Skill Select EOI Invitation Results for 11th January 2019

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Skill Select EOI Invitation Results for 11th January 2019

The Department of  Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the 11th January 2019 “Skill Select” invitation 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 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.

Recent 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.

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!

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

Summary:

Next round will be 11 March 2019. Commentary regarding the February 2019 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 December 2018) this recent skill Select round from Department of Immigration’s “SkillSelect” division has KEPT THE SAME NUMBER OF INVITATIONS, – about 2,500 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”.

The exact number of invitations on 11th January 2019: 2,490 invitations in the Skilled Independent SC189 subclass and 10 in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489.

For this round, most invitations (1,037) were to applicants who have 75 points.

Another 848 invitations went to persons with 70 points (compared to 736 in Dec 2018).

Four hundred two invitations were given to persons with 80 points.

Two hundred invitations were given to applicants having 85 points.

Three invitations were given to persons with 90 points or more. 

GOOD NEWS is that the number of applicants who were invited in January 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)!

There were NO INVITES to applicants with 60 or 65 points.

Occupations Analysis:

Since late 2017 the “Accountants group” of occupations were not invited at all for quite some time. This is now the tenth round of invitations where DoHA has re-commenced inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has been steady at 80 points (this round and the last round). The cut-off date is published as 24-08-2018 which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 80 points or more who applied for their Expression of Interest (EOI) before 24-08-2018 got invited. In the previous month, the date was 18-08-2018, so it has not moved forward by much! For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score is also 80, and the cut-off date is 27-06-2018 (in the last round of invitations this was 08-06-2018, so this has moved forward by about 20 days).

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 29-11-2018. In the October 2108 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 also got invited at 70 points with a date of effect 02-07-2018.

Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 24-10-2018, i.e. is date has moved forward by two weeks. So in this invitation round, 70-point holders have not been invited once again! 

ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) got invited at 75 points with the visa date of effect 03-10-2018 – this has moved forward by about 20 days.

ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) – the pass mark STAYS at 70 points with the visa date of effect 23-01-2018. Last invitation round date of effect was 01-04-2017 – this had meant that a lot of Software and Application programmers who had been waiting in the queue for a long time got selected (maybe their points increased automatically because of age or work-experience requirements).  

ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 70 points with the visa date of effect 06-09-2018 – this moved forward by six days.

So for most ICT professionals, there is about four month’s waiting in the queue for their Expression of Interest to be converted into an “invite” (except for Software and Application Programmers where the wait is 12 months in this round.  December 2018 round was just an aberration at 20 months wait-period, but it has sorted itself out in this invitation round).

The good news is that the list now continues to include 70-point scorers in some occupations! For example, Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers, Software and Application Programmers, Computer Network Professionals are getting invited even at 70 points. Again, 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.

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 last article regarding the 11 December 2018 round, I was hoping that the number of “invitations” rises over the next few rounds – BUT IT REDUCED BY ALMOST 50% for the second consecutive month! This is certainly 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. Now the number of invitations were regularly above the two-thousand mark in the 11 August 2018, AND the 11 September 2018SkillSelect results – 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.

The total number of invitations for the last financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) was 16,296.

Based on July 2018August 2018September 2018,  October 2018November 2018,  December 2018 and January 2019 figures, the total number of EOI applicants invited for this financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) could be (19,940 divides by 7 multiply by 12) = approx. 34,200 per year which would mean a substantial increase in Subclass 189and Subclass 489 (Family) invitations compared to the previous financial year 2017-2018. There may be even more invitations planned for the next four months (March 2019 – June 2019) – let us wait and see.

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 – so they get “re-invited” as per 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 2,500-odd invitations only about 1500-1800 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, 2,490 invitations were issued, at 70 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 70-75 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 roundFebruary 2018 roundMarch 2018 round, April 2018 roundMay 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018 and December 2018 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 last two rounds EXCEEDED our expectations.  But now the December 2018 round and January 2019 is halved to 2,500 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 January 2019

The information below (published by the Department of Immigration – now renamed Depart of Home Affairs – DoHA) shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11th January 2019:

The table below shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11 January 2019.

Visa subclass Number
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) 2,490
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 10

During 2018-19 program year the following numbers of invitations have been issued:

11 January 2019 results

The following graph shows the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 January 2019 round.

Graph showing the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 January 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) 70

8/12/2018  12:42 pm

Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 80

28/08/2018  6:55 pm

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.

Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro rata occupations in the 11 January 2019 invitation round.

Occupation ID Description Minimum points score Date of effect
2211 Accountants 80 24/08/2018  4:17 pm
2212 Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers 80 27/06/2018  6:20 am
2334 Electronics Engineer 75 29/11/2018  5:13 pm
2335 Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers 70 2/07/2018  9:54 pm
2339 Other Engineering Professionals 75 24/10/2018  7:02 am
2611 ICT Business and System Analysts 75 3/10/2018  6:30 pm
2613 Software and Applications Programmers 70 23/01/2018  1:29 pm
2631 Computer Network Professionals 70 6/09/2018  4:25 pm

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           19,640
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 10 10 10 10 10 10 10           70
Total 1,010 2,500 2,500 4,350 4,350 2,500 2,500           19,710

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.