HIGHLIGHTS
Migration program shake-up:
The Australian government lifted the annual permanent migration intake to 195,000 places in its 2022-23 migration program, opening doors to an extra 35,000 migrants to plug the country’s pressing skills shortages and reduce reliance on temporary workers.
Before COVID hit, the Morrison government capped the total intake at 160,000 a year, but migration dropped into net negative territory in the two years during the pandemic, leading to a cumulative loss of 600,000 temporary visa holders.
Announcing the decision to increase the cap in September, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the country needs to learn the lessons of the pandemic, and one of those would be to bring changes to the migration mix.
“We can’t just have this over-reliance on temporary labour. And there are so many professions, whether it’s nursing, whether it’s engineers, whether it’s chefs, where we’ve had skills shortages for a long period.
“It makes no sense to bring people in, have them for a few years, then get a new cohort in to adapt to the Australian work environment,” the prime minister said in a press conference at the Jobs and Skills Summit.
Boost for skilled migration:
Under the lifting of the cap, the number of places in the Skilled Stream has gone up significantly from 79,600 to 142,400, with the regional category (subclass 491) poised to get 34,000 permanent migrants and states and territories nominated (subclass 190) 31,000 places, 20,000 more than the previous program year’s projections.
Minister of Home Affairs Claire O’Neil said these changes to the skilled stream would allow more qualified professionals to enter the workforce in the ongoing program year.
Australia's migration future:
The Labor government has also announced a comprehensive review of the migration system to ensure it better meets existing economic challenges and sets a clear direction for the coming decades.
PMSOL abolished: Priority processing for healthcare workers and teachers:
On October 28, a new Ministerial Direction came into effect that abolished the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL) and formalised the government’s processing priorities for the health and education sectors.?
Criteria relaxed for state-nominated visas:
Nearly all states have relaxed their occupation lists and other criteria to attract applicants based on their skill needs.
With the highest number of state allocations under the state-nominated program, the New South Wales government recently decided to eliminate requirements related to work experience and minimum points scores for its skilled-nominated visa category.
Partner visas are no longer subject to a ceiling:
A total of 52,500 places have been allocated to the Family Stream, predominantly made up of Partner visas, enabling Australians to reunite with family members from overseas and provide them with permanent migration pathways.
The Partner visa category is estimated to deliver 40,500 visas, processing for which will move to a demand-driven model.
Incentives for international students:
The student visa work hours have been temporarily relaxed until 30 June 2023 to address labour shortages. This means all ongoing students, new student arrivals and secondary applicants can work more than 40 hours a fortnight in any sector.
Overall faster visa processing:
Newly released government data indicates that the Department of Home Affairs has cut down the waiting list to just 600,000 after inheriting a visa application backlog of more than 950,000 applications.
Earlier this month, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said that by ramping up processing times and hiring an additional 400 staff, “I’m proud to say that we have now processed over 4 million visas since coming to Government.”
Source: DHA
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