Skill Select EOI Invitation Results for 11th December 2018

Hi Everyone,

Just recently (early February 2019) the Department of  Home Affairs (DoHA) has released the statistical analysis of the 11^th December 2018 “Skill Select” invitation results (Expressions of Interest – EOI) for the General Skilled Migration or “GSM” visa subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) and subclass 489 (Skilled Family Sponsored).

EasyMigrate is a leading Australian migration agent, based in Perth, Western Australia. EasyMigrate’s Migration Consultant Mr Cyrus Mistry (our principal immigration agent in Australia) has reviewed these SkillSelect results – see his comments below.

Broad Overview:

Recent news: Department of Immigration (now DoHA) has announced that from Financial Year 2018-2019 there will be only ONE ROUND OF SKILL SELECT INVITATIONS PER MONTH.

Recent 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.

Our Recommendation: Most applicants with 60 or 65 points are not getting invited at all since 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 a more than a year so we did a file-review and recommended a suitable state-nomination option. Many of them got invited for permanent residency WITHIN 8-12 WEEKS!

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 March 2019. Commentary regarding the January 2019 and February 2019 Skill Select invitation rounds will be published by EasyMigrate as soon as those statistics are made available to the public by Department of Immigration.

Compared to the last invitation round (11 November 2018) this recent skill Select round of  11 December 2018 invitation round from Department of Immigration’s “SkillSelect” division has ALMOST HALVED THE NUMBER OF INVITATIONS, – about 2,500 invitations compared to 4,350 invitations. So the “boom” we had seen between September 2018 and November 2018 is slowing down.

The exact number of invitations on 11^th December 2018: 2,490 invitations in the Skilled Independent SC189 subclass and 10 in the Family-Sponsored Subclass 489.

For this round, most invitations (1,093) were to applicants who have 75 points.

Another 736 invitations went to persons with 70 points.

496 invitations were given to persons with 80 points.

156 invitations were given to applicants having 85 points.

9 invitations were given to persons with 90 points or more. 

GOOD NEWS is that the number of applicants were invited in December 2018 for General Skilled Migration SC189 visa was still a substantial number compared to the slowdown in the financial year 2017-2018 (Oct 2017 to June 2018)!

There were NO INVITES to applicants with 60 or 65 points.

Occupations Analysis:

Since late 2017 the “Accountants group” of occupations were not invited at all. This is now the ninth round of invitations where DoHA has re-commenced inviting Accountants, Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers! For Accountants, the invitation threshold has been steady at 80 points (this round and the last round). The cut-off date is published as 18-08-2018 which means that all “Accountant” applicants with 80 points or more who applied for their Expression of Interest (EOI) before 18-08-2018 got invited. In the previous month, the date was 10-08-2018, so it has not moved forward by much! For the other occupations listed above, the cut-off points-score is also 80, and the cut-off date is 08-06-2018 (in the last round of invitations this was 04-07-2018, so this has moved backwards by about 25 days).

Accountants had been excluded (or dramatically reduced) since Oct-Nov 2017 invitation-rounds, so this is an excellent ongoing sign that the demand continues!

Electronics Engineers got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 18-11-2018. In the October 2108 invitation round, 70-point holders were also invited, but not any more. So this shows an increase in the number of applications received by the Department of Immigration.

Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers also got invited at 70 points with a date of effect 22-06-2018. The previous period was 05-04-2018, so this is a good development for Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers.

Other Engineering Professionals got invited at 75 points with the date of effect 13-10-2018, i.e. is date has moved forward by one week. So in this invitation round, 70-point holders have not been invited once again! 

ICT Professionals (Business and Systems Analysts) got invited at 75 points with the visa date of effect 18-09-2018 – this has moved forward by about 10 days.

ICT Professionals (Software and Application Programmers) – the pass mark STAYS at 70 points with the visa date of effect 01-04-2017. Last invitation round date of effect was 06-04-2018 – this means that a lot of Software and Application programmers who had been waiting in the queue for a long time got selected (maybe their points increased automatically because of age or work-experience requirements).  

