News
SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 10th March 2019
On 26th March 2019, the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the 11th March 2019 “Skill Select EOI Invitation Round” results. This is for persons who lodged Expressions of Interest (EOI) for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” visa subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) and subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored).
EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agent, based in Perth, Australia. EasyMigrate’s Migration Consultant Mr Cyrus Mistry (our principal immigration agent in Australia) has reviewed these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.
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Broad Overview:
Recent SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round news: From 1 July 2018 the “pass mark” has been increased from 60 to 65 points. New applicants can lodge their Expression Of Interest (EOI) with 65 points or more. Other applicants who submitted their EOI before 30 June 2018 with 60 points will continue to stay in the queue.
Recent SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round news: Department of Immigration (now DoHA) has announced that from Financial Year 2018-2019 there will be only ONE ROUND OF SKILL SELECT INVITATIONS PER MONTH – usually around the eleventh of the month.
Our Recommendation: Most applicants with 60 or 65 points are not getting invited at all since the last 18 months or so. Many 70-pointers are also not getting invitations for a long time.
SOLUTION: apply for state-nominations also, in parallel. We have many clients who were waiting for a more than a year, so we did a file-review and recommended a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them got invited for permanent residency WITHIN 8-12 WEEKS!
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Summary:
Next round will be 11 April 2019. 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.
Compared to the last invitation round (11 February 2019) this recent skill Select round from Department of Immigration’s “SkillSelect” division has MAINTAINED THE SAME NUMBER OF INVITATIONS AS FEBRUARY 2019 – about 1,500 invitations. Compare this to 4,350 invitations during the “boom” months that we had between September 2018 and November 2018. This represents A CONTINUATION of the “slow down” policy by the Department of Immigration for the financial year 2018-2019.
The exact number of invitations on 11th March 2019: 1,490 invitations in the Skilled Independent SC189 subclass and 10 in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489.
For this round, most invitations (884) were to applicants who have 75 points.
There were no invitations to persons with 70 points (compared to 848 in Jan 2019 and 32 in February 2019).
Three hundred and eighty-six invitations were given to persons with 80 points.
Two hundred and fourteen invitations were given to applicants having 85 points.
Only six invitations were given to persons with 90 points or more.
GOOD NEWS is that the number of applicants who were invited in March 2019 for General Skilled Migration SC189 visa was still a substantial number compared to the slowdown in the financial year 2017-2018 (Oct 2017 to June 2018)!
This time, there were NO INVITES to applicants with 60, 65 or 70 points.
Occupations Analysis:
The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 75 points, cut-off date 08-03-2019.
The cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 85 points, cut-off date 09-03-2019.
This is now the twelfth round of invitations where DoHA has re-commenced inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has stayed at 85 points as compared to the last round of 11 February 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 09-03-2019 which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 85 points or more who applied for their Expression of Interest (EOI) before 09-03-2019 got invited. In the previous month, the date was 09-02-2019! For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score is still 80, and the cut-off date is 19-07-2018 (in the last round of invitations this was 06-07-2018, so this has moved slightly compared to previous month).
Accountants, Auditors etc. had been excluded (or dramatically reduced) since Oct-Nov 2017 invitation-rounds, so this is an excellent ongoing sign that the demand continues!
Electronics Engineers got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 07-12-2018. In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited, but not anymore. So this is due to a combination of factors: an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced number of invitations.
Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers were previously invited at 70 points with a date of effect 04-02-2019. But new invitations for March 2019 stop at 75 points, with cut-off date 24-02-2019.
Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 06-11-2018.
ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) got invited at 75 points with the visa date of effect 09-10-2018 – this has moved forward by about 30 days.
ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) – the pass mark has remained steady at 75 points with the visa date of effect 13-02-2019. Last invitation round date of effect was 29-01-2019 – In the January 2019 invitation-round, a lot of Software and Application programmers who had been waiting in the queue for a long time got selected. Unfortunately, the same thing has not happened in this skill select invitation rounds of February and March 2019.
ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 75 points with the visa date of effect 08-03-2019 – this moved forward by one month.
So for most ICT professionals, there is now a substantial waiting in the queue for their Expression of Interest to be converted into an “invite”.
If the number of invitations at each round goes up for the next invitation rounds in this general skilled migration program, then more occupations with 70 and 65 points are likely to be invited. But I do not think that is likely to happen.
Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change, e.g. additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, etc.
In my earlier articles, I was hoping that the number of “invitations” rises over the next few rounds – BUT IT HAS STAYED REDUCED BY ALMOST 65% for this month compared to “boom” months! This indeed is not a good sign for all occupations who are waiting at 70 points and 65 points. This may be a slowdown due to financial-year adjustments – based on the July2018-June2019 quota.
Historical Analysis:
The number of monthly invitations used to hover around the “two thousand-plus” mark for last few months and were even lower between November 2017 and June 2018 at about 305 “SkillSelect” invitations per fortnight for the EOI applicants!
