Key migration news this week
- First week of online parent migration applications — plenty of system bugs
- The claim that the QS skills assessment now requires a year of experience is a misunderstanding
- Nurse registration English requirements adjusted — the speaking bar gets harder
- More Subclass 191 grants and faster employer sponsorship?
- A roundup of this week’s grants, invitations and skills-assessment figures
State and territory quota usage
April is almost over, and the Department of Home Affairs has finally updated the state-nomination quota usage as at the end of March. Victoria closes new applications on 28 April, Canberra skipped its April round, and New South Wales will issue its first invitations under Subclass 491 Pathway Two in the week of 28 April, so many people have been anxiously awaiting this update on the actual quota position. 
As at 31 March 2026
Canberra:
266 Subclass 190 places and 248 Subclass 491 places remaining, with about 200 formal allocations granted across the whole of March. Almost another month has now passed, and optimistically the Subclass 190 and Subclass 491 allocations are each expected to be around 200. The official website says the originally scheduled April matrix invitations will be skipped, and the final round of this financial year will be released in the week of 4 May.
New South Wales:
768 Subclass 190 places and 469 Subclass 491 places remaining. NSW has already run one Subclass 190 round in April, smaller in scale than before. In March it granted 338 formal Subclass 491 allocations, and in February it also granted close to 300. The processing volume is large, all going to Pathways One and Three. The first Subclass 491 Pathway Two round will be issued in the week of 28 April; whether it runs one round or two depends on how much is left from Pathways One and Three. What is certain is that in April the state government was still approving Pathways One and Three — we have clients who received invitations.
Northern Territory: 210 Subclass 190 places and 403 Subclass 491 places remaining. The Subclass 190 places all go to onshore graduates or workers, while offshore Subclass 491 is currently being processed fairly slowly.
Queensland:
848 Subclass 190 places and 171 Subclass 491 places remaining. Queensland granted 365 formal Subclass 190 allocations in a single month, catching up on pace, and still has 45% of its quota left. The frequency of April rounds has already increased and will be maintained in May, but competition in Queensland remains extremely fierce. With 171 Subclass 491 places left, that is under 23%.
South Australia:
586 Subclass 190 places and 441 Subclass 491 places remaining. Since opening, South Australia has methodically issued invitations at the start of each month, though the numbers and occupations have held no great surprises.
Tasmania:
410 Subclass 190 places and 385 Subclass 491 places remaining. Tasmania updates its own processing and quota position every week; the latest, as at 23 April, shows 267 Subclass 190 places and 320 Subclass 491 places left, with a further 236 Subclass 190 and 204 Subclass 491 applications still awaiting processing before formal allocation — so in reality there are not as many places available. Processing has advanced to nomination applications lodged on 2 February.
Victoria:
807 Subclass 190 places and 117 Subclass 491 places remaining. The Subclass 190 figure may not look small, but in March Victoria extended invitations to non-priority occupations in the largest round of the financial year, and by month’s end the remaining proportion had already fallen below 30%. You have to admire Victoria’s efficiency: in March alone it processed close to 500 formal Subclass 190 nominations, far ahead of second-placed Queensland. Victoria should still have the capacity for one more small round.
Western Australia:
991 Subclass 190 places and 449 Subclass 491 places remaining. On the numbers alone, Western Australia has the largest proportion of quota left — close to half of its Subclass 190 quota, roughly 1,000 places — but because processing is slow, exactly how much Western Australia has left has always been a mystery.
As we analysed earlier, the states will all sprint through March, April and May, leaving June mainly for processing. As things stand, March used up close to 8,000 Subclass 190 places — 2,000 more than February — and Subclass 491 also used close to 5,000, more than 1,200 above February. May is expected to bring plenty more invitations, so those still waiting have something to look forward to.
1. First week of online parent migration applications — still plenty of system bugs
This week, on 22 April, the long-awaited online parent migration application system officially went live. We immediately logged into ImmiAccount to test it and, sure enough, a new Parent Visa option had been added, specifically covering Subclasses 103/143/804/864.
