennifer – our passionate registered migration agent who is fluent in Korean!
There are not many people who can claim three different nationalities within their family, but our new Registered Migration Agent Jennifer Sungnyeo Kim can do just that.
Jennifer is South Korean; her husband is Singaporean and her one year old son Australian.
“That’s quite a lot of nationalities, it certainly sparks conversation. I took my son back to Singapore to meet his grandparents and when we took out our passports, officials at Immigration control commented on it. It can be quite difficult to get your head around.”
Jennifer was born in a town to the south of Seoul. She went to university to study law, spurred on by her brother who is a successful lawyer, however she soon realised that maybe this wasn’t for her.
“My long-term aim was to see more of the world and to travel, but I wasn’t sure how law would allow me to do this. I’d done some part-time teaching work at university and really enjoyed this, so I thought I’d go to America and teach Korean, but I ended up in Australia as a backpacker and I soon realised that there weren’t too many opportunities to teach people Korean.”
It was here in Australia where she met her future husband who was renting a room in a house she was living in.
“Once I met him, my future was decided and I knew that I’d be in Australia for good. I completed a Diploma of Legal Studies which meant the law I studied in South Korea was recognised here. I then went on to Murdoch University and qualified with a Postgraduate Certificate in Migration Law and Practise.”
Jennifer joined a WA migration company and thrived on the work allocated to her. Her background in law helps her to understand the legalities surrounding migration policy.
“I just caught the tail end of the boom with the 457, so there was a lot of these visas on fairly tight turnaround times. What I really did enjoy was seeing people on 457 visas transition onto permanent residency as it meant that they’d settled well into their roles and their appointments had been a success. That gave me real job satisfaction.”
Jennifer is based at VSA’s new office in Exchange House on St Georges Terrace in Perth’s CBD. It’s a new office in a central location. While she is used to working behind the scenes on assessments, this role will be more customer-focused and she will be talking to people walking in off the street.
“It will be my job to explore visa options with them. I’ll be taking on a mix of cases including partner and family visas. Long term we want to build new relationships with city-based corporate companies,” she explained.
“The migration industry is changing rapidly and that means Visa Solutions Australia can grow and prosper. Our team here has a great reputation, we are all from different cultural backgrounds so we can easily relate to other people’s stories.”
Outside of work Jennifer enjoys taking her one year old son Daniel to the park and is an avid reader.
“Australia has so much going for it, being close to the beach, having lots of clean fresh air, there’s an abundance of nature around us, surely it must be one of the best places to live in the world?”
