SkillSelect EOI Invitation Round Results for 11th December 2019

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Skill Select Invitation Round Results
December 2019 Skill Select Round Results

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

By Cyrus Mistry

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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Skill Select & Migration News

  • Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has released new State List for 2019 / 2020  – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in Canberra, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required statelist? Now is your chance.
  •  New South Wales (NWS) has released new State List for 2019/2020  – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in NSW, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required statelist? Now is your chance.
  • Northern Territory (NT) has released new State List for 2019/2020 –Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) Migration Occupation List includes occupations that are in demand in the NT eligible for NT nomination under the General Skilled Migration Program. If your occupation is not on the NT Migration Occupations List but is on the Department of Home Affairs, Combined current list of eligible skilled occupations and identified as being eligible for subclass 491 (S/T) or subclass 190 visa you can still apply for NT Government nomination.a
     

Previous Updates

  • Western Australia released new State List for 2019 / 2020 -Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live in Perth, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required state-list, or that Perth wasn’t a specified regional area? Now is your chance – the WA “Graduate Occupations List” is quite extensive and has now been expanded to students who have studied at CERTIFICATE or DIPLOMA levels in WA, not just BACHELORS and MASTERS degree holders.
  •  Queensland released new State List for 2019 / 2020 – Have you ever wanted to Migrate to Australia and live on the Gold Coast, but haven’t been able to because your occupation wasn’t on the required state-list, or that Gold Coast wasn’t a specified regional area? Now is your chance.
  • South Australia released new State List for 2019 / 2020 – The South Australian government has now released its 2019-2020 Skilled Migration Occupation Lists, if you have previously applied or are now interested in applying for state nomination in South Australia under the General Skilled Migration (GSM) program, now could be your chance.

Hints & Tips

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 is 11 January 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 invitation round 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 11 November 2019 round was very low and disappointing – only 250 invitations! This latest round (11 December 2019) is the same at 250 invitations for subclass 189 applicants and another 200 invitations for the new SC491 family-sponsored applicants.

The exact number of invitations on  11th  December 2019

250 invitations in the Skilled Independent subclass 189 and 200 invitation in the new subclass 491 family-sponsored stream. The Family-Sponsored Subclass 489 has been discontinued from 16 Nov 2019 and replaced by the “SC491 Family Sponsored” stream.

For this round, no invitations went to applicants who have 90 points or less (but in my opinion this is the same as the previous “invitation at 80 points”. This is because applicants now get more points for spouse if spouse is skilled or speaks good English, applicants also get more points if they are “SC491 Family Sponsored”, etc).

  • 169 SC189 invitations and 132 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 95 points.
  • 49 invitations went to applicants with 100 points for both SC189 and SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants.
  • 16 SC189 invitations and 18 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 105 points.
  • Approximately 20 SC189 invitations and approximately 5 SC491-Family-sponsored invitations went to applicants with 110 or more points. 

There were no invitations to persons with 90 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 95 points, cut-off date 30-11-2019. This means that only the 250-odd persons with 95 points and above got invited.

The previous cut-off for Skilled Family Sponsored (SC489) was 85 points, cut-off date 15-08-2019 in previous invitation rounds. But this time 200 SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited, with cut-off date 04-12-2019.

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 an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration and reduced number of invitations.

For the twentyfirst round of invitations, DoHA has been inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has GONE UP TO 100 points as compared to the previous round of 11 November 2019 (It had come down to 80 points in January 2019). The cut-off date is published as 19-11-2019, which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 90 points who lodged before 19-11-2019 got invited. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For the Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score has gone up to 95, and the cut-off date is now 27-05-2019. 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 November 2019 they have been invited at 80 points or more, cut-off date was 04-06-2019. For this latest round, Electronics Engineers have been invited a 95 points, cut-off date is 30-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were invited for Electrical Engineer occupation at 100 points, cut-off date 04-12-2019.

For Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers – last month the new invitations stopped at 95 points, with cut-off date 10-11-2019. The situation has remained the same –invitations have been issued at 95 points, with cut-off date 29-09-2019! SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

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

Other Engineering Professionals also got the invitation-score increased from 85 points to 95 points! The date of effect is 18-11-2019. SC491 Family Sponsored applicants were not invited at all.

For ICT Business and Systems Analysts – the SC189 invitation threshold has increased from 85 points to 95 points with the visa date of effect 27-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were also invited at 95 points with cut-off date 18-11-2019.

Software and Application Programmers – for SC189 the pass mark increased from 85 to 95 points; the cut-off date is now 30-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 95 points, cut-off date 29-11-2019.

Computer Network Professionals – SC189 applicants got invited at 95 points with the visa date of effect 29-11-2019. In this occupation, SC491-Family-Sponsored applicants were invited at 95 points, cut-off date 02-12-2019.

If the number of invitations goes up in future general skilled migration program invitations, then more occupations with 90 points or less are likely to be invited. From the next invitation round onwards (January 2020) we will start to see the new Subclass 491 invitations increase as a full-month of application-time kicks 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 1st 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 16th 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 2017-2018 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 years.

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. This latest round (December 2019) is not much better – 250 invitations for SC189 and 200 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 2018September 2018,  October 2018November 2018 December 2018  January 2019  February 2019 March 2019April 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 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 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 may get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

This time, few invitations were issued to new SC491 Family-Sponsored applicants. 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 80 points “independently” plus the 15 points from their family-sponsor (if invitations are being issued at 95 points). From 16 November 2019 onwards the new Subclass 491 Regional Family-Sponsored visa has come into effect, replacing the SC489.

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 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 2019,  June 2019 July 2019 ,August 2019,   September 2019  October 2019 and November 2019 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: 

https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skillselect/invitation-rounds

Overview

Invitation rounds for Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) and Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491) – Family Sponsored visas will be run once a month.

Invitation rounds are anticipated to run on the 11th day of each month. Dates for the rounds are subject to change.

Invitation numbers in each round may vary depending on the number of applications being processed by the Department.

Note: State or territory government nominations for Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491) will not be impacted.

Current round

Invitations issued on 11 December 2019

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

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

11 December 2019 results

The following graph shows the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 December 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) 95 30/11/2019  2:57pm
Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491) – Family Sponsored) 95 4/12/2019  2:59pm

Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro rata occupations in the 11 December 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 Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491) – Family Sponsored . If all places are taken up by subclass 189 visas then there will be no invitations issued for subclass 491 visas in these occupations.

Subclass Occupation ID Description Minimum points score Latest date of effect
189 2211 Accountants 100 19/11/2019  9:53pm
189 2212 Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers 95 27/05/2019  4:07pm
189 2334 Electronics Engineer 95 30/11/2019  1:27am
491 2334 Electronics Engineer 100 4/12/2019  3:32pm
189 2335 Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers 95 29/09/2019  4:36pm
189 2339 Other Engineering Professionals 95 18/11/2019  10:50am
189 2611 ICT Business and System Analysts 95 27/11/2019  3:23pm
491 2611 ICT Business and System Analysts 95 18/11/2019  6:20pm
189 2613 Software and Applications Programmers 95 30/11/2019  1:27am
491 2613 Software and Applications Programmers 95 29/11/2019  10:10pm
189 2631 Computer Network Professionals 95 29/11/2019  9:55am
491 2631 Computer Network Professionals 95 2/12/2019  7:18pm

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) 1,000 100 100 1,500 250 250             3,200
Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491) – Family Sponsored           200             200
Skilled Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 489) 100 100 100                   300
Total 1,100 200 200 1,500 250 450             3,700

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.