Australian Immigration Daily News

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS SPEAK UP, SPEAK OUT!

CANBERRA – 31 AUGUST 2018

On 29 June 2018 the ACT Government partially closed its permanent visa program to people living in Canberra who did not have one of the limited numbers of occupations on the ACT Occupation List.

The Department of Home Affairs has published their first round of skill select invitations for the new financial year and the figures are looking bleak.  The first round of invitations was sent on 11 July 2018 to potential applicants.  As reported previously, Home Affairs confirmed that invitation rounds will be issued once per month however, this will not impact the number of invitation issued.  The July figures seem to contradict the following statement issued via skill select: 

Posted on: 25/07/2018 at 00:01

SkillSelect invitation rounds for Skilled - Independent (subclass 189) and Skilled - Regional Provisional (subclass 489) will occur once each month, on the 11th day of each month, effective 11 August 2018. There is no change to the overall number of invitations provided each month.

The Department of Home Affairs has updated their Policy on labour market testing requiring business sponsors to undertake LMT within the 4-month period or since any redundancies or retrenchments have occurred. This includes redundancies occurring in associated entities of the business.  Exemptions to LMT are limited and the sponsor will generally be required to produce LMT on lodgement of 482 nomination unless international trade obligations apply. 

The previous regime allowed exemptions based on occupation as well as skill level of the nominee.

To satisfy the LMT requirement under the new current rules, a business sponsor at the time of lodging their 482 nomination must provide the following information:

The media are reporting that Peter Dutton has resigned his position as Minister for the Department of Home Affairs following his unsuccessful challenge earlier today to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Dutton lost the leadership "spill" by a vote of 48 - 35 and will now move to the backbench.

The details are available in this article from the Sydney Morning Herald at this link.

There is no doubt that Australia has seen a massive year in many aspects relating to immigration.

Swooping changes last April resulted in the Government announcing the abolition of the Subclass 457 visa, a visa programme which allowed businesses to bring skilled workers for the past 24 years. The same month saw the Government halt processing of citizenship applications in hope of passing legislation to existing toughen eligibility criteria including stricter English language as well as residency requirements.

This year, a more restrictive TSS visa was introduced in March.  Further changes included increasing the pool pass mark for General Skilled Migration as well as removal of 230 occupations from the previous skilled occupation list.  Finally, this year Australian population has surpassed the 25 million.  This is a significant milestone for a country which is still fairly young, yet very modern and advanced in many aspects.