The Federal Government delivered its budget for 2024-2025 on 14 May 2024. Key changes that will affect the migration landscape are as follows:

1. Total Places for Permanent Migration reduced from 190,000 to 185,000 places. Almost all of these reduction has been done in the Skills Category. This will affect those applicants who are planning to get visas like 189, 190, 491 or any kind of Employer Sponsored visa. This means more competition for these visas in the future.
2. Employment duration reduced to One year for 482 applicants. Previously, 482 visa applicants were required to show 2 years epereince. Come Nov 2024- it will be reduced to one year only. This will benefit those applicants who are already working in their field and have an employer who is willing to sponsor them.
3. MATES Visa Program for Indian Nationals. If you are an Indian National between the ages of 18-30 , a recent graduate or early career professional, you may have the chance to enter the ballot and be one of the lucky 3000 to come to Australia on this visa. Although details are not yet come, we believe it will favor those graduates or professionals whose skills will be in demand in Australia.
4. Work and Holiday for India, Vietnam and China. A ballot system will be put in place for work and holiday visa for limited number of applicants each year form these countries starting this migration year. We believe you must be lucky to get one of these visas and probably these countries may itself put some requriements in place on who can be in tha ballot.
5. National Innovation Visa. This visa will be introduced to replace the existing Global Talent Visa. We think it will favour those exceptional talents who will be of high importance to the Australian economy. As Australia has priority occupation list, we believe this visa will target exceptional talents from all around the world in these occupaitons.

These changes have wide ranging impacts on how the Australia immigration landscape will look in the future. Further, the planning horizon will be changed from one year to four years. How this will affect future migration planning is yet to be seen. Till then, we ask all visa applicants to dicuss their cases with their trusted Registered Migration Agents as your visa journey will be yours to undertake.

Written by

Sanat Gupta
Registered Migration Agent
MARN 1466755

Date: 15 May 2024