SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results are for:

1.  Skill Select EOI Invitation Round is for people who lodged an Expression of Interest (EOI)
2. Submitted EOI’s must be for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” stream of visa subclasses
3. The two GSM visa subclasses are 189 (Skilled Independent) (Australian Permanent visa) and subclass 491 (Skilled Family Sponsored) (Australian Provisional visa).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agency, based in Perth, Australia. Mr Cyrus Mistry (founder of EasyMigrate) has reviewed SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results – see his comments below.

Skill Select & Migration News

• Novel Coronavirus Information for Visa Holders 

• Visa conditions relaxed for backpackers in Australia

• WA – Graduate Occupation list Update

Hints & Tips

Apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year for an invitation through SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results. For these clients we complete a file-review and recommend a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them get invited for permanent residency WITHIN 2 to 3 MONTHS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy”, and we can review your case (link for online booking etc.) 

Summary:

Next round is 11 March 2020. Commentary regarding that Skill Select invitation round will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by the Department of Immigration (usually one month later).

The SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for September 2019  was terrible  – 100 invitations instead of 1,000 invitations in July 2019. The 11 October 2019 was much better – with 1,500 invitations! Then, the SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11 November 2019 and 11 December 2019 rounds were very low and disappointing – only 250 invitations! 10 January 2020 invitations were better at 1000 invitations. The latest SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results (11 February 2020) is slightly better than the October 2019 and January 2020 invitations – 1000 invitations for subclass 189 applicants and another 500 invitations for the new SC491 family-sponsored applicants.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  February 2020: 

1,000 invitations in the Skilled Independent subclass 189 and 500 invitations in the new subclass 491 family-sponsored stream. You may already be aware that Family-Sponsored Subclass 489 has been discontinued from 16 Nov 2019 and replaced by the “SC491 Family Sponsored” stream.

For this round, 189 invitations went to SC489 Family Sponsored applicants who have 85 points (but in my opinion this is the same as the previous pre-November 2019 rule changes score level “invitation at 70 points”). This is because applicants now get 5 or 10 more points for spouse if spouse is skilled and/or speaks good English, if applicants DO NOT have a spouse (10 points), etc. Applicants also get 15 more points if they are “SC491 Family Sponsored”.

• For SC189 Independent:

• 555 invitations went to applicants with 90 points
• 323 invitations went to applicants with 95 points
• 73 invitations went to applicants with 100 points
• 32 invitations went to applicants with 105 points
• Approx 20 invitations went to applicants with 110 points or more.

• For SC491-Family Sponsored:

• 189 invitations went to applicants with 85 points
• 156 invitations went to applicants with 90 points
• 88 invitations went to applicants with 95 points
• 49 invitations went to applicants with 100 points
• Approx 22 invitations went to applicants with 105 points or more.
•  There were no invitations to persons with 80 points or less (but historically, even at 70 points, 884 were invited in March 2019, 848 invited in Jan 2019 and 32 invited in February 2019).

Occupations Analysis

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 90 points, cut-off date 16-11-2019.

The previous cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 95 points, cut-off date 16-12-2019 in previous invitation rounds. But this time 500 SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited, starting at 85 points with cut-off date 08-01-2020.

The “boom” months were between September 2018 and November 2018 at 4,350 invitations per month.

In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited for SC189, but not anymore. This is due to a combination of increased numbers of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced quota for invitations.

For pro-rata Occupations:

For the twenty-third round of invitations relating to pro-rata occupations, DoHA has been inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold dropped from 100 points to 95 points (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 17-05-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 95 points who lodged before 17-05-2019 got invited. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants (Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers) were not invited at all.

For the Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers occupations, the cut-off points-score has stayed at 95, and the cut-off date is now 01-12-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

Electronics Engineers did not get invited for SC189 in the September 2019 or October 2019.  In December 2019 they had been invited at 95 points or more, cut-off date was 04-06-2019. For this latest round, Electronics Engineers have been invited a 90 points, cut-off date is 16-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited for Electrical Engineer occupation at 85 points, cut-off date 22-12-2019.

For Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers – last month the new invitations stopped at 90 points, with cut-off date 01-06-2019. The score requirement has remained the same –invitations have been issued at 90 points, with cut-off date 17-09-2019! SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

(Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited in November 2018 at 70 points)

In previous month, Other Engineering Professionals got the invitation-score increased from 85 points to 95 points! In Jan 2020 this had dropped to 90 points. February 2020 invitations went to applicants with 90 points. The date of effect is 11-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For ICT Business and Systems Analysts – the SC189 invitation threshold had increased from 85 points to 95 points in December 2019. This has dropped to 90 points in January 2019, with the visa date of effect 01-09-2019. February 2020 invitations went to applicants with 90 points, cut-off date 07-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were not invited at all in Jan 2020 round.

Software and Application Programmers – for SC189 the pass mark had increased from 85 to 95 points in December 2019 round, 90 points in January 2020 round; this has stayed the same at 90 points and the cut-off date is now 16-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 85 points, cut-off date 06-01-2020.

Computer Network Professionals – SC189 applicants got invited at 95 points in December 2019 round. In January 2019, this dropped to 90 points with cut-off date 30-09-2019. In February 2020 round, invitations were given to applicants with 90 points, cut-off date 16-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 85 points, cut-off date 03-01-2020.

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 85 points or less are likely to be invited. We are now starting to see the new Subclass 491 invitations increase as full-months of application-time has kicked in. This is likely to dilute the SC189 applicant’s chances. My recommendation is: PLEASE CONTACT US TO SEE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE AND THEN LODGE SC491 EOIs ALSO, LODGE SC190 EOIs ALSO IF ELIGIBLE.

With the quota having re-set on 1^st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next few invitation rounds. But from December 2019 round onwards the new Subclass 491 visa (Regional Family Sponsored) has also come under the Expression of Interest scheme so there will be fluctuations and variations. The new SC 491 visa replaced the “old” SC489 visa on 16^th November 2019.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change — for example, additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, extra points for “single-status”, etc.

Overall, the Australia Government has announced that the quota for general skilled migration is to be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000. This will also affect applicants in future.

Historical Analysis

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” around 2017 good months.  They went lower between November 2017 to June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

From July 2018 the invitations were on par with the good months in previous year (2017).

The two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations at 4,340 invitations.  

But the December 2018 round and January 2019  halved to 2,500 invitations. February 2019,  March 2019  were FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019 invitations were a disappointing 100 invitations only. 

July 2019 invitations had bounced back to 1,000 invitations. But August 2019 and September 2019 had fallen back to just 100 invitations! October 2019 invitations looked much better at 1,500 invitations. But November 2019 round was very poor at 250 invitations. The December 2019 was not much better – 250 invitations for SC189 and 200 invitations for SC491-Family-Sponsored. The January 2020 invitations were better with 1,000 SC190 invitations and 300 SC491-Family-Sponsored invitations. The current round under review (11 February 2020) was slightly better at 1000 invitations for SC189 and 500 invitations for SC491 Family Sponsored.

