ACT State Sponsorship - Canberra

State Sponsorship is where a State in Australia will sponsor people in particular profession for migration. There is a requirement though that you commit to living and working in that state for your first 2 years. Following this, you are free to move around. This new visa would be the subclass 176. Our current application is for the subclass 175 visa. If we are approved by a State then our application will be switched from one to the other.

Looking at the various States in Australia, we have found that the only state accepting my skill at the minute is the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). ACT is where Canberra is located. Canberra is the capital of Australia. Wait... "Sydney is the capital" I hear you scream.... no.. believe it or not, Sydney is not the capital.

Anyway, now we have to go through the process of applying for state sponsorship, which will mean we will be living in the Australian capital, Canberra, for 2 years. Basically, we apply for the sponsorship, and once approved we will move up in the Priority listing to number 5. We then have to wait for DIAC to process our application.

Hope!

After further evaluation of the new changes to the Australia Skilled Migration Visa processing, we have found a way to move up the processing priority mentioned in my previous post. By applying for State Sponsorship, our application will be moved into Priority 5. This should speed things up a little bit for us. Hopefully before 2012.

New Priority Processing - Bad News for Us

Wow... what a day. We received some pretty awful news today. DIAC have just announced a new Priority Processing system, which changes the processing order of all applicants. The new system will give priority to those people who are in and in demand profession on the Critical Skills List (CSL) and those with State Sponsorship (SS). There are now 7 levels of priority:

1. Applications from people who are employer sponsored under the ENS and the RSMS.
2. Applications from people who are nominated by a State/Territory government and whose nominated occupation is listed on the Critical Skills List (CSL).
3. Applications from people who are sponsored by family and whose nominated occupation is listed on the CSL.
4. Applications from people who are neither nominated nor sponsored but whose nominated occupation is listed on the CSL.
5. Applications from people who are nominated by a State/Territory government whose nominated occupation is not listed on the CSL
6. (i) Applications from people whose occupations are listed on the Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL). and
   (ii) Applications from people who are sponsored by family and whose nominated occupation is not listed on the CSL.
7. All other applications are to be processed in the order in which they are received.

Guess which one we now fall into? Priority 7! The lowest of all. To make matters worse, they have announced that those applications that fall into Priority 7 will not be looked at until 2012. yes, you read that right.... 2012.... at the earliest!!! This has to be the worst news we have received this year. When we applied it was expected that our application may be complete just 3 months from now. This has affected an awful lot of people, and we have all had our hopes and dreams dashed.