The pandemic has flared up again across Australia in full force — Victoria and Canberra have both announced a 2-week lockdown extension, the Northern Territory has also entered a brief 3-day lockdown, and NSW goes without saying…
Now that we’re into the new financial year,the grant speed for 189 and 190 seems to have slowed down again, and 491 continues to show no improvement,and with several states going in and out of lockdown one after another due to new cases, visa processing has become even slower.Those onshore are still relatively okay — it’s the group offshore who are far more anxious, with their lives and work affected even more severely.
Nearly 20,000 skilled migration TR holders
stranded offshore
FOI data obtained by The Sun-Herald shows that, as at April this year, a total of19,345 holders of temporary skilled visas were stranded offshore, all of whom had already been granted their visas,some were granted while offshore and unable to return, others had been granted long ago, departed, and then couldn’t get back in — mainly across four major visa categories:457/482/491/494(this should also include the former regional state-nominated Subclass 489.)
Of these,more than 7,500 people’s visas are due to expire by the end of 2021, and 9,200 people’s expire in 2022,these are all provisional-PR visas that don’t fall into the categories eligible for a travel exemption — apart from a small number of so-called “critical skills” cases — leaving them stuck awkwardly in between.
On travel exemptions
Critical skills exemptions approved
According to data previously published by the Department of Home Affairs, from 21.9.13 to 21.3.2436,508 people were granted an exemption through the critical skills pathway.
For occupations on the PMSOL list, 1,827 applications were approved, with the top three occupations each accounting for more than 200,all occupations that will be very familiar to us.
Andamong applicants in critical industries, a total of 6,223 travel exemptions were approved, covering health care and social services, engineering, mining, construction, and agriculture, forestry and fisheriesand others.
If you have a job or job offer in any of the industries above, feel free to add our consultant below for a travel exemption assessment.
Migration expert Abul Rizvi says these were alreadyskilled talent Australia had “in hand” — and is now losing all over again; their departure amounts to a brain drain,which also damages Australia’s international reputation. “These people’s lives are being seriously disrupted and thrown into turmoil — I think if we had greater quarantine capacity, we might be able to let more people in.
GTI
Global Talent visa — not so “global”?
On top of that, there’s also the GTI Global Talent visa that was booming during last year’s full-blown COVID outbreak in Australia — from 21 March 2020 to 30 June 2021, the Department of Home Affairs approved a total of 12,167 Global Talent visas,but only 367 people actually entered Australia from offshore,one reason being that many applicants were already in Australia, and another being that from the second half of the 2020-21 financial year, this once red-hot visa also cooled off.
Government think tank the Grattan Institute previously released a report saying that while the GTI’s original intent was good, handing out that many places all at once meansits actual effectiveness still needs to be tested.Especially compared with employer sponsorship, the GTI’s assessment criteria are far vaguer. Rizvi even warned that this actually undermines other skilled visa categories, because its “flexibility” lacks objective standards.
The Department of Home Affairs
different purposes
A Home Affairs spokesperson explained:
30%the talent visa goes to experts in digital technology, including quantum computing, blockchain and remote Wi-Fi.About a quarterare researchers and entrepreneurs in health and life sciences,20%are experts in resources and clean energy, while many of the rest work in fields such as biotechnology and advanced manufacturing materials development.
Employer sponsorship, on the other hand, is mainly for the critical skills businesses need — so the two serve different purposes.
189&190&491
Still waiting anxiously for a grant
None of the above even counts those still offshore waiting on a grant — again from the Department’s FOI data, as at 21.4.30,the number of 189/190/491 applicants onshore or offshore who have been waiting for a grantfor more than 6 monthsis as follows ↓↓↓
189: 2,448 people offshore, 7,521 people onshore
190: 5,109 people offshore, 3,790 people onshore
491: 2,911 people offshore, 2,791 people onshore
across the three categories, 10,468 people are waiting offshore and 14,102 onshore
There’s been endless debate about how to fill this shortage or that one — if these nearly 25,000 people could be granted their visas as soon as possible, especially those offshore, that would surely go a long way to plugging the gap… The Minister for Immigration previously said they were considering temporarily freezing visas for offshore Subclass 485 holders so their time wasn’t wasted for nothing, but nothing further came of it. Right now, on one hand we’re hoping Australia’s vaccine rollout picks up speed — uptake, progress and vaccine restocking are all improving — and on the other, we really think some exemptions should be granted, given that tens of thousands of people are affected.
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