What does Australia’s first Skill Select round for 2020 indicate?

The first Skill Select round for 2020 conducted by the Australia’s Department of Home Affairs in January saw a total of 1300 skilled visa invitations issued to immigration candidates. This was a significant increase from the 250 invitations issued in December last year. The latest round has increased the hopes of prospective immigrants who hope that the department will issue the same number if invites every month in this program this year.

 

Australia has set a target of 16652 invites this year. Out of these 4000 invitations will go to citizens of New Zealand. The invitations were issued under Subclass 189 (Skilled Independent) and Subclass 491 (Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) Visa.

 

The following number of Invitations were issued in the January round:

 

Visa subclass	Number
Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189)	1,000
Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491) – Family-Sponsored	300

 

Coming to the score requirements 646 applicants for the Skilled Independent (Subclass 189) visa had 90 points while 285 applicants had 95 points while more than 70 applicants had 100 points.

 

Immigration experts hope that if this trend continues, the cut-off points could come down by almost five points particularly for non-pro-rata occupations. The present round of invitations had a high number assigned to Subclass 491 applicants compared to earlier.

 

Invites by profession:

The highest number of invites in this round was issued to IT and software professionals who received a total of 289 invitations across both the visa subclasses. Database and Systems Administrators and ICT Security Specialists received 121 invitations while ICT Business and Systems Analysts received 93 invitations. The score cut-off for most IT professions was 90 points.

 

Here is the breakdown of the invitations issued based on the profession: 

Immigration experts hope that the Department of Home Affairs will continue to issue 1000 skilled visas every month during the program year which has four more months to go. They feel that the January round indicates a positive trend and could increase the chances of those whose visas expire in March this year.

 

If you are looking to Study, Work, Visit, Invest or Migrate to Australia, talk to Y-Axis, the World’s No.1 Immigration & Visa Company.