Skill Select 11 February 2020 Results

SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results are for:

1.  Skill Select EOI Invitation Round is for people who lodged an Expression of Interest (EOI)
2. Submitted EOI’s must be for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” stream of visa subclasses
3. The two GSM visa subclasses are 189 (Skilled Independent) (Australian Permanent visa) and subclass 491 (Skilled Family Sponsored) (Australian Provisional visa).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agency, based in Perth, Australia. Mr Cyrus Mistry (founder of EasyMigrate) has reviewed SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results – see his comments below.

Skill Select & Migration News

• Novel Coronavirus Information for Visa Holders 

• Visa conditions relaxed for backpackers in Australia

• WA – Graduate Occupation list Update

Hints & Tips

Apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for more than a year for an invitation through SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results. For these clients we complete a file-review and recommend a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them get invited for permanent residency WITHIN 2 to 3 MONTHS!

You can contact us for an “initial consultancy”, and we can review your case (link for online booking etc.) 

Summary:

Next round is 11 March 2020. Commentary regarding that Skill Select invitation round will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by the Department of Immigration (usually one month later).

The SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for September 2019  was terrible  – 100 invitations instead of 1,000 invitations in July 2019. The 11 October 2019 was much better – with 1,500 invitations! Then, the SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11 November 2019 and 11 December 2019 rounds were very low and disappointing – only 250 invitations! 10 January 2020 invitations were better at 1000 invitations. The latest SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results (11 February 2020) is slightly better than the October 2019 and January 2020 invitations – 1000 invitations for subclass 189 applicants and another 500 invitations for the new SC491 family-sponsored applicants.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  February 2020: 

1,000 invitations in the Skilled Independent subclass 189 and 500 invitations in the new subclass 491 family-sponsored stream. You may already be aware that Family-Sponsored Subclass 489 has been discontinued from 16 Nov 2019 and replaced by the “SC491 Family Sponsored” stream.

For this round, 189 invitations went to SC489 Family Sponsored applicants who have 85 points (but in my opinion this is the same as the previous pre-November 2019 rule changes score level “invitation at 70 points”). This is because applicants now get 5 or 10 more points for spouse if spouse is skilled and/or speaks good English, if applicants DO NOT have a spouse (10 points), etc. Applicants also get 15 more points if they are “SC491 Family Sponsored”.

• For SC189 Independent:

• 555 invitations went to applicants with 90 points
• 323 invitations went to applicants with 95 points
• 73 invitations went to applicants with 100 points
• 32 invitations went to applicants with 105 points
• Approx 20 invitations went to applicants with 110 points or more.

• For SC491-Family Sponsored:

• 189 invitations went to applicants with 85 points
• 156 invitations went to applicants with 90 points
• 88 invitations went to applicants with 95 points
• 49 invitations went to applicants with 100 points
• Approx 22 invitations went to applicants with 105 points or more.
•  There were no invitations to persons with 80 points or less (but historically, even at 70 points, 884 were invited in March 2019, 848 invited in Jan 2019 and 32 invited in February 2019).

Occupations Analysis

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 90 points, cut-off date 16-11-2019.

The previous cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 95 points, cut-off date 16-12-2019 in previous invitation rounds. But this time 500 SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited, starting at 85 points with cut-off date 08-01-2020.

The “boom” months were between September 2018 and November 2018 at 4,350 invitations per month.

In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited for SC189, but not anymore. This is due to a combination of increased numbers of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced quota for invitations.

For pro-rata Occupations:

For the twenty-third round of invitations relating to pro-rata occupations, DoHA has been inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold dropped from 100 points to 95 points (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 17-05-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 95 points who lodged before 17-05-2019 got invited. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants (Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers) were not invited at all.

For the Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers occupations, the cut-off points-score has stayed at 95, and the cut-off date is now 01-12-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

Electronics Engineers did not get invited for SC189 in the September 2019 or October 2019.  In December 2019 they had been invited at 95 points or more, cut-off date was 04-06-2019. For this latest round, Electronics Engineers have been invited a 90 points, cut-off date is 16-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited for Electrical Engineer occupation at 85 points, cut-off date 22-12-2019.

For Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers – last month the new invitations stopped at 90 points, with cut-off date 01-06-2019. The score requirement has remained the same –invitations have been issued at 90 points, with cut-off date 17-09-2019! SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

(Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited in November 2018 at 70 points)

In previous month, Other Engineering Professionals got the invitation-score increased from 85 points to 95 points! In Jan 2020 this had dropped to 90 points. February 2020 invitations went to applicants with 90 points. The date of effect is 11-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For ICT Business and Systems Analysts – the SC189 invitation threshold had increased from 85 points to 95 points in December 2019. This has dropped to 90 points in January 2019, with the visa date of effect 01-09-2019. February 2020 invitations went to applicants with 90 points, cut-off date 07-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were not invited at all in Jan 2020 round.

Software and Application Programmers – for SC189 the pass mark had increased from 85 to 95 points in December 2019 round, 90 points in January 2020 round; this has stayed the same at 90 points and the cut-off date is now 16-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 85 points, cut-off date 06-01-2020.

Computer Network Professionals – SC189 applicants got invited at 95 points in December 2019 round. In January 2019, this dropped to 90 points with cut-off date 30-09-2019. In February 2020 round, invitations were given to applicants with 90 points, cut-off date 16-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 85 points, cut-off date 03-01-2020.

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 85 points or less are likely to be invited. We are now starting to see the new Subclass 491 invitations increase as full-months of application-time has kicked in. This is likely to dilute the SC189 applicant’s chances. My recommendation is: PLEASE CONTACT US TO SEE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE AND THEN LODGE SC491 EOIs ALSO, LODGE SC190 EOIs ALSO IF ELIGIBLE.

With the quota having re-set on 1^st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next few invitation rounds. But from December 2019 round onwards the new Subclass 491 visa (Regional Family Sponsored) has also come under the Expression of Interest scheme so there will be fluctuations and variations. The new SC 491 visa replaced the “old” SC489 visa on 16^th November 2019.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change — for example, additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, extra points for “single-status”, etc.

Overall, the Australia Government has announced that the quota for general skilled migration is to be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000. This will also affect applicants in future.

Historical Analysis

The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” around 2017 good months.  They went lower between November 2017 to June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants! 

From July 2018 the invitations were on par with the good months in previous year (2017).

The two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations at 4,340 invitations.  

But the December 2018 round and January 2019  halved to 2,500 invitations. February 2019,  March 2019  were FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019 invitations were a disappointing 100 invitations only. 

July 2019 invitations had bounced back to 1,000 invitations. But August 2019 and September 2019 had fallen back to just 100 invitations! October 2019 invitations looked much better at 1,500 invitations. But November 2019 round was very poor at 250 invitations. The December 2019 was not much better – 250 invitations for SC189 and 200 invitations for SC491-Family-Sponsored. The January 2020 invitations were better with 1,000 SC190 invitations and 300 SC491-Family-Sponsored invitations. The current round under review (11 February 2020) was slightly better at 1000 invitations for SC189 and 500 invitations for SC491 Family Sponsored.

The total number of invitations for the financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) was 22,920.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018, September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019, April 2019 and May 2019 figures, I had forecast in my previous articles that the total number of EOI applicants invited for the financial year July 2018 to June 2019 would be  22,820 – my estimate was very close because the FINAL COUNT SkillSelect Invitation Round Results was 22,920!

Cyrus Mistry Comments

Recent announcements by the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) point to a further slow-down in the number of “general skilled migration” (GSM) invitations.

The effect of “re-invitation” continues to plague the SkillSelect invitations program. In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the impact of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have changed to other countries or changed their plans but have not removed their Expressions of Interest (EOI). So they get invited, but they do not apply within the next 60 days. These applicants usually get “re-invited” as per the Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,000-odd invitations in January 2020 only about 600-800 may take it up, 200-400 “invites” are wasted! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

This time, more invitations were issued to new SC491 Family-Sponsored applicants (500 instead of 300). The points allotted for Family-Sponsorship under the new legislation have increased from 10 to 15 points. Please keep in mind that for the SC491 FAMILY-SPONSORED visa, the applicant needs to have scored 70 points “independently” plus the 15 points from their family-sponsor (if invitations are starting at 85 points). From 16 November 2019 onwards the new Subclass 491 Regional Family-Sponsored visa has come into effect, replacing the SC489.

Our EasyMigrate website has statistics for previous SkillSelect Invitation Round Results. My ongoing analysis for the  October 2017 invitations; the November 2017 invitation round and the December 2017 round are available. January 2018 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019,  June 2019,  July 2019, August 2019, September 2019, October 2019, November 2019 , December 2019 and January 2020 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Department of Home Affairs Invitations Round Results

The results in the next section have been taken from the Department of Home Affairs website: