Victoria announced early this morning that invitations would be issued today. This is the first round of invitations for this financial year, and also the second state to release pre-invitations this financial year. The previous round of pre-invitations was issued by Canberra in September.
Overall, this round continues the policy of prioritising onshore applicants, and employment remains the key to receiving an invitation! Nearly all invitees this round are onshore applicants with jobs; we have not yet seen any offshore applicants receive invitations. As this is a temporary quota, the volume issued was not large.
Both IT and Accounting received invitations this round — but competition is fierce! IT 100+5, Accounting 95+5,
Statisticians 80+5, Nurses 70+5. Victoria’s score for Nurses has dropped to 70 — a full 10 points lower than the 189 visa!
In addition, there were several invitations for the 224999 category — INFORMATION AND ORGANISATION PROFESSIONALS NEC — an occupation that is extremely popular offshore. This round’s invitees came almost exclusively from onshore applicants, all with annual salaries above $100,000.
After half a year, Victoria has finally issued invitations again.
This round of issuance clearly takes into account applicants’ pressing demand. After securing 380 temporary quota places, Victoria decided to release a first round. Last Thursday, Victoria announced that this year’s ROI would be opened, and invitations were issued just one week later — a clear show of good faith.
However, because only temporary quota is available, the volume issued in this round is relatively small. Let’s wait for the formal quota to come out — hopefully there will be more good news to follow!
Over this period, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland have all announced their policies and opened application channels, and even New South Wales has shown signs of movement. The release of the full state nomination quota should not be far away!