The total number of invitations for the financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) was 22,920.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018, September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019, April 2019 and May 2019 figures, I had forecast in my previous articles that the total number of EOI applicants invited for the financial year July 2018 to June 2019 would be  22,820 – my estimate was very close because the FINAL COUNT SkillSelect Invitation Round Results was 22,920!

Cyrus Mistry Comments

Recent announcements by the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) point to a further slow-down in the number of “general skilled migration” (GSM) invitations.

The effect of “re-invitation” continues to plague the SkillSelect invitations program. In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the impact of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have changed to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days. These applicants usually get “re-invited” as per the Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,000-odd invitations in January 2020 only about 600-800 may take it up, 200-400 “invites” are wasted! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

This time, more invitations were issued to new SC491 Family-Sponsored applicants (500 instead of 300). The points allotted for Family-Sponsorship under the new legislation have increased from 10 to 15 points. Please keep in mind that for the SC491 FAMILY-SPONSORED visa, the applicant needs to have scored 70 points “independently” plus the 15 points from their family-sponsor (if invitations are starting at 85 points). From 16 November 2019 onwards the new Subclass 491 Regional Family-Sponsored visa has come into effect, replacing the SC489.

Our EasyMigrate website has statistics for previous SkillSelect Invitation Round Results. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019,  June 2019,  July 2019, August 2019, September 2019, October 2019, November 2019 , December 2019 and January 2020 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Department of Home Affairs Invitations Round Results

The results in the next section have been taken from the Department of Home Affairs website: 

The post Skill Select 11 February 2020 Results appeared first on Easy Migrate.

Skill Select January 2020 Results

SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results are for:

1.  Skill Select EOI Invitation Round is for people who lodged an Expression of Interest (EOI)
2. Submitted EOI’s must be for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” stream of visa subclasses
3. The two GSM visa subclasses are 189 (Skilled Independent) (Australian Permanent visa) and subclass 491 (Skilled Family Sponsored) (Australian Provisional visa).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agency, based in Perth, Australia. Mr Cyrus Mistry (founder of EasyMigrate) has reviewed SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results – see his comments below.

Skill Select & Migration News

1. WA introduced a new Regional WA only category – A new condition has been applied to some health care related occupations in the WA state nomination.
2. Horticulture labour agreement – Applications are now open – Since 1st January 2020, Australian businesses in the horticulture industry can apply for the new Horticulture Industry Labour Agreement.

Previous Updates

• Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has released new State List for 2019 / 2020  – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in Canberra, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required statelist? Now is your chance.
•  New South Wales (NWS) has released new State List for 2019/2020  – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in NSW, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required statelist? Now is your chance.
• Northern Territory (NT) has released new State List for 2019/2020 –Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) Migration Occupation List includes occupations that are in demand in the NT eligible for NT nomination under the General Skilled Migration Program. If your occupation is not on the NT Migration Occupations List but is on the Department of Home Affairs, Combined current list of eligible skilled occupations and identified as being eligible for subclass 491 (S/T) or subclass 190 visa you can still apply for NT Government nomination.
   

Hints & Tips

Apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year for an invitation through SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results. For these clients we complete a file-review and recommend a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them get invited for permanent residency WITHIN 2 to 3 MONTHS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy”, and we can review your case (link for online booking etc.) 

Summary:

Next round is 11 February 2020. Commentary regarding that Skill Select invitation round will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by the Department of Immigration (usually one month later).

The SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for September 2019  was terrible  – 100 invitations instead of 1,000 invitations in July 2019. The 11 October 2019 was much better – with 1,500 invitations! Then, the SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11 November 2019 and 11 December 2019 rounds were very low and disappointing – only 250 invitations! The latest SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results (10 January 2020) is slightly similar to the October 2019 invitations – 1000 invitations for subclass 189 applicants and another 300 invitations for the new SC491 family-sponsored applicants.

The exact number of invitations on  10th  January 2020: 

1,000 invitations in the Skilled Independent subclass 189 and 300 invitations in the new subclass 491 family-sponsored stream. You may already be aware that Family-Sponsored Subclass 489 has been discontinued from 16 Nov 2019 and replaced by the “SC491 Family Sponsored” stream.

For this round, no invitations went to applicants who have 85 points or less (but in my opinion this is the same as the previous pre-November 2019 rule changes score level “invitation at 75 points”). This is because applicants now get 5 or 10 more points for spouse if spouse is skilled or speaks good English, applicants also get more points if they are “SC491 Family Sponsored”, etc).

• For SC189, 646 invitations went to applicants who had 90 points. For SC491-Family-sponsored invitations, 168 invitations went to applicants with 90 points.
•  
• 285 invitations went to SC189 applicants at 95 points, 82 invitations went to SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants at 95 points.
•  
• Approx 45 invitations went to applicants with 100 points for both SC189 and SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants.
•  
• 17 SC189 invitations and 8 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 105 points.
•  
• Approximately 11 invitations went to applicants with 110 or more points. 

There were no invitations to persons with 85 points or less (but historically, even at 70 points, 884 were invited in March 2019, 848 invited in Jan 2019 and 32 invited in February 2019).

Occupations Analysis

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 90 points, cut-off date 02-10-2019.

The previous cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 95 points, cut-off date 04-12-2019 in previous invitation rounds. But this time 300 SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited, with cut-off date 16-12-2019.

The “boom” months were between September 2018 and November 2018 at 4,350 invitations per month.

In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited for SC189, but not anymore. This is due to a combination of increased numbers of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced quota for invitations.

For the twenty-second round of invitations, DoHA has been inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold had GONE UP TO 100 points but has dropped to 95 points as compared to the previous round of 11 December 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 23-04-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 95 points who lodged before 23-04-2019 got invited. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants (Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers) were not invited at all.

For the Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score has stayed at 95, and the cut-off date is now 18-10-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

Electronics Engineers did not get invited for SC189 in the September 2019 or October 2019.  In December 2019 they had been invited at 95 points or more, cut-off date was 04-06-2019. For this latest round, Electronics Engineers have been invited a 90 points, cut-off date is 25-09-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited for Electrical Engineer occupation at 95 points, cut-off date 03-01-2020.

For Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers – last month the new invitations stopped at 95 points, with cut-off date 29-09-2019. The score requirement has dropped –invitations have been issued at 90 points, with cut-off date 01-06-2019! SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

(Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited in November 2018 at 70 points)

In previous month, Other Engineering Professionals got the invitation-score increased from 85 points to 95 points! In Jan 2020 this has dropped to 90 points. The date of effect is 28-08-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For ICT Business and Systems Analysts – the SC189 invitation threshold had increased from 85 points to 95 points in December 2019. This has dropped to 90 points, with the visa date of effect 01-09-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were not invited at all in Jan 2020 round.

Software and Application Programmers – for SC189 the pass mark had increased from 85 to 95 points in December 2019 round; this has reduced to 90 points and the cut-off date is now 02-10-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 90 points, cut-off date 11-12-2019.

Computer Network Professionals – SC189 applicants got invited at 95 points in December 2019 round. This has dropped to 90 points with cut-off date 30-09-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 90 points, cut-off date 20-11-2019.