ICT Professionals (Computer Network Professionals) got invited at 70 points with the visa date of effect 30-08-2018 – this moved forward by three days.

So for most ICT professionals, there is about four month’s waiting in the queue for their Expression of Interest to be converted into an “invite” (except for Software and Application Programmers where the wait is 20 months in this round, but I believe this is just an aberration and will sort itself out in the next invitation round). The good news is that the list now continues to include 70-point scorers in some occupations! For example, Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers, Software and Application Programmers, Computer Network Professionals are getting invited even at 70 points. Again, if the number of invitations at each round goes up for the next invitation rounds in this general skilled migration program, then more occupations with 70 and 65 points are likely to be invited.

Please note that the EOI date resets each time an applicant does an “upgrade” or change, e.g. additional points for age, extra points for work-experience, successful NAATI test, etc.

In my last article regarding the 11 November 2018 round, I was hoping that the number of “invitations” rises over the next few rounds – BUT IT REDUCED BY ALMOST 50%! This is certainly not a good sign all occupations who are waiting at 70 points and 65 points. This may be a slowdown due to financial-year adjustments – based on the July2018-June2019 quota.

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. Now the number of invitations were regularly above the two-thousand mark in the 11 August 2018 AND the 11 September 2018SkillSelect results – then jumped up to 4,340 invitations on 11 October 2018 and 11 November 2018 and  December 2018. This current invitation-round has seen a drop-back to the 2,000+ levels.

The total number of invitations for the last financial year (July 2017 to June 2018) was 16,296.

Based on July 2018,  August 2018 ,  September 2018,  October 2018, November 2018 and December 2018 figures, the total number of EOI applicants invited for this financial year (July 2018 to June 2019) could be (17,150 divide by 6 multiply by 12) = 34,300 per year which would mean substantial increase in Subclass 189 and Subclass 489 (Family) invitations compared to the previous financial year 2017-2018. There may be even more invitations planned for the next four months (March 2019 – June 2019) – let us wait and see.

In my previous articles, I had mentioned about the effect 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 – so they get “re-invited” as per Dept of Immigration rules one more time! I estimate this figure to be as high as 30-40% in many occupations. This seriously affects the program because out of the 2,500-odd invitations only about 1500-1800 get taken up! This is something that the Department of Home Affairs has not been able to tackle yet.

For this latest round of invitations under the subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) visa, 2,490 invitations were issued, at 70 points or above. Only ten 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 70-75 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 round, February 2018 round, March 2018 round, April 2018 round, May 2018 Round, the two x June 2018 rounds, the 11th July 2018, 11^th August 2018   the 11 September 2018,  October 2018, and November 2018 invitation rounds are also available on our website. I estimate that the Nov 2017 to June 2018 rounds were only about 30-40% of the usual monthly track-record before October 2017, but from July 2018 the invitations are on par with the good months up to September 2017 in previous years, and the last two rounds EXCEEDED our expectations.  But now the December 2018 round is halved to 2,500 invitations.

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

Invitations issued on 11 December 2018

The information below (published by the Department of Immigration – now renamed Depart of Home Affairs – DoHA) shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11th December 2018:

Overview….

Invitation rounds for a Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) and Skilled Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 489)visas will be run once a month.

Invitation rounds are anticipated to run on the 11^th 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 Regional (Provisional) visas (subclass 489) will not be impacted.

Current Round

Invitations issued on 11 December 2018

The table below shows the number of invitations issued in the SkillSelect invitation round on 11 December 2018.

During the 2018-19 program year the following amounts of invitations have been issued:

11 December 2018 results

The following graph shows the points for clients who were invited to apply in the 11 December 2018 round.

Invitation process and cut off

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.

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 the availability of invitations across the program year.

Point scores and the dates of effect cut off for the pro rata occupations in the 11 December 2018 invitation round.

Invitations issued during 2018-19 program year

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.