In a report released today, The Business Council of Australia recommends:

 The ‘ceiling’ for the permanent migration intake should remain at 190,000 per annum in 2019-20, with 128,550 places reserved for skilled migrants and the remainder for the family stream.

 Consider setting the ceiling of 190,000 per annum for the next three years – 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 – to provide business, governments and the community with greater certainty about the future intake and to support better long term planning for growth

The following Migration Newsletter 713 for February 2019, produced by Lewis & Bollard makes excellent reading:

Migration_Newsletter_713.02.pdf

Department of Home Affairs conducted public consultation “Australia’s 2019-2020 Migration Program".  The purpose of the discussion paper is to seek public and stakeholder views on Australia’s current immigration program to ensure that immigration continues to serve the national interest and the interests of all Australians in the coming year. The rate, composition and distribution of immigration has significant impact on Australia's current population and distribution of the population (especially regional areas). Australia’s immigration programs are continuously reviewed to ensure that settings maximise the benefits migration brings to Australia.

Specifically, the paper focuses on the following permanent streams:

• Skill stream – improves the productive capacity of the economy and fills skill shortages in the labour market, including those in regional Australia. 
• Family stream – allows Australian citizens and permanent residents to reunite with close family members, including partners, and certain dependent relatives. 
• Special Eligibility stream - provides visas for those in special circumstances that do not fit into other streams, including former residents. The Special Eligibility stream is a very small component of the overall permanent Migration Program.

At current planning levels, the government anticipates to allocate approximately 190,000 places to permanent residency.  The government fell short of the target last year granting approximately 165 000 permanent residency visas.

Invitation rounds for Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) and Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) visas will be run once a month.

Current round

Citizenship and Migration decisions can be found on Page 3 of the latest AAT Bulletin dated 4 February 2019.

http://www.aat.gov.au/AAT/media/AAT/Files/AAT%20Bulletins/5-19.pdf

It is recommended that the Bulletin be read on-line. This has the advantage of allowing the reader to use hyperlinks to access the full text of cases and other internet sites mentioned in the Bulletin.