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 85 points or less are likely to be invited. From this invitation round onwards (January 2020) we will start to see the new Subclass 491 invitations increase as a full-month of application-time has kicked in. This is likely to dilute the SC189 applicant’s chances. My recommendation is: PLEASE CONTACT US TO SEE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE AND THEN LODGE SC491 EOIs ALSO, LODGE SC190 EOIs ALSO IF ELIGIBLE.

With the quota having re-set on 1^st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next few invitation rounds. But from December 2019 round onwards the new Subclass 491 visa (Regional Family Sponsored) has also come under the Expression of Interest scheme so there will be fluctuations and variations. The new SC 491 visa replaced the “old” SC489 visa on 16^th November 2019.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change — for example, additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, extra points for “single-status”, etc.

Overall, the Australia Government has announced that the quota for general skilled migration is to be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000. This will also affect applicants in future.

Historical Analysis

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” around 2017-2018 good months.  They went lower between November 2017 to June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

From July 2018 the invitations were on par with the good months in previous years.

The two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations at 4,340 invitations.  

But the December 2018 round and January 2019  halved to 2,500 invitations. February 2019,  March 2019  were FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019 invitations were a disappointing 100 invitations only. 

July 2019 invitations had bounced back to 1,000 invitations. But August 2019 and September 2019 had fallen back to just 100 invitations! October 2019 invitations looked much better at 1,500 invitations. But November 2019 round was very poor at 250 invitations. The December 2019 was not much better – 250 invitations for SC189 and 200 invitations for SC491-Family-Sponsored. The latest round (January 2020) is much better with 1,000 SC190 invitations and 300 SC491-Family-Sponsored invitation.

The total number of invitations for the financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) was 22,920.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018, September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019, April 2019 and May 2019 figures, I had forecast in my previous articles that the total number of EOI applicants invited for the financial year July 2018 to June 2019 would be  22,820 – my estimate was very close because the FINAL COUNT SkillSelect Invitation Round Results was 22,920!

Cyrus Mistry Comments

Recent announcements by the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) point to a further slow-down in the number of “general skilled migration” (GSM) invitations.

The effect of “re-invitation” continues to plague the SkillSelect invitations program. In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the impact of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have changed to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days. These applicants usually get “re-invited” as per the Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,000-odd invitations in January 2020 only about 600-800 may take it up, 200-400 “invites” are wasted! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

This time, few invitations were issued to new SC491 Family-Sponsored applicants. The points allotted for Family-Sponsorship under the new legislation have increased from 10 to 15 points. Please keep in mind that for the SC491 FAMILY-SPONSORED visa, the applicant needs to have scored 75 points “independently” plus the 15 points from their family-sponsor (if invitations are being issued at 90 points). From 16 November 2019 onwards the new Subclass 491 Regional Family-Sponsored visa has come into effect, replacing the SC489.

On our EasyMigrate website, has statistics for previous SkillSelect Invitation Round Results. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019,  June 2019,  July 2019, August 2019, September 2019, October 2019, November 2019 and December 2019 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Department of Home Affairs Invitations Round Results

The results in the next section have been taken from the Department of Home Affairs website: 

Current round

The post SkillSelect Invitation Round January 2020 Results appeared first on Easy Migrate.

Subclass 491

NSW Business and Skilled Migration has released information on its processes for NSW State Nominated Subclass 491 visas.

Applications will open in mid January 2020.

Notably, the NSW Government will handle the entire process, RDAs in NSW will not be participating in the Skilled Work Regional visa (subclass 491).

RDA committees will continue to support regional employers in NSW and their skill needs through responsibilities as a Regional Certifying Body (RCB) in the new Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 494)

NSW nomination requirements and application procedures can be found on the NSW Live and Work in NSW site.

Eligible occupations and postcodes designated as regional can be found on the Department of Home Affairs website.

NSW State Nominated Subclass 190 Update

Subclass 190

Requirements for state nomination for the Subclass 190 program are also available on the NSW Live & Work in NSW site.

Commencing January 2020, NSW will generally not invite candidates to apply for nomination by NSW for a Skilled Nominated Visa (190) if they are currently residing in another Australian state or territory.

NSW undertakes ‘invitation rounds’ where selected applicants are invited to apply for NSW nomination. There are no set dates on when an invitation round will occur.

If you would like more information on getting started on your journey to  Australia started, please fill in our initial Online Assessment form to see if you qualify. You can book a face-2-face appointment, telephone or Skype with one of our Register Migrations Agents through our online booking calendar.

The post NSW State Nominated Subclass 491 announcement appeared first on Easy Migrate.

Australian Capital Territory Open For Migration

Words by Emma Gallagher and Paul Mc Hugh

Have you ever wondered what’s it’s like to live in Canberra?

Canberra is the capital of Australia and over 100 years old. It can sometimes be named the bush capital because of its nature reserves and ranges of mountains, which adds to the scenery.

Canberra is famous for being the only place in Australia where you can experience a hot air balloon ride and view the breathtaking views, also a great place to enjoy the views of the balloon festival. The area has attracted so much love for balloons that thousands visit for the yearly event to enjoy a skyline full of colour.

For any adventure goers, this is the only city you can skydive over the houses of Parliament.

Canberra was ranked one of the loveliest places to visit and live due to vibrant culture, food and wine and its beautiful views and landscapes.

Canberra is perfect of wine lovers with over 30 wineries close to the CBD, what better way to enjoy the summer sunshine and taste plenty of choices. Making use of the local fruit and creating its own wine.

It even has its own NASA Airbase, and there are only another 3 locations in the whole of the world, America, Spain and Milian.

Only 2 hours away you will find snowy mountains so perfect if you love to ski in your spare time.

How can you live in ACT

The ACT Occupation List identifies the skills that are currently in demand in Canberra (for migration purposes). The ACT Occupation List is used to determine the eligibility for ACT support of the following programs:

• Skilled Regional (provisional) subclass 491 visa.
• Skilled Nominated (permanent) subclass 190 visa.

ACT OCCUPATION LIST: 1 January 2020

The ACT Occupation List effective 1 January 2020, will apply to all Canberra Matrix submitted on or after 1 January 2020. 

If you submitted a Canberra Matrix on or before 31 December 2019, your Matrix score for a nominated occupation is valid for six months.

You can view the list here

The ACT is not the only part of Australia that allows valid applicants to apply, Perth, Western Australia, Northern Territory, Regional Victoria, Regional New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania all are open to immigration applications.

If you would like more information on getting started on your journey to migrate to Australia, please fill in our Initial Online Assessment form to see if you qualify.

The post Australian Capital Territory Now Open for Migration appeared first on Easy Migrate.

The Department of  Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the  11th December 2019 “Skill Select EOI Invitation Round” results. 

By Cyrus Mistry

Who are these results for:

1.  Skill Select EOI Invitation Round is for people who lodged an Expression of Interest (EOI)
2. Submitted EOI’s must be for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” stream of visa subclasses
3. The two GSM visa subclasses are 189 (Skilled Independent) (Australian Permanent visa) and subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored) (Australian Provisional visa).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agency, based in Perth, Australia. Mr Cyrus Mistry (founder of EasyMigrate) has reviewed these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.

