The MIA has written to the Minister expressing concerns about the priority processing of General Skilled Migration (GSM) applications. Recent changes to the program have resulted in many unintended consequences for applicants and do not treat existing applicants fairly or reasonably.
The Institute believes this is an issue of grave concern for the many thousands of individuals and their families who have paid for and lodged applications with DIAC and now find themselves languishing in a bureaucratic limbo. Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, spoke to Peter Mares on The National Interest (13 Nov 2009), and said there are currently 30,000 onshore and 150,000 offshore applications waiting in the queue.
The current priority processing regime creates numerous serious problems, including
- Damage to Australia’s reputation - Thousands of people, who in good faith paid visa application charges with the quite reasonable expectation that the applications would be finalised within published service standard times, will be waiting indefinite lengths of time for a decision to be made about their GSM visa applications.
- Unreasonable additional costs – Tests and checks to support visa applications can cost up to $1300 and may need to be repeated to ensure validity by the time of processing (in addition to actual visa charges).
- Difficulty of Employment on Bridging Visas – applicants consigned to waiting years pending visa decisions may find it difficult to work professionally as employers prefer a potential employee to hold permanent residence.
The MIA suggests that it is reasonable for the Department to refund fees for applicants who suddenly face up to three years before their applications will be processed and now wish to withdraw their application. Senator Evans dismissed the prospect of refunds and said the Government would continue taking applications even though the system was under review (see also the MIA’s submission to the Migration Occupation in Demand List MODL review).
Some GSM applicants were only weeks away from having visas approved after being in the system 18 months already. The Institute believes it is particularly important to give priority processing exemptions to those applications which were about to be finalised and for which further health and police checks had been requested.
We hope the Minister will agree to meet with representatives from the Institute to discuss options to redress the current impasse.
Thanks go to Lily for giving me permission to use her photo.
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I agree, people waiting in the pipeline are the worst affected. The Minister should have applied the rules to all new applicants instead of a blanket rule on all existing and new applications. New applicants will also want to reconsider migrating to Australia considering now that the PR grant time is not much different compared to Canada or the UK. Furthermore, a big drop in student numbers is waiting to happen considering there is going to be further change in the rules.
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