News
The Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the analysis of the 6th June 2018 “Skill Select” invitation results (Expressions of Interest – EOI) for the visa subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) and 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored). EasyMigrate’s Principal Migration Consultant Mr Cyrus Misty has reviewed these results:
“Broad Overview:
Breaking news: Department of Immigration (now DoHA) has announced that from 1 July 2018 the “pass mark” has been increased from 60 to 65 points. New invitations will only go to applicants with 65 points or more.
For the last seven months, the Dept of Immigration (now Department of Home Affairs) has once again released only 305 invitations. This level has been static since November 2017! After many months of harsh policy where no Accountants were invited, this is the second round of invitations where DOHA has finally invited Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! Accountants who score 80 points or more have been invited, and the cut-off date is published as 31-01-2018 which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 80 points or more who applied for their Expression of Interest (EOI) before 31-01-2018 got invited. For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off date is 13-02-2018 (in the last round of invitations this was 12-02-2018, so it has “inched” forward by only one day!).
The total number of invitations for this financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) has been 15,991. I was hoping for a substantial increase in the number of invitations for this fiscal year (July 2017 – June 2018) … but I have not seen this happen. There may be more invitations planned for next financial year (July 2018 – June 2019) – let us wait and see.
I have said this before, and I think it is still relevant: Why only 305 invitations at each round? Why did this start happening from November 2017? To me, the “November 2017” date has significance because Dept of Immigration takes about eight months to process SC189 / 489-Family-Sponsored applications so it would not affect their statistics till June 2018!! But this slow-down will certainly affect their statistics in the 2018-2019 financial year. So is this a deliberate attempt to slow-down the “pipeline” in preparation for some dramatic changes to be announced in July 2018? I hope I am wrong, but I expect dramatic changes will be published in July 2018!
Once again for this latest round of invitations under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, only 300 invitations were issued, at 75 points or above. Only five invitations were issued to SC489 Family-Sponsored applicants – 3 at 80 points and 2 at 85 points… 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.
As I have mentioned in my previous newsletter, This is a decrease of about 2250 invitations per month compared to the October 2017 invitations; it is about 1105 invitations less than the November 2017 round. The December 2017 round, January 2017 round, February 2017 round, March 2018 round and April 2018 round and the May 2018 Round. All of these have been very low with the number of invitations, with only 610 invitations per month (305 invitations x 2 invitation-rounds each month). I estimate that the current rounds are only about 25-30% of the usual monthly track-record before October 2017.
Please note that these figures do not include invitations under the state-nominated subclass 190 and state-nominated “Regional” subclass 489.
For this round, most invitations (172) were to applicants who have 75 points. Another 100 invitations went to persons with 80 points. 28 invitations were given to applicants having 85 points. In this invitation round, no one scored 90-95 points.
There were NO INVITES to applicants with 60, 65 or 70 points.
As I have mentioned before – when the number of invitations is so low, then anomalies creep in – let me explain. I estimate that about 15% of the “invitations” usually do not get taken up (because of the applicant’s changed circumstances). These “invitations” expire after 60 days and lead to a “re-invite” in the next round of invitations (maximum two invites). When the number of invitations is reduced by DIBP to a paltry 300 (instead of the usual 2000-3000 per month), then these “re-invitation” tend to skew the results and give inaccurate statistics.
For the occupations subject to pro-rata arrangements, Accountants with 80 points or more got invitations up to an EOI-date of 31-01-2018. “Auditors,” “Company Secretaries” and “Corporate Treasurers” also got invited at 80 points, with a cut-off date of 13-02-2018. This is a good development because Accountants had been excluded (or dramatically reduced) since Oct-Nov 2017 invitation-rounds!
Electronics Engineers got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 30-05-2018, so they seem to have waited ONLY ONE WEEK IN THE QUEUE! Unfortunately, this is only for 75 point applicants; all others lost out.
Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers also got invited at 75 points with a date of effect 30-05-2018.
Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 11-04-2018. The new date 11-04-2018 is quite significant – waiting in the queue is now about SEVEN WEEKS but only for 75-point holders! As the number of “invitations” increase over the next few rounds, this is a good sign for other engineers who are waiting at 70 points and 65 points.
ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) got invited at 75 points with visa date of effect 20-02-2018.
ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) got invited at 75 points with visa date of effect 28-03-2018 – this date has hardly changed since the last invitation-round.
ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 75 points with visa date of effect 24-04-2018.
So for ICT professionals, there is about 1.5 to 4 month’s waiting in the queue. The good news is only for 75-point holders. Again, if the number of invitations at each round goes up for the next financial year (July 2018 – June 2019), then more ICT professionals with 70 and 65 points are likely to be invited.
06 June 2018 Invitation Round
The table below (published by Department of Immigration – now renamed Depart of Home Affairs – DoHA) shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 6th June 2018:
Invitations issued on 6 June 2018