Skill Select & Migration News

• Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has released new State List for 2019 / 2020  – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in Canberra, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required statelist? Now is your chance.
•  New South Wales (NWS) has released new State List for 2019/2020  – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in NSW, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required statelist? Now is your chance.
• Northern Territory (NT) has released new State List for 2019/2020 –Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) Migration Occupation List includes occupations that are in demand in the NT eligible for NT nomination under the General Skilled Migration Program. If your occupation is not on the NT Migration Occupations List but is on the Department of Home Affairs, Combined current list of eligible skilled occupations and identified as being eligible for subclass 491 (S/T) or subclass 190 visa you can still apply for NT Government nomination.a
   

Previous Updates

• Western Australia released new State List for 2019 / 2020 -Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in Perth, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required state-list, or that Perth wasn’t a specified regional area? Now is your chance – the WA “Graduate Occupations List” is quite extensive and has now been expanded to students who have studied at CERTIFICATE or DIPLOMA levels in WA, not just BACHELORS and MASTERS degree holders.
•  Queensland released new State List for 2019 / 2020 – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live on the Gold Coast, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required state-list, or that Gold Coast wasn’t a specified regional area? Now is your chance.
• South Australia released new State List for 2019 / 2020 – The South Australian government has now released its 2019-2020 Skilled Migration Occupation Lists, if you have previously applied or are now interested in applying for state nomination in South Australia under the General Skilled Migration (GSM) program, now could be your chance.

Hints & Tips

Apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year, so we do a file-review and recommend a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them get invited for permanent residency WITHIN 2 to 3 MONTHS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy”, and we can review your case (link for online booking etc.) 

Summary:

Next round is 11 January 2020. Commentary regarding that Skill Select invitation round will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by the Department of Immigration (usually one month later).

The invitation round for September 2019  was terrible  – 100 invitations instead of 1,000 invitations in July 2019. The 11 October 2019 was much better – with 1,500 invitations! Then, the 11 November 2019 round was very low and disappointing – only 250 invitations! This latest round (11 December 2019) is the same at 250 invitations for subclass 189 applicants and another 200 invitations for the new SC491 family-sponsored applicants.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  December 2019: 

250 invitations in the Skilled Independent subclass 189 and 200 invitation in the new subclass 491 family-sponsored stream. The Family-Sponsored Subclass 489 has been discontinued from 16 Nov 2019 and replaced by the “SC491 Family Sponsored” stream.

For this round, no invitations went to applicants who have 90 points or less (but in my opinion this is the same as the previous “invitation at 80 points”. This is because applicants now get more points for spouse if spouse is skilled or speaks good English, applicants also get more points if they are “SC491 Family Sponsored”, etc).

• 169 SC189 invitations and 132 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 95 points.
• 49 invitations went to applicants with 100 points for both SC189 and SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants.
• 16 SC189 invitations and 18 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 105 points.
• Approximately 20 SC189 invitations and approximately 5 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 110 or more points. 

There were no invitations to persons with 90 points or less (but historically, even at 70 points, 884 were invited in March 2019, 848 invited in Jan 2019 and 32 invited in February 2019).

Occupations Analysis

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 95 points, cut-off date 30-11-2019. This means that only the 250-odd persons with 95 points and above got invited.

The previous cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 85 points, cut-off date 15-08-2019 in previous invitation rounds. But this time 200 SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited, with cut-off date 04-12-2019.

The “boom” months were between September 2018 and November 2018 at 4,350 invitations per month.

In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited for SC189, but not anymore. This is due to an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced number of invitations.

For the twentyfirst round of invitations, DoHA has been inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has GONE UP TO 100 points as compared to the previous round of 11 November 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 19-11-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 90 points who lodged before 19-11-2019 got invited. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For the Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score has gone up to 95, and the cut-off date is now 27-05-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

Electronics Engineers did not get invited for SC189 in the September 2019 or October 2019.  In November 2019 they have been invited at 80 points or more, cut-off date was 04-06-2019. For this latest round, Electronics Engineers have been invited a 95 points, cut-off date is 30-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited for Electrical Engineer occupation at 100 points, cut-off date 04-12-2019.

For Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers – last month the new invitations stopped at 95 points, with cut-off date 10-11-2019. The situation has remained the same –invitations have been issued at 95 points, with cut-off date 29-09-2019! SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

(Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited in November 2018 at 70 points)

Other Engineering Professionals also got the invitation-score increased from 85 points to 95 points! The date of effect is 18-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For ICT Business and Systems Analysts – the SC189 invitation threshold has increased from 85 points to 95 points with the visa date of effect 27-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were also invited at 95 points with cut-off date 18-11-2019.

Software and Application Programmers – for SC189 the pass mark increased from 85 to 95 points; the cut-off date is now 30-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 95 points, cut-off date 29-11-2019.

Computer Network Professionals – SC189 applicants got invited at 95 points with the visa date of effect 29-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 95 points, cut-off date 02-12-2019.

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 90 points or less are likely to be invited. From the next invitation round onwards (January 2020) we will start to see the new Subclass 491 invitations increase as a full-month of application-time kicks in. This is likely to dilute the SC189 applicant’s chances. My recommendation is: PLEASE CONTACT US TO SEE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE AND THEN LODGE SC491 EOIs ALSO, LODGE SC190 EOIs ALSO IF ELIGIBLE.

With the quota having re-set on 1^st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next few invitation rounds. But from December 2019 round onwards the new Subclass 491 visa (Regional Family Sponsored) has also come under the Expression of Interest scheme so there will be fluctuations and variations. The new SC 491 visa replaced the “old” SC489 visa on 16^th November 2019.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change — for example, additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, extra points for “single-status”, etc.

Overall, the Australia Government has announced that the quota for general skilled migration is to be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000. This will also affect applicants in future.

Historical Analysis

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” around 2017-2018 good months.  They went lower between November 2017 to June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

From July 2018 the invitations were on par with the good months in previous years.

The two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations at 4,340 invitations.  

But the December 2018 round and January 2019  halved to 2,500 invitations. February 2019,  March 2019  were FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019 invitations were a disappointing 100 invitations only. 

July 2019 invitations had bounced back to 1,000 invitations. But August 2019 and September 2019 had fallen back to just 100 invitations! October 2019 invitations looked much better at 1,500 invitations. But November 2019 round was very poor at 250 invitations. This latest round (December 2019) is not much better – 250 invitations for SC189 and 200 invitations for SC491-Family-Sponsored.

The total number of invitations for the financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) was 22,920.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018, September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019, April 2019 and May 2019 figures, I had forecast in my previous articles that the total number of EOI applicants invited for the financial year July 2018 to June 2019 would be  22,820 – my estimate was very close because the FINAL COUNT was 22,920!

Cyrus Mistry Comments

Recent announcements by the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) point to a further slow-down in the number of “general skilled migration” (GSM) invitations.