For July 2018, 1,010 invitations had been issued to persons who had lodged their Expression of Interest (EOI). This was better than the 610 invitations being issued from Nov 2017 onwards until June 2018. But still a lot less than the 2,000-odd invitations that were being issued per month before October 2017. Until January 2019 the number of invitations was regularly above the two-thousand mark. In the 11 August 2018, AND the 11 September 2018 SkillSelect results were above the two-thousand mark – then jumped up to 4,340 invitations on 11 October 2018 and 11 November 2018 invitations. December 2018 and January 2019 invitation-rounds have seen a drop-back to the 2,000+ levels and reduced further since February 2019 invitation-rounds.
The total number of invitations for the last financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) was 16,296.
Based on July 2018, August 2018, September 2018, October 2018, November 2018, December 2018 January 2019 and February 2019 figures, the total number of EOI applicants invited for this financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) could be (22,620 divided by nine multiply by 12) = approx. 30,100 per year which would mean a substantial increase in Subclass 189and Subclass 489 (Family) invitations compared to the previous financial year 2017-2018.
But 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 effect of “re-invitation”. Many applicants have moved on 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 seriously affects the program because out of the 1,500-odd invitations in February 2019 only about 900-1000 get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.
For this latest round of invitations under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, 1,490 invitations were issued, at 75 points or above. Only ten invitations were issued to SC489 Family-Sponsored applicants –at 80 points or above… so as you can see, the SC489 FAMILY-SPONSORED applicant needs to have scored 70 points “independently” plus the 10 points from their family-sponsor.
On our EasyMigrate website, we have the statistics. 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, 11th August 2018 the 11 September 2018, October 2018, November 2018, December 2018 January 2019 and February 2019 invitation rounds are also available on our website. I estimate that the Nov 2017 to June 2018 rounds were only about 30-40% of the usual monthly track-record before October 2017, but from July 2018 the invitations are on par with the good months up to September 2017 in previous years, and the two rounds of October 2018 and November 2018 EXCEEDED our expectations. But the December 2018round and January 2019 has halved to 2,500 invitations. Now February 2019 and March 2019 are FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations.
Please note that these figures do not include invitations under the state-nominated subclass 190 and state-nominated “Regional” subclass 489.
Invitations issued on 11 March 2019
The table below shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11 March 2019, as published by the Department of Home Affairs:
Current round – Invitations issued 10th March 2019 by Department of Home Affairs
Invitations issued on 10 March 2019
The table below shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 10 March 2019.
Visa subclass | Number |
---|---|
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) | 1,490 |
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) | 10 |
During 2018-19 program year the following numbers of invitations have been issued:
10 March 2019 results
The following graph shows the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 10 March 2019 round.
Invitation process and cut offs
The highest ranked clients by points score are invited to apply for the relevant visa. For clients who have equal points scores, the time at which they reached their points score for that subclass (referred to as the date of effect) determines their order of invitation. Expressions of Interest with earlier dates of effect are invited before later dates.
Visa subclass | Minimum points score | Date of effect |
---|---|---|
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) | 75 |
8/03/2019 5:50 am |
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) | 85 |
9/03/2019 8:30 am |
Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro rata occupations in the 10 March 2019 invitation round.
Due to high levels of demand, and in keeping with previous years, the below occupation groups will be subject to pro rata arrangements to ensure availability of invitations across the program year.
SkillSelect first allocates available places to Skilled – Independent visas (subclass 189) and then the remaining to Skilled – Regional (Provisional) visas (subclass 489). If all places are taken up by subclass 189 visas then there will be no invitations issued for subclass 489 visas in these occupations.
Occupation ID | Description | Minimum points score | Date of effect |
---|---|---|---|
2211 | Accountants | 85 | 9/03/2019 9:33 pm |
2212 | Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers | 80 | 19/07/2018 3:15 pm |
2334 | Electronics Engineer | 75 | 7/12/2018 1:09 am |
2335 | Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers | 75 | 24/02/2019 1:29 am |
2339 | Other Engineering Professionals | 75 | 06/11/2018 11:23 pm |
2611 | ICT Business and System Analysts | 75 | 9/10/2018 5:07 pm |
2613 | Software and Applications Programmers | 75 | 13/02/2019 7:00 pm |
2631 | Computer Network Professionals | 75 | 08/03/2019 2:15 am |
Invitations issued during 2018-19 program year
Visa subclass | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) | 1,000 | 2,490 | 2,490 | 4,340 | 4,340 | 2,490 | 2,490 | 1,490 | 1,490 | 22,620 | |||
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 90 | |||
Total | 1,010 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 4,350 | 4,350 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 22,710 |
The above figures do not include invitations issued for State and Territory Government nominated visa subclasses. State and Territory Governments nominate throughout the month for specific points tested skilled migration and business innovation and investment visas.