News
Skill Select 6th December 2017 Round Results
The Department of Immigration has released the analysis of the 6th December 2017 round results (Expressions of Interest) for the visa subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) and 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored). EasyMigrate’s Principal Migration Consultant Mr Cyrus Mistry has reviewed these results:
“Broad Overview: I am hereby revising my end-of-year analysis regarding the Expression of Interest regime, now that the 6th December round has been announced. The total number of invitations for the last six months has been 12,331 so I expect that in the remaining financial year (Jan-June 2018) there is likely to be a slight increase in the number of invitations provided by the Department of Immigration.
Under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, ONLY 300 invitations were issued in total with only 5 invitations under the subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored) visa. This means that most places were taken by the subclass 189 visa as it gets preference over the subclass 489 visa. It brings the total number of invitation under the General Skilled Migration Pathway 189 and 489 to 305 invitations. This is a decrease of 2250 invitations compared to the October 2017 invitations and 1105 invitations less than the November 2017 round. The total invitations for the current financial year commencing 1 July 2017 are standing at 12,331.
For this round, most invitations (222) were to applicants who have 75 points. There were NO INVITES to applicants on 70 points, 60 or 65 points. 78 invites were to applicants on 80 points with 5 invitations going to applicants having 85 points or more.
Please note 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-invitations” tend to skew the results and give inaccurate statistics. I wonder when DIBP will wake up to this reality and make necessary adjustments in their reporting.
For the occupations subject to pro-rata arrangements, Accountants got invitations at a point score of 75 for applications with a visa date of effect of 18 October 2017. Accountants were excluded from some Oct-Nov 2017 rounds for a while so this is good news for Accountants, although the pass-mark has crept up from 70 to 75 compared to the last round of invitations!
Industrial, Mechanical, Production and Electronics Engineers got invited at 75 points with varying visa dates of effect.
ICT Business and Systems Analysts got invited at 75 points with visa date of effect 22-09-2017
Same 75 points for Software and Application Programmers and Computer Network Professionals, however their visa date of effect is better – 03-10-2017 so they seem to be standing a better chance at getting invitations”.