Awaiting Visa/case officer? READ THIS

[Guest Dave & Carole]

I read in amongst another thread about allocation of Case officers by 13th Feb - this seemed too good to be true. However asked our agent & she sent us the following:

 

On 17 December 2008 the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship announced

changes to the way General Skilled Migration applications will be allocated and processed. As a result of this announcement, from 1 January 2009 applications for General Skilled Migration will be strictly allocated and processed in the following priority order:

 

1. Applications with a successful State & Territory Nomination (until all applications have been allocated); and then

2. Applications where the nominated occupation is on the Critical Skills List (until all applications have been allocated); then

3. Applications where the nominated occupation is on the Migration Occupations in Demand List (until all applications have been allocated);

then

4. All other remaining applications.

 

This affects all applications lodged before and after 1 January 2009, both paper lodged or electronically lodged. Applications which were already

allocated to case officers before 1 January 2009 are un-affected and will be processed as usual to finalisation.

 

There are also changes introduced for the order of provisional visas (ie 475,4 87 etc). They will be done in the following order :

 

1. State or territory sponsorship

2. Family sponsorship where the applicant’s occupation is listed on the CSL

3. And then all other applications.

 

Apparently all applications will be allocated to case officers for assessment by 13 February 2009.

 

 

Good news for all of us applying for those Visas. Maybe our goal is finally in sight.