The effect of “re-invitation” continues to plague the SkillSelect invitations program. In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the impact of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have moved on to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days. These applicants usually get “re-invited” as per the Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,500-odd invitations in March 2019 only about 900-1000 may get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

This time, few invitations were issued to new SC491 Family-Sponsored applicants. The points allotted for Family-Sponsorship under the new legislation have increased from 10 to 15 points. Please keep in mind that for the SC491 FAMILY-SPONSORED visa, the applicant needs to have scored 80 points “independently” plus the 15 points from their family-sponsor (if invitations are being issued at 95 points). From 16 November 2019 onwards the new Subclass 491 Regional Family-Sponsored visa has come into effect, replacing the SC489.

On our EasyMigrate website, we have the statistics. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019,  June 2019 July 2019 ,August 2019,   September 2019  October 2019 and November 2019 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Department of Home Affairs Invitations Round Results

The post SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11th December 2019 appeared first on Easy Migrate.

The Department of  Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the  11th October 2019 “Skill Select EOI Invitation Round” results. 

Who are these results for:

1. Skill Select EOI Invitation Round is for people who lodged an Expression of Interest (EOI)
2. Submitted EOI’s must be for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” stream of visa subclasses
3. The two GSM visa subclasses are 189 (Skilled Independent) (Australian Permanent visa) and subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored) (Australian Provisional visa).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agency, based in Perth, Australia. Mr Cyrus Mistry (founder of EasyMigrate) has reviewed these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.

Skill Select & Migration News

1. New Skill Select Point System commences 16th November 2019 – The Australian Skilled Migrant points system has been revised points, so skilled migrants have new ways to earn points towards their score.
2. Perth and Gold Coast to be classified as REGIONAL – Skilled migrants are now being encouraged to move to Perth and the Gold Coast as the Federal Government grapples with congestion in Australia’s three biggest cities.
3. Extra options for international graduates from regional institutions – Subclass 485 Holders May Be Eligible For Extra One Year

Previous Updates

• New SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round news: From 1 July 2018 the “pass mark” was increased from 60 to 65 points July 2018. DOHA confirmed November 2019 that the pass mark will remain at 65.
• Changes in State Nomination Migration Program of WA’s Graduate Stream Criteria – International students who study in Western Australia will soon find The State Nomination Migration Program (SNMP) Graduate stream more accessible.
• Changes on Points test for General Skilled Migration: (apply to 189, 190, 489, and 491) from 16 November 2019 – There have been recently announced changes in the points test for General Skilled Migration. They apply to visa subclasses 189, 190, 489, and 491 from 16 November 2019.

Hints & Tips

Apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year, so we do a file-review and recommend a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them get invited for permanent residency WITHIN 2 to 3 MONTHS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy”, and we can review your case (link for online booking etc.) 

Summary:

Next round is 11 November 2019. Commentary regarding that Skill Select invitation round will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by the Department of Immigration (usually one month later).

The last invitation round (11 September 2019)  was terrible  – 100 invitations instead of 1,000 invitations in July 2019. But the last round (11 October 2019) was much better – with 1,500 invitations!

The “boom” months were between September 2018 and November 2018 at 4,350 invitations per month.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  October 2019: 

1,500 invitations in the Skilled Independent subclass 189 and zero in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489.

For this round, no invitations went to applicants who have 75 points or less.

• 318 invitations went to applicants with 80 points.
• 992 invitations went to applicants with 85 points.
• 149 invitations were given to applicants having 90 points.
• 38 invitations were given to persons with 95 points. 

There were no invitations to persons with 70 points (compared to 884 in March 2019, 848 in Jan 2019 and 32 in February 2019). There were no invitations to persons with 75 points either.

Occupations Analysis

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 85 points, cut-off date 04-06-2019.

The previous cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 85 points, cut-off date 15-08-2019 in last invitation round. But this time none of the SC489 Family Sponsored applicants were invited.

In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited for SC189, but not anymore. This is due to an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced number of invitations.

For the nineteenth round of invitations, DoHA has been inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has DROPPED to 90 points as compared to the previous round of 11 September 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 06-09-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 90 points who lodged before 06-09-2019 got invited.

For the Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score has remained steady at 85, and the cut-off date is 12-04-2019.

Electronics Engineers did not get invited for SC189 in the last round but this time they have been invited at 80 points or more, cut-off date 04-06-2019.

For Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers – new invitations stop at 80 points, with cut-off date 11-12-2018.This result is a lot better than last month – when invitations had stopped at 95 points!

(Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited in November 2018 at 70 points)

Other Engineering Professionals also got the invitation-score dropped from 95 points to 80 points! The date of effect is 03-04-2019.

However, Engineering Professionals AND applicants in all other occupations who had a FAMILY SPONSOR (SC489) did not get invited at all. 

For ICT Business and Systems Analysts – the SC189 invitation threshold has dropped from 85 points to 80 points with the visa date of effect 20-03-2019.

Software and Application Programmers – for SC189 the pass mark dropped from 85 points to 80 points; the cut-off date is now 09-04-2019.  

Computer Network Professionals – SC189 applicants got invited at 80 points with the visa date of effect 20-05-2019 – This dropped from 85 to 80 points.

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 75 and 70 points are likely to be invited. With the quota having re-set on 1^st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next few invitation rounds. But from December 2019 round onwards the new Subclass 491 visa (Regional Family Sponsored) may also come under the Expression of Interest scheme so there will be fluctuations and variations. The new SC 491 visa replaces the “old” SC489 visa on 16^th November 2019.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change — for example, additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, etc.

Overall, the Australia Government has announced that the quota for general skilled migration is to be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000. This will also affect applicants in future.

Historical Analysis

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” around 2017-2018 good months.  They went lower between November 2017 to June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

From July 2018 the invitations were on par with the good months up to September 2017 in previous years.

The two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations at 4,340 invitations.  

But the December 2018 round and January 2019  halved to 2,500 invitations. February 2019,  March 2019  were FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019 invitations were a disappointing 100 invitations only. 

July 2019 invitations had bounced back to 1,000 invitations. But August 2019 and September 2019 had fallen back to just 100 invitations! October 2019 invitations look much better at 1,500 invitations.

The total number of invitations for the financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) was 22,920.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018, September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019, April 2019 and May 2019 figures, I had forecast in my last article that the total number of EOI applicants invited for the financial year July 2018 to June 2019 would be  22,820 – my estimate was very close because the FINAL COUNT was 22,920!

Cyrus Mistry Comments

Recent announcements by the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) point to a further slow-down in the number of “general skilled migration” (GSM) invitations.

The effect of “re-invitation” continues to plague the SkillSelect invitations program. In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the impact of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have moved on to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days. These applicants usually get “re-invited” as per the Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,500-odd invitations in March 2019 only about 900-1000 may get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

This time, no invitations were issued to SC489 Family-Sponsored applicants –Please keep in mind that for the SC489 FAMILY-SPONSORED visa, the applicant needs to have scored 75 points “independently” plus the 10 points from their family-sponsor. From December 2019 onwards the new Subclass 491 Regional Family-Sponsored visa will come into effect, replacing the SC489. New legislation is expected to give 15 points (instead of 10) to these SC491 Regional Family Sponsored applicants. 

