The report detailing outcomes for Australia’s 2020-21 program year has been published along with a self-congratulatory media release by the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs.

The headline of the program year was the grant of over 72,000 partner visas, primarily the onshore subclass 820 – Partner visa and the subclass 801 – Partner visa when the relationship in question is deemed a long-term relationship. The amount of partner visas granted, according to the Minister, is the largest in over 25 years.

An important distinction in the report is that “two-stage” visas are counted once when the provisional visa is granted, and not the corresponding permanent visa. For partner visas, if the provisional visa is skipped over and the permanent visa is granted instead, this will obviously count.

While there is no definition of a provisional visa in the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), they operate in the murky middle ground between temporary and permanent visas. Provisional visas are temporary visas, however, many of the criteria for grant are assessed as if applying for a permanent visa. For example, all provisional visa applicants must complete permanent visa medicals, whereafter they are not usually assessed as part of the “second stage” permanent visa application. Some popular provisional/permanent visas are:

• Subclass 820 – Partner visa/Subclass 801 – Partner visa,

• Subclass 309 – Partner visa/Subclass 100 – Partner visa,

• Subclass 188 - Business Innovation and Investment (Provisional) visa/Subclass 888 - Business Innovation and Investment (Permanent) visa,

• Subclass 489 - Skilled - Regional (Provisional) visa/Subclass 887 - Skilled – Regional visa,

• Subclass 491 – Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa/Subclass 191 – Permanent Residence (Skilled Regional) visa,

• Subclass 494 – Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa/Subclass 191 – Permanent Residence (Skilled Regional) visa, and

• Subclass 173 - Contributory Parent (Provisional) visa/Subclass 143 - Contributory Parent visa.

In some instances where an applicant does not progress through to a permanent visa, the place is returned to the program.

While criteria must be met for the corresponding permanent visa, for some these are not as onerous as for the provisional visa, and visa application charges are generally lower. For partner visas, they are nil as these are technically applications for both the provisional and permanent visa.

Aside from the considerable dent of removing a third of the partner visa pipeline (64,111 applications as of 30 June 2021), there were other interesting takeaways from the report.

More grants than places

There were 52 more visas granted than the 160,000 total allocated. While an extremely small amount, this goes to show that there is no real way of regulating visa applications without specific changes to the regulations for the particular visa. The great exception is the Expression of Interest (EOI) model with General Skilled Migration visas (subclass 189 - Skilled – Independent, subclass 190 - Skilled - Nominated and subclass 491 – Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visas) and the subclass 858 – Global Talent visa.

The pipeline of existing partner visa applications, as mentioned above, is further proof of the inability to slow or stop applications. Capping and queuing visas, which sets a total number of visas granted for a category in the program year only adds to the pipeline until it makes no sense in applying. A case in point are parent visas, whose pipeline increased 5.2 per cent to 114,359 applications.

Registered nurses most granted occupation

Registered nurses were the highest occupation unit group granted across all Skilled stream visa categories with 3,670 primary visas granted, the overwhelming majority from the General Skilled Migration Program at 85 per cent. With Australia poised to emerge from self-imposed isolation in the coming months, these could come in handy. Software and Applications Programmers were not too far behind with 3,121 primary visas granted and almost half of these were employer-sponsored.

Hospitality occupations in demand for regional 494 visas

For the employer-sponsored regional 494 visa, hospitality occupations dominated the occupation list. Cooks (185) were highest, above Retail Managers (173), and Café and Restaurant Managers (70) and Bakers and Pastrycooks (33) rounded out the top five occupations. This demonstrates an ongoing demand for qualified hospitality staff in regional areas.

Over one-fifth of business skills visa applications were withdrawn

Despite no withdrawal rates published for other visas, the Business Innovation and Investment Program (BIIP) may be suffering from its inherent complexities, with 17 per cent of visa applications withdrawn. There are no reasons given, however, given the costs involved in preparing visa applications and related documentation any decision to withdraw must have been a serious one.

Global Talent misses its mark by a third

The Global Talent program missed its allocation of 15,000 by over a third, granting 9,584 visas. This is not for want of trying as the non-invite rate, which consists of those who submitted an EOI but were declined an invitation, increased from 41.6 per cent in 2019-20 to 64.8 per cent for the six months from January 2021 to June 2021. Because of the baked-in vetting procedure of the EOI system, the refusal rate was extremely low at just 0.6 per cent.

India: the source of most skilled visas

While China was the source country of the most migrants at 22,207 places, this is somewhat evenly split between the skilled (11,430) and family (10,397) streams. India, however, a close second at 21,791 places, was the source of a greater number of skilled workers (15,462) and at a much greater proportion to their contribution to the family stream (6,012).