The Australian 2022-23 migration planning levels were announced by the Minister of Immigration today. In a media release, Alex Hawke announced that the permanent migration program ceiling would remain at 160,000 places.
With the Australian border now re-opened, we are glad to see that the Morrison government has made an effort to address the critical skill shortages by boosting the skilled migration program by 30,300 places.
Unfortunately, with the total allocation remaining the same most of this re-allocation was taken from the family stream. The partner visa stream which was boosted during the pandemic was reduced by 31,800 places, bringing the total allocation back to around 40,500. Despite this reduction to the partner stream, it still boasts the highest individual apportionment of all categories.
Permanent parent visas also got a slight boost to 6,000 places (up by 1,500). This is a step in the right direction but not nearly enough to reduce the long processing times currently experienced. We would have liked to have seen some of the employer sponsored allocation go towards significantly addressing this problem.
In short, after two years of seeing stagnation in visa processing for almost all categories, besides partner visas, it is great to see the planning levels return to what is roughly was before the pandemic. We expect to see the skilled migration category pick up somewhat from July when this allocation will officially be put in place.
We have produced the following comparison table between the 2021-22 planning levels and the 2022-23 levels, together with the allocation changes, to help put this all into context.
If you have any questions about how this will affect your application (or prospective application), please don't hesitate to get in touch with our team via email at
info@immigration2oz.com or call us on +44 1483 550 919 or +27 87 550 2166 or +61 86 205 3444.
To read the Minister's media release, simply click here: https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/AlexHawke/Pages/2022-23-budget-release.aspx
