Kirk Migration Column

In a letter issued to agents today, Canberra announced the latest state-nominated occupation list, reducing the original 152 Unit Groups …

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What a roller-coaster of a week. Last Friday after hours, the MIA issued a notice informing members that the Department of Home Affairs had updated its 485 website to no longer recognise online study undertaken offshore on a student visa during COVID as counting towards the Australian Study Requirement for meeting work-visa or skilled-migration points. After a joint outcry from multiple parties, the Department has now confirmed that the change will not take effect, and the official website has been updated accordingly.

NSW issued its second round of Subclass 190 invitations for this financial year on the afternoon of 2 November. The first case I saw was a transport engineer client invited with 80+5 points, relevant work experience, and a partner who also had a skills assessment plus IELTS 6 in each band. Our team then spent another hour collecting the data shown in Figure 1.

Most of my previous articles have focused on skilled migration, with fewer updates on 188/888 migration information and data. While requesting skilled migration data through FOI, I also obtained the 188/888 backlog figures, so I wanted to share them first.

500,000 net overseas migration (NOM)

I happened to see a Little Red Book user share data for 189, 190 and 491 up to August this year. Combined with the financial-year-end data to late June, here is my read on grant activity over these two months and the outlook for 189 invitations.

Today we look at what to do if your Engineers Australia skills assessment has passed the three-year validity period recognised by the Department of Home Affairs. To be clear, an EA skills assessment itself does not technically have an expiry date, but if it is being used for migration, Home Affairs recognises it for three years. If more than three years have passed, Home Affairs may treat it as expired even if EA still considers it valid.

First, lodgements have continued rising over recent years, from 12,000 in 2019-20 to 26,000 in 2022-23, essentially doubling. Compared with grants, the total allocation was cut to only 4,500 during the special circumstances of the past three years, then returned to 8,500 last financial year, and Home Affairs used the full allocation.

Nearly four months into the financial year, let’s review Tasmania’s nomination allocation since receiving its quota on 24 August.

Last week, the Minister released a press statement announcing that 30,000 New Zealanders have applied for Australian citizenship since the pathway opened.