As part of its efforts to improve skilled visa processing times, to clear visa processing backlogs and to address Australia's worker shortage, the Australian government has issued new directions for prioritising skilled visa applications.
Headlining the changes is a visa processing priority for the health and education sectors.
A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs stated, "the new Ministerial Direction simplifies the visa process and will deliver more efficient visa processing for the benefit of skilled applicants and their sponsors across industries, allowing the Department of Home Affairs to process more skilled applications faster and respond quickly to labour market needs."
"This change will also help small businesses seeking to recruit overseas workers. It speeds up processing for all occupations and makes the process less complicated."
"Prioritising offshore permanent and provisional skilled visa applications will also enable more workers to enter Australia and contribute to the economy and ease labour shortages."
"Applications relating to occupations in regional Australia continue to have priority, helping to support agricultural and other regional workforce needs."
"This direction removes the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL) implemented in September 2020, which involved time-consuming and complex assessments. These were only necessary while travel restrictions were in place and contributed to the backlog of skilled visa applications."
"The PMSOL was also outdated - recent National Skills Commission labour market analysis has shown that almost a quarter of occupations on the PMSOL are not in national shortage."
"The new direction by the Government restores priority for Accredited Sponsors in all sectors who are trusted employers and key businesses that drive economic productivity. Efficient processing of these applications allows the Department to have more capacity to handle other applications as well."
The new priorities apply to all skilled visa nomination and visa applications that are yet to be decided, as well as new applications lodged.
Skilled visa applications are processed in the following order of priority:
- Visa applications in relation to a healthcare or teaching occupation.
- For employer sponsored visas, visa applications where the applicant is nominated by an Approved sponsor with Accredited Status.
- Visa applications in relation to an occupation to be carried out in a designated regional area.
- For permanent and provisional visa subclasses, visa applications that count towards the migration program, excluding the Subclass 188 (Business Innovation and Investment (Provisional)) visa.
- All other visa applications.
For all categories above, priority is given to holders of eligible passports.
All other skilled visa applications are assessed in order of date of lodgement.
The Department's website has been updated with the new processing priorities. See: Skilled visa processing priorities (homeaffairs.gov.au)
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