In May, the President of the Migration Institute of Australia (MIA) met with the Department of Home Affairs for a meeting — or, more accurately, a discussion — primarily to find out about the latest developments across a range of policies and information。

After the meeting, the MIA President emailed registered migration agents to share the news he had gathered. There were 11 items in total; some are not particularly relevant to us, so here we have picked out a few of the important ones.

Item 1: The Department of Home Affairs says that the reform-related migration white paper (the Migration Strategy) is being actively prepared, and the whole project will run for several years.As we understood previously, this is a medium-to-long-term project, and in the short term the policies we will see are still the previously announced package of measures, such as the TSMIT and employer-sponsored changes。For points-based skilled migration, there is not much new news for now.

Item 2: The Department’s application backlog has now been reduced to 550,000, almost halved since the change of government (down from 960,000) — and given the very large number of new applications lodged this year as well, this is an achievement worth commending.

However, since the start of May, skilled migration grants have slowed somewhat because the quota is almost used up. Most of the grants now are for Subclass 482 employer-sponsored, 887, and partner migration. We hope that once the new financial year opens on 1 July, everyone gets their grant as wished!

For a round-up of recent grants, see: “No grants or invitations lately?” Of course there are — there’s a whole batch of them! PR categories / Subclass 500 / Subclass 600 / all kinds of skills assessments and invitations — we’ve got them all!

Item 3: A serious VACCU backlog is extending the processing time for a very small number of visas

VACCU is responsible for assessing whether an applicant meets the character requirement

This affects only a very small number of applicants, whose applications are referred to VACCU for additional assessment. The number of cases referred over the past 1–2 years has increased substantially, and the processing cycle remains fairly long, so the overall wait time for the visa application is extended as a result.

The news the President received this time is that, if there are genuinely exceptional circumstances, you can try emailing VACCU directly to request priority processing — we have quite a few clients on our books who have been waiting more than a year.

Item 4: On the issue of logging in to the ImmiAccount system, the Department says that demand for logging in to the ImmiAccount system has surged recently. Since February this year, more than 4.7 million visa applications have been lodged, and new registered users are expected to reach 3.5 million for the full year. They also offered a small tip: peak times are Wednesday to Friday between 1 pm and 9 pm, so if you can, please lodge or log in outside these peak hours

Item 5: More news about the Subclass 408 COVID visa. The Department has said it is actively considering gradually cancelling this stream, but no specific timing has been confirmed yet.

Eligible applicants may want to consider lodging as early as possible; lodging in the near term still requires no medical examination and is processed relatively quickly. But please remember, you must lodge within 90 days before your visa expires — recently we have had a number of requests for help because applications lodged too early were refused, so this also needs special attention.

If you need to prepare early for new financial year state nomination and want to explore the most suitable and fastest pathway, you can talk to us. If you don’t want to miss the latest new financial year state nomination and other migration news, add our customer service below and note: New Policy

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