On our EasyMigrate website, we have the statistics. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019,  June 2019 July 2019 ,August 2019 and September 2019 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Department of Home Affairs Invitations Round Results

Please note that these figures do not include invitations under the state-nominated subclass 190 and state-nominated “Regional” subclass 489.

The results in the next section have been taken from the Department of Home Affairs website: 

Current round

To find out if you are eligible for an Australian visa please contact our team on +61 8 9221 4888 or complete our Free online assessment

Online Assessment form

The post SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11th October 2019 appeared first on Easy Migrate.

Who are these results for:

1. Skill Select EOI Invitation Round is for people who lodged an Expression of Interest (EOI)

2. Submitted EOI’s must be for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” stream of visa subclasses

3. The two GSM visa subclasses are 189 (Skilled Independent) (Australian Permanent visa) and subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored) (Australian Provisional visa).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agency, based in Perth, Australia. Mr Cyrus Mistry (founder of EasyMigrate) has reviewed these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.

New SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round news: From 1 July 2018 the “pass mark” has been increased from 60 to 65 points. New applicants can lodge their Expression Of Interest (EOI) with 65 points or more. Other applicants who submitted their EOI before 30 June 2018 with 60 points will continue to stay in the queue.

New SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round news: The Department of Home Affairs has announced that there will be only ONE ROUND OF SKILL SELECT INVITATIONS PER MONTH. These results generally are released around the eleventh of the month.

Our Recommendation: Most applicants with 60 or 65 points are not getting invited at all since the last 18 months or so. Many 70-pointers are also not getting invitations for a long time.

SOLUTION: apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year, so we do a file-review and recommend a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them get invited for permanent residency WITHIN 2 to 3 MONTHS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy”, and we can review your case (link for online booking etc.).

Summary:

Next round will be 11 August 2019. Commentary regarding that Skill Select invitation round will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by the Department of Immigration.

Compared to the last invitation round (11 June 2019) this current Round was much better – 1,000 invitations instead of only 100 invitations! Compare this to 4,350 invitations per month during the “boom” months that we had between September 2018 and November 2018.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  July 2019: 1,000 invitations in the Skilled Independent SC189 subclass and 100 in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489. My analysis is that the “quota” for the year 2018-2019 has been reset. The Department of Immigration is adjusting the figures to allow for a realistic “phased” level of invitations between July 2019 and June 2020 (financial year)

For this round, 775 invitations were to applicants who have 80 points.

One hundred thirty invitations went to applicants with 85 points.

Eighty invitations were given to applicants having 90 points.

Fifteen invitations were given to persons with 95 points or more. 

There were no invitations to persons with 70 points (compared to 884 in March 2019, 848 in Jan 2019 and 32 in February 2019).

This time, there were NO INVITES to applicants with 75 points too, but invitations re-commenced at 80 points.

Occupations Analysis:

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 80 points, cut-off date 13-05-2019.

The cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 85 points, cut-off date 05-01-2019.

For the sixteenth round of invitations, DoHA has re-commenced inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has dropped to 85 points as compared to the previous round of 11 June 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date e is published as 14-12-2018, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 85 points who lodged before 14-12-2018 got invited. For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score has also dropped to 85, and the cut-off date is 09-03-2019.

Electronics Engineers invitation threshold dropped to 80 points with the date of effect 05-05-2019. In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited, but not anymore. This is due to an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced number of invitations.

Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited (in November 2018) at 70 points with a date of effect 04-02-2019. But new invitations stop at 80 points, with cut-off date 10-05-2019.

Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 80 points with the date of effect 01-04-2019.  

For ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) – the invitation threshold has dropped to 80 points with the visa date of effect 12-04-2019.

ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) – the pass mark is now 80 points; the cut-off date is now 13-05-2019.  

ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 80 points with the visa date of effect 13-05-2019 – this moved backwards by about 15 days.

So for most ICT professionals, there is now a 2 to 3 month waiting in the queue for their Expression of Interest to be converted into an “invite” (provided they score 80 points or more).

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 80, 75 and 70 points are likely to be invited. With the quota re-setting on 1^st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next 11 August 2019 round.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change — for example, additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, etc.

Overall, the Australia Government has announced that the quote for general skilled migration is to be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000. This will affect applicants in future.

Historical Analysis:

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” mark for last few months and were even lower between November 2017 and June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

For July 2018, 1,010 invitations had been issued to persons who had lodged their Expression of Interest (EOI). This was better than the 610 invitations being issued from Nov 2017 onwards until June 2018. But still a lot less than the 2,000-odd invitations that were being issued per month before October 2017. Until January 2019 the number of invitations was regularly above the two-thousand mark. In the 11 August 2018, AND the 11 September 2018 SkillSelect results were above the two-thousand mark – then jumped up to 4,340 invitations on 11 October 2018 and 11 November 2018 invitations. December 2018 and January 2019 invitation-rounds have seen a drop-back to the 2,000+ levels and reduced further since February 2019,  March-2019 and April 2019 invitation-rounds.

The total number of invitations for the last financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) was 22,920.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018, September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019, April 2019 and May 2019 figures, I had forecast in my last article that the total number of EOI applicants invited for this financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) would be  22,820 – my estimate was very close because the FINAL COUNT is 22,920!

But recent announcements by the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) point to a further slow-down in the number of “general skilled migration” (GSM) invitations.

The effect of “re-invitation” continues to plague the SkillSelect invitations program. In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the impact of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have moved on to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days. These applicants usually get “re-invited” as per the Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,500-odd invitations in March 2019 only about 900-1000 get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

For this last round of invitations (June 2019) under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, only 100 invitations were issued, at 85 points or above. This time (11 July 2019)the number of invitations has gone up to 1,000 which is a good sign. This tie, another  100 invitations were issued to SC489 Family-Sponsored applicants –at 80 points or above… so as you can see, the SC489 FAMILY-SPONSORED applicant needs to have scored 70 points “independently” plus the 10 points from their family-sponsor. 

On our EasyMigrate website, we have the statistics. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019 and June 2019 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Comment: from July 2018 the invitations are on par with the good months up to September 2017 in previous years, and the two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations.  But the December 2018 round and January 2019 has halved to 2,500 invitations. Now February 2019,  March 2019  are FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019invitations are a disappointing 100 invitations only. July 2019 has bounced back to 1,000 invitations.

Please note that these figures do not include invitations under the state-nominated subclass 190 and state-nominated “Regional” subclass 489.

The results in the next section have been taken from the Department of Home Affairs website: https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skillselect/invitation-rounds

Invitations issued on 11 July 2019

The table below shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11 July 2019

During 2019-20 program year the following numbers of invitations have been issued:

11 July 2019 results

The following graph shows the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 July 2019 round.

Invitation process and cut-offs

The highest-ranked clients by points score are invited to apply for the relevant visa. For clients who have equal points scores, the time at which they reached their points score for that subclass (referred to as the date of effect) determines their order of invitation. Expressions of Interest with earlier dates of effect are invited before later dates.

Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro-rata occupations in the 11 July 2019 invitation round.

Due to high levels of demand, and in keeping with previous years, the below occupation groups will be subject to pro-rata arrangements to ensure availability of invitations across the program year.

SkillSelect first allocates available places to Skilled – Independent visas (subclass 189) and then the remaining to Skilled – Regional (Provisional) visas (subclass 489). If all places are taken up by subclass 189 visas, then there will be no invitations issued for subclass 489 visas in these occupations.

Invitations issued during 2019-20 program year

The above figures do not include invitations issued for State, and Territory Governments nominated visa subclasses. State and Territory Governments nominate throughout the month for specific points tested skilled migration and business innovation and investment visas.

If you would like to find out from Cyrus if you are eligible for Migration to Australia, please complete our online assessment and a member of our team will contact you.

Book a Consultation…

Book a face-to-face (or telephone) appointment with one of our qualified and experienced Migration Consultants who will be able to discuss your circumstances and outline any visa options/pathways available to you. Appointments can be made at a time convenient for you by using our online booking system. 

Initial Consultations are charged at AUD$198 (discounted to AUD$99 for Australian student visa holders) and includes two (2) free follow-up consultations. Any subsequent (follow-up) appointments required are charged at AUD$66 (or AUD$33 for Australian student visa holders). Appointments can be paid for through our online booking system at the time of booking. 

Australian Migration Made Easy

The post SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11th July 2019 appeared first on Easy Migrate.

Fast Visa Processing Regional Australia

Every month Mr Cyrus Mistry (our principal immigration agent in Australia)  reviews the Department of Home Affairs SkillSelect results. In this months blog, he suggested that; 

“Most applicants with 60 or 65 points are not getting invited at all since last 18 months or so. Many 70-pointers are also not getting invitations for a long time. The solution would be to apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year so, we did a file-review and recommended a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them got invited for permanent residency WITHIN 8-12 WEEKS!”

Today Friday 8th February 2019 Mr David Coleman (Minister of Immigration) has announced Skilled migrants who apply to move to regional Austalia will have their visa applications accelerated under a $19.4 million plan.

“Our officers will be on the ground to discuss regional migration opportunities with regional employers and communities, and also to hear first hand the local labour issues they face. Training and skilling Australians is one of our top priorities, but there is a need for additional workers to supplement the workforce, particularly in regional areas,“ Mr Coleman said.

The Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) officials will travel to regional areas across Australia to help businesses get the skilled workers they require, over the next four years. DoHA will establish priority processing for visas sponsored by employers in regional areas, along with agreements with local councils so they can recruit employees from overseas.

If you would like to find out if you qualify for Regional State Sponsorship or would like to know more about relocating to a regional area of Australia, please make an appointment to speak to us today;

• Book Online
• Email: reception@easymigrate.com
• Telephone: +61 8 9221 4888

The post Migrant visas fast-tracked for regional Australia appeared first on Easy Migrate.

Just recently (early February 2019) the Department of  Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the 11^th December 2018 “Skill Select” invitation results (Expressions of Interest – EOI) for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” visa subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) and subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agent, based in Perth, Western Australia. EasyMigrate’s Migration Consultant Mr Cyrus Mistry (our principal immigration agent in Australia) has reviewed these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.

Broad Overview:

Recent news: Department of Immigration (now DoHA) has announced that from Financial Year 2018-2019 there will be only ONE ROUND OF SKILL SELECT INVITATIONS PER MONTH.

Recent news: From 1 July 2018 the “pass mark” has been increased from 60 to 65 points. New applicants can lodge their Expression Of Interest (EOI) with 65 points or more. Other applicants who submitted their EOI before 30 June 2018 with 60 points will continue to stay in the queue.

Our Recommendation: Most applicants with 60 or 65 points are not getting invited at all since last 18 months or so. Many 70-pointers are also not getting invitations for a long time.

SOLUTION: apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for a more than a year so we did a file-review and recommended a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them got invited for permanent residency WITHIN 8-12 WEEKS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy” and we can review your case (link for online booking etc).

Summary:

Next round will be 11 March 2019. Commentary regarding the January 2019 and February 2019 Skill Select invitation rounds will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by Department of Immigration.

Compared to the last invitation round (11 November 2018) this recent skill Select round of  11 December 2018 invitation round from Department of Immigration’s “SkillSelect” division has ALMOST HALVED THE NUMBER OF INVITATIONS, – about 2,500 invitations compared to 4,350 invitations. So the “boom” we had seen between September 2018 and November 2018 is slowing down.

The exact number of invitations on 11^th December 2018: 2,490 invitations in the Skilled Independent SC189 subclass and 10 in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489.

For this round, most invitations (1,093) were to applicants who have 75 points.

Another 736 invitations went to persons with 70 points.

496 invitations were given to persons with 80 points.

156 invitations were given to applicants having 85 points.

9 invitations were given to persons with 90 points or more. 

GOOD NEWS is that the number of applicants were invited in December 2018 for General Skilled Migration SC189 visa was still a substantial number compared to the slowdown in the financial year 2017-2018 (Oct 2017 to June 2018)!

There were NO INVITES to applicants with 60 or 65 points.

Occupations Analysis:

Since late 2017 the “Accountants group” of occupations were not invited at all. This is now the ninth round of invitations where DoHA has re-commenced inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has been steady at 80 points (this round and the last round). The cut-off date is published as 18-08-2018 which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 80 points or more who applied for their Expression of Interest (EOI) before 18-08-2018 got invited. In the previous month, the date was 10-08-2018, so it has not moved forward by much! For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score is also 80, and the cut-off date is 08-06-2018 (in the last round of invitations this was 04-07-2018, so this has moved backwards by about 25 days).

Accountants had been excluded (or dramatically reduced) since Oct-Nov 2017 invitation-rounds, so this is an excellent ongoing sign that the demand continues!

Electronics Engineers got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 18-11-2018. In the October 2108 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited, but not any more. So this shows an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration.

Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers also got invited at 70 points with a date of effect 22-06-2018. The previous period was 05-04-2018, so this is a good development for Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers.

Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 13-10-2018, i.e. is date has moved forward by one week. So in this invitation round, 70-point holders have not been invited once again! 

ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) got invited at 75 points with the visa date of effect 18-09-2018 – this has moved forward by about 10 days.

ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) – the pass mark STAYS at 70 points with the visa date of effect 01-04-2017. Last invitation round date of effect was 06-04-2018 – this means that a lot of Software and Application programmers who had been waiting in the queue for a long time got selected (maybe their points increased automatically because of age or work-experience requirements).  

ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 70 points with the visa date of effect 30-08-2018 – this moved forward by three days.

So for most ICT professionals, there is about four month’s waiting in the queue for their Expression of Interest to be converted into an “invite” (except for Software and Application Programmers where the wait is 20 months in this round, but I believe this is just an aberration and will sort itself out in the next invitation round). The good news is that the list now continues to include 70-point scorers in some occupations! For example, Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers, Software and Application Programmers, Computer Network Professionals are getting invited even at 70 points. Again, if the number of invitations at each round goes up for the next invitation rounds in this general skilled migration program, then more occupations with 70 and 65 points are likely to be invited.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change, e.g. additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, etc.

