SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11th August 2019

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SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11th August 2019

The Department of  Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the  11th August 2019 “Skill Select EOI Invitation Round” results. 

Who are these results 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 489 (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 these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.

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Broad Overview:

New 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.

New SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round news: The Department of Home Affairs has announced that there will be only ONE ROUND OF SKILL SELECT INVITATIONS PER MONTH. These results generally are released 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 more than a year, so we do 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 will be 11 Sept 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 July 2019) this current Round was terrible  – 100 invitations instead of 1000 invitations last month! Compare this to 4,350 invitations per month during the “boom” months that we had between September 2018 and November 2018.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  August 2019100 invitations in the Skilled Independent SC189 subclass and 100 in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489.

For this round, zero invitations were to applicants who have 80 points.

One sixty invitations went to applicants with 85 points.

Twentyseven invitations were given to applicants having 90 points.

Seventeen invitations were given to persons with 95 points or more. 

There were no invitations to persons with 70 points (compared to 884 in March 2019, 848 in Jan 2019 and 32 in February 2019). There were no invitations to persons with 75 points or 80 points either.

Occupations Analysis:

The cut-off for Skilled Independent (SC189) was 85 points, cut-off date 01-08-2019.

The cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 80 points, cut-off date 21-01-2019.

For the seventeenth round of invitations, DoHA has re-commenced inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has increased to 90 points as compared to the previous round of 11 June 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 20-07-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 85 points who lodged before 20-07-2019 got invited. For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score has remained steady at 85, and the cut-off date is 11-03-2019.

Electronics Engineers invitation threshold increased to 85 points with the date of effect 05-05-2019. In the October 2018 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited, but not anymore. This is due to 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 (in November 2018) at 70 points with a date of effect 04-02-2019. But new invitations stop at 85 points, with cut-off date 31-07-2019.

Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 90 points only! This is a big increase! The date of effect is 07-08-2019.  

For ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) – the invitation threshold has increased to 85 points with the visa date of effect 30-07-2019.

ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) – the pass mark is now 85 points; the cut-off date is now 31-07-2019.  

ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 80 points with the visa date of effect 14-07-2019 – this moved forwards by about two months.

So for most ICT professionals, there is now a 2 to 3 month waiting in the queue for their Expression of Interest to be converted into an “invite” (provided they score 80 points or more).

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 80, 75 and 70 points are likely to be invited. With the quota re-setting on 1st July 2019 (financial year-end), I expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in the number of invitations in the next 11 September 2019 round.

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, etc.

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

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,  March-2019 and April 2019  and subsequent invitation-rounds.

The total number of invitations for the last financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) was 22,920.

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

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 impact 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 severely affects the program. For example, out of the 1,500-odd invitations in March 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 last round of invitations (August 2019) under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, only 100 invitations were issued, at 85 points or above. Last month (11 July 2019) the number of invitations had gone up to 1,000 which was a good sign. This time, another  100 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 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 2018November 2018,  December 2018 rounds are available.  January 2019,  February 2019,  March 2019,  April 2019  May 2019June 2019 and July 2019 invitation rounds are also available on our website. 

Comment: 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 2018 round and January 2019 has halved to 2,500 invitations. Now February 2019,  March 2019  are FURTHER REDUCED to 1,500 invitations, and April 2019 plus May 2019 plus June 2019 invitations are a disappointing 100 invitations only. July 2019 had bounced back to 1,000 invitations. But August 2019 has fallen back to just 100 invitations!

Please note that these figures do not include invitations under the state-nominated subclass 190 and state-nominated “Regional” subclass 489.

The results in the next section have been taken from the Department of Home Affairs website: https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skillselect/invitation-rounds

Invitations issued on 11 August 2019

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

Visa subclass Number
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) 100
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 100

During 2019-20 program year the following numbers of invitations have been issued:

11 August 2019 results

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

Graph showing the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 July 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 Latest date of effect
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) 85

01/08/2019 9:41pm

Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 80

21/01/2019 12:10pm

Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro-rata occupations in the 11 August 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 Latest date of effect
2211 Accountants 90 20/07/2019 8:54pm
2212 Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers 85 11/03/2019 7:14pm
2334 Electronics Engineer 85 15/07/2019 2:50pm
2335 Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers 85 31/07/2019 3:21pm
2339 Other Engineering Professionals 90 7/08/2019 4:41pm
2611 ICT Business and System Analysts 85 30/07/2019 12:04pm
2613 Software and Applications Programmers 85 31/07/2019 7:57pm
2631 Computer Network Professionals 80 14/07/2019 8:37pm

Invitations issued during 2019-20 program year

Visa subclass Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Total
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) 1,000 100                     1,100
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 100 100                     200
Total 1,100 200                     1,300

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.