New visa requirements

The Immigration Minister, and Prime Minister has announced a commitment to Australian business of a visa system that will grant approvals in seven days to highly paid overseas staff.

The promise of a seven-day grant (to include processing of a nomination and visa) appears limited to a new visa stream for employers to bring in migrants earning more than $135,000.

This new stream will be introduced at the end of 2024. It is not clear whether applicants who are already onshore will also have their applications decided within 7 days. The idea behind limiting the new streamlined visa stream to overseas highly paid applicants is apparently to make Australia more a more competitive option for highly paid applicants.

Highly paid tradies, machinery operators, drivers and labourers will apparently be excluded from this fast-track pathway. Instead, there will be a “core skills” visa stream for skilled tradespeople where a data-driven occupation list administered by Jobs and Skills Australia will assess whether their skills are in demand. We will have to wait and see how this will work.

While a fast processing time sounds great, what it really means is that you have to make the application perfect and “decision-ready”. Your business can have all the best intentions with a perfect candidate to recruit, but, if you don’t properly address the criteria for approval your application will be refused, and you may even create avoidable adverse information about your business and applicant which will be difficult to fix.

As lawyers working in the courts and tribunals, we see the consequences of people not getting an application right at first instance. We see the consequences of sensible professionals making applications that look right to an untrained eye but don’t address the legal criteria for approval. And you don’t get your money back if you are rejected – so its critical to get it right the first time. You can spend a few days waiting to be rejected by the Department followed by years waiting to fix errors in the courts and tribunals. You need proper specialist immigration legal advice to give you the best chance of success.  

We work with an array of businesses from a small business looking to recruit a highly skilled family member to global listed companies with hundreds of employees. We know how to understand your business and business needs and we know how to apply your facts to the applicable law.  We know how to make a decision-ready application that addresses all legal criteria to make sure your business can have the right team you need to succeed.