In my last article regarding the 11 November 2018 round, I was hoping that the number of “invitations” rises over the next few rounds – BUT IT REDUCED BY ALMOST 50%! This is certainly not a good sign all occupations who are waiting at 70 points and 65 points. This may be a slowdown due to financial-year adjustments – based on the July2018-June2019 quota.

Historical Analysis:

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” mark for last few months and were even lower between November 2017 and June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

For July 2018, 1,010 invitations had been issued to persons who had lodged their Expression of Interest (EOI). This was better than the 610 invitations being issued from Nov 2017 onwards until June 2018. But still a lot less than the 2,000-odd invitations that were being issued per month before October 2017. Now the number of invitations were regularly above the two-thousand mark in the 11 August 2018 AND the 11 September 2018SkillSelect results – then jumped up to 4,340 invitations on 11 October 2018 and 11 November 2018 and  December 2018. This current invitation-round has seen a drop-back to the 2,000+ levels.

The total number of invitations for the last financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) was 16,296.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018 ,  September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018 and December 2018 figures, the total number of EOI applicants invited for this financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) could be (17,150 divide by 6 multiply by 12) = 34,300 per year which would mean substantial increase in Subclass 189 and Subclass 489 (Family) invitations compared to the previous financial year 2017-2018. There may be even more invitations planned for the next four months (March 2019 – June 2019) – let us wait and see.

In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the effect of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have moved on to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days – so they get “re-invited” as per Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This seriously affects the program because out of the 2,500-odd invitations only about 1500-1800 get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

For this latest round of invitations under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, 2,490 invitations were issued, at 70 points or above. Only ten invitations were issued to SC489 Family-Sponsored applicants –at 80 points or above… so as you can see, the SC489 FAMILY-SPONSORED applicant needs to have scored 70-75 points “independently” plus the 10 points from their family-sponsor. 

On our EasyMigrate website, we have the statistics. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, and November 2018 invitation rounds are also available on our website. I estimate that the Nov 2017 to June 2018 rounds were only about 30-40% of the usual monthly track-record before October 2017, but from July 2018 the invitations are on par with the good months up to September 2017 in previous years, and the last two rounds EXCEEDED our expectations.  But now the December 2018 round is halved to 2,500 invitations.

Please note that these figures do not include invitations under the state-nominated subclass 190 and state-nominated “Regional” subclass 489.

Invitations issued on 11 December 2018

The information below (published by the Department of Immigration – now renamed Depart of Home Affairs – DoHA) shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11th December 2018:

Overview….

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

Invitation rounds are anticipated to run on the 11^th day of each month. Dates for the rounds are subject to change.

Invitation numbers in each round may vary depending on the number of applications being processed by the department.

Note: State or territory government nominations for Skilled Regional (Provisional) visas (subclass 489) will not be impacted.

Current Round

Invitations issued on 11 December 2018

The table below shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11 December 2018.

During the 2018-19 program year the following amounts of invitations have been issued:

11 December 2018 results

The following graph shows the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 December 2018 round.

Invitation process and cut off

The highest ranked clients by points score are invited to apply for the relevant visa. For clients who have equal points scores, the time at which they reached their points score for that subclass (referred to as the date of effect) determines their order of invitation. Expressions of Interest with earlier dates of effect are invited before later dates.

Due to high levels of demand, and in keeping with previous years, the below occupation groups will be subject to pro-rata arrangements to ensure the availability of invitations across the program year.

Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro rata occupations in the 11 December 2018 invitation round.

Invitations issued during 2018-19 program year

The above figures do not include invitations issued for State and Territory Government nominated visa subclasses. State and Territory Governments nominate throughout the month for specific points tested skilled migration and business innovation and investment visas.

The post Skill Select EOI Invitation Results for 11th December 2018 appeared first on Easy Migrate.

The West Australian Government has released the statistical analysis of the WA STATE NOMINATION results (Expressions of Interest – EOI) for the “WA Graduate Stream) in their General Skilled Migration or “GSM” visas:

Skilled Nominated visa (subclass 190) and

Skilled Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 489).

(Statistical analysis of the recent INDEPENDENT INVITATION ROUNDS and STATE-NOMINATION STATISTICS are also available on our website – https://www.easymigrate.com/news/ )

EasyMigrate is one of Australia’s leading migration agencies, based in Perth, Western Australia. Our Registered Migration Consultant Mr Cyrus Mistry (principal migration agent Perth) has reviewed these statistics – commentary is given below

Summary:

The West Australian Government has a special sub-program called the “WA Graduate Stream” program.

International students who have studied in Western Australia for at least two years at a “tertiary” or university level can become eligible for this. There is a special list called the “WA Graduate Occupations List” or WA-GOL and the international student’s nominated “occupation” has to be on this list.

This is under the General Skilled Migration program. Applicants can opt for “WA State Nomination – Graduate Stream” –

(a)      subclass 190 permanent residency

(b)      subclass 489 “Regional Nomination” which is a four-year temporary residency leading to permanent residency subclass 887 after meeting regional residency and regional employment conditions.

There are many criteria that must be satisfied but the main ones are:

(1)        The international student must have completed at least two years of study in Western Australia at a university level (Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, or a PhD qualification)

(2)        The applicant must have a job offer from a WA employer for at least the next 12 months.

(3)        Bachelor degree holders need to show that they have already worked with an employer for one year (Master’s degree holders and PhD holders do not need to satisfy these criteria).

(4)        The applicant must have a satisfactory skills assessment in their nominated occupation and should have lodged their Expression of Interest (EOI) under the Department of Immigration’s SKILLSELECT program.

(5)        The WA state Government will invite the applicant only if the occupation is on the WA GRADUATE OCCUPATION LIST (WA-GOL).

(6)        The WA Government has a ranking system that takes into account both onshore and offshore work-experience (i.e. employment experience inside Australia and outside Australia). Priority is given to applicants who have ONSHORE employment experience i.e. Australian employment experience.

The following statistics have been released by the WA State Government regarding their SNMP WA Graduate Program invitations dated 18^th January 2019:

Accountants (ANZSCO Code 221111):

A lot of “Accountants” are applying for inclusion in this WA Graduate Program. Because of this, the number of invitations given to applicants with their Expression of Interest (EOI) under the Accountant (General) nominated occupation are restricted. The profile of the last invited EOI with this nominated occupation was as follows, indicating that only Masters and PhD qualification-holders got invited as Accountants (Bachelor degree holders did not get an “invitation” in this January 2019 invitation round).

Accountant invitations by WA Government:

Accountants continue to be on the WA-GOL (the WA Graduate Occupations List).

Note: The pass mark under the Australian “points test” for state nominated migration to Australia is 65 points.
Obtaining a subclass 190 invitation from a state government gives an additional 5 points to the applicant.
Obtaining a subclass 489 invitation from a state government gives an additional 10 points to the applicant.

This information has been obtained from the Migration Institute of Australia (MIA) Notice 13, dated 20^th January 2019.

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