Australian Immigration Daily News

Following last week’s budget as well the National Migration Conference, we would like to provide our readers with an up to date summary of 190 State Nominated Visa Programmes.  We are hoping this summary will make it easier for you to advise your clients or if you are an applicant, consider your current position.

New South Wales

Invitation rounds will commence shortly for subclass 190 visa nomination. In line with Home Affairs direction, NSW will only invite applicants currently in selected health, ICT and engineering occupations, and who currently reside in NSW.

A decision to travel to Australia to study necessarily involves a range of strategic and tactical decisions being taken by applicants for a visa to achieve a variety of outcomes. According to DHA, SkillSelect is a major change to how Australia manages its skilled migration program. SkillSelect helps to ensure the skilled migration program is based on the economic needs of Australia.

It supports the Australian Government in managing who can apply for skilled migration, when they can apply and in what numbers. There is however a catch, whilst we know that Skill Select exists and that the applicant needs to be invited in order to lodge a particular visa, we do not know our ranking amongst cohorts.

For example, if you are a Developer Programmer sitting on 100 points waiting for a subclass 189 invitation, you cannot predict when you will receive an invitation for your visa.  However, by visiting skill select dashboard database, it is possible to filter how many other Developer Programmers are in the queue.  For example, the Dashboard will tell you the lowest score this occupation had received an invitation and how many invitations have been for that particular occupation (you can choose filters such as date range, points range, points breakdown etc). Lets suppose that ten invitation were issued for this occupation last month the minimum score of 95 points.  This would be a good indication that the chance of receiving an invitation in the next round is high.

Last Friday, 9^th October 2020 Migration Alliance in partnership with Legal Training Australia held the very first of its kind, an all-online National Migration Conference.

COVID-19 had a devastating impact on the Australian Migration Profession, seeing a number of practitioners forced out of business, or having to re-invent the wheel in the way they operate their businesses.

Support is the most vital element of surviving through the tough times and reassurance and hope is what keeps practitioners waking up every morning and doing what we as practitioners do best.

Recent announcement by the Northern Territory government confirmed plans to assist some 70 students flying from the island city-state to arrive in the country in this month.

The initiative comes from the regional government is working with Charles Darwin University on the project, with flights priced at around AUD$2,500.

“We have a lot of international students here. Over the last four years, we grew international student numbers from just over 1,000 to 2,500 … I don’t think we could get 2,500 in,” NT chief minister Michael Gunner told ABC Radio Darwin.

The following information has been released by the Government of Victoria in relation to State Sponsored Migration:

The Department of Home Affairs has now confirmed that we can continue to use our interim allocation places beyond 5 October.