But so far the online application system is not fully polished and still has some bugs:
① BPAY is not supported yet. Previously, paper applications could only be paid by card or PayPal, which incurs a fee of about 1.4%. Paying via BPAY now waives this fee, saving close to $100 when the primary and secondary applicants lodge together (based on 2025-26 financial year prices). But the system has probably not finished upgrading, as the BPAY function is not yet enabled — we will keep monitoring it.
② The system is not very stable. Over the past few days we have occasionally seen the Parent Visa category disappear from the system — some accounts can see it, on others it vanishes after logging in, and sometimes you have to log out and back in repeatedly. This is most likely because the system has only just launched and the servers are still unstable.
③ Fully paperless lodgement will be achieved step by step. Although Form 47PA has now moved online, the Form 40 that sponsors must complete still has to be filled out on paper the old-fashioned way, signed, then scanned and uploaded. The Department of Home Affairs needs a little more time to bring the sponsorship forms into the system too.
At present, Subclass 143 requests for further documents have reached applications lodged in mid-November 2018. The FOI file-retrieval data is still on its way; once we have an update, we will produce a projection table as soon as we can!
2. The claim that the QS skills assessment now requires a year of experience is a misunderstanding
This week the QS skills assessment caused a stir, with claims that the assessing authority AIQS had changed its requirements: that, according to its FAQ, even graduates with an accredited Australian qualification now need one year of work experience to pass a skills assessment usable for permanent residency, while an assessment based on qualifications alone can only be used for Australian study points or other work visas. After looking into it, we believe nothing has actually changed.
- The FAQ is not newly published — it has been there since last November. AIQS added “maybe”, and advised that applicants should contact the Department of Home Affairs to confirm any migration and visa questions.
- The actual policy on the official website has not been updated since 2023; it states that an accredited qualification only can be used for skilled migration — again qualified with “maybe”.
- The most recent skills assessments based on an accredited qualification alone are no different from earlier ones.
- Australian study points do not require any additional assessment from a skills assessing authority.
- The idea that a qualification-only assessment can only earn points and support a work visa, while only one backed by work experience can be used for a PR visa, is a distinction that migration law simply does not make.
In practice, from 2023 to now, the QS skills assessments we have done using an accredited qualification have had no problems — the assessment passes, the invitation is approved, and the PR is granted. There are indeed online rumours of qualification-only assessments being rejected by a state government; if that is true, we believe the state government’s decision has no legal basis and can be argued.
So —
AIQS is a skills assessing authority, and its wording on migration and visa advice is not very precise, which has caused confusion; it also cautiously hedged with “may or maybe”. On top of that, even if the rules really do change clearly later on, assessments already issued are generally unaffected.
3. Australia’s nurse registration English requirements have officially been adjusted!
What has genuinely changed are the English requirements for nurse registration. From 23 April 2026, AHPRA is adjusting the standards for the different English tests:
Note: AHPRA handles the practising registration of nurses, not the skills assessment used for skilled migration; the skills assessing authority for nursing is a separate body, ANMAC.
- The change is mainly in PTE: the speaking requirement rises by 10 points and writing by 4 points, while the other two components, including the overall score, fall.
- The TOEFL speaking requirement also rises by 1 point, the other three components fall slightly, and the overall score drops by 3 points.
- IELTS is unchanged.
This change mainly raises the speaking requirement and lowers the requirements for the other components, placing greater weight on communication skills in nursing. Although this is not a change to the skills assessment English requirements, the vast majority of nursing graduates will go on to work as nurses.
4. More Subclass 191 grants and faster employer sponsorship?
The Subclass 191 figures we obtained this week, for the 2025-26 financial year up to 31 January: 15,188 lodged, 16,772 processed, and a backlog of 14,353.
We mentioned earlier that this financial year’s Subclass 191 processing was concentrated in the first few months of the year: 12,369 were granted from July to October, with 5,300+ granted in July, after which the numbers gradually declined, dropping below 1,000 by October. Combining that with these latest figures — 16,772 granted from July to the following January — means 4,403 were processed from November to January, an average of 1,500 a month, so at least the decline in processing volume has stopped. Processing has now reached applications lodged in late August 2025.
This week the Department of Home Affairs also updated its processing times, showing that employer sponsorship has clearly sped up, as below
482 SID nomination
50% take 6 days — 4 months faster
90% take 8 months — unchanged
482 SID core skills stream-visa
50% take 69 days — just under 2 months faster
90% take 8 months — 1 month slower
186DE50%
Take 9 months — 5 months faster
90% take 15 months — 6 months faster
186TRT
50% take 10 months — 3 months faster
90% take 15 months — 5 months faster
But many of our clients have not seen any significant speed-up. We believe this is mainly because the Department of Home Affairs now sorts applications into priority and non-priority — especially the quota-limited Subclass 186. The Department has made clear that applications for positions in regional areas, for healthcare and teaching occupations, and from accredited employers will be processed as a priority, and these have already advanced to close to mid-2025. The rest, the non-priority majority, are still back in mid-2024.
5. This week’s grants, invitations and skills assessments
State government invitations
Tasmania state nomination
Formal invitation
Nomination lodged on 23 January 2026; formal Subclass 491 invitation received on 22 April 2026
Queensland state nomination
Formal invitation: ROI pre-invitation received on 10 March 2026; formal Queensland Subclass 190 invitation received on 21 April 2026, 80+5, Physiotherapist
Visa grants
Subclass 189 Skilled Independent migration
None this week
Subclass 190 state government nomination
Lodged 31 January 2025, granted 20 April 2026, onshore, with spouse, Systems Analyst
Lodged 30 January 2025, granted 20 April 2026, onshore, single, ICT Security Specialist
Lodged 5 July 2024, granted 20 April 2026, ACT 190 Accountant (General)
Lodged 23 April 2025, Subclass 190 granted 24 April 2026
Subclass 491 regional state nomination
None this week
Subclass 191/887 regional permanent residence
None this week
Employer sponsorship
Nomination lodged 11 August 2025, visa lodged 20 January 2026, nomination and visa approved 24 April 2026, Marketing Specialist
Lodged 8 January 2026, Subclass 482 nomination approved 24 April 2026, Accountant
Investor visa / GTI visa
Lodged 19 September 2025, Subclass 888 granted 20 April 2026
Lodged 15 July 2024, Subclass 858 GTI granted 21 April 2026
Partner migration
Submitted on 2/8/2024, Granted on 21/4/2026 309
Lodged 26 September 2024, granted 22 April 2026
Subclass 300 — lodged 12 June 2024, Subclass 300 visa granted 20 April 2026
Lodged 16 April 2024, Subclass 801+820 granted 20 April 2026
Lodged 3 May 2024, Subclass 820 granted 20 April 2026
Parent visas
Subclass 143 lodged 26 July 2018, further documents provided 17 November 2025, Subclass 143 granted 21 April 2026
Subclass 485 Graduate Work visa
Lodged 10 April 2026, Subclass 485 granted 20 April 2026
Lodged 13 April 2026, Subclass 485 granted 20 April 2026
Subclass 500 Student visa
Submitted on 23/9/2025, Granted on 18/4/2026
Lodged 11 March 2026, granted 20 April 2026, onshore, higher education
Lodged 17 March 2026, Subclass 500 granted 20 April 2026
Lodged 17 March 2026, Subclass 500 granted 20 April 2026
Subclass 600 Visitor visa
Lodged 26 March 2026, Subclass 600 granted 21 April 2026
Lodged 28 March 2026, Subclass 600 granted 22 April 2026
Lodged 22 October 2025, Subclass 600 granted 24 April 2026, offshore
Subclass 155 visa
Lodged 16 April 2025, granted 23 April 2026, residence requirement not met
Lodged 16 April 2025, granted 22 April 2026, residence requirement not met
Child visa
Lodged 4 April 2024, Subclass 101 granted 23 April 2026
