Migration Agent asked the Tasmanian State Government about a high number of recent 491 refusals and received the following detailed reply …
Thank you for the opportunity to explain Migration Tasmania’s processes and considerations in regard to subclass 491 nomination.
We are currently in a situation where the number of people we expect to seek nomination between now and the end of June 2020 will greatly exceed our remaining nomination quota. This is particularly the case in relation to the Tasmanian Graduate category, where enrolments in one year business and management courses have increased dramatically during the past 18 months and it is very likely that majority of these students will seek Tasmanian nomination upon their graduation. In response, we are carefully managing our quota for the remainder of the year to ensure that we are able to nominate candidates who are best able to contribute to Tasmania’s skills needs and economic growth.
This is not a different approach to that which we have employed in the past, the only variation recently being the increased pressure on our quota raising the baseline standard to be competitive and therefore nominated. The Migration Tasmania website has consistently stated that meeting our minimum nomination requirements does not guarantee nomination, and that all eligible applications are assessed according to a range of additional criteria to determine competitiveness for a limited number of places. These include:
“• your demonstrated ability and commitment to establishing yourself, and any dependents, in Tasmania with a view to your prospects for long-term settlement in the state
• the demand for your particular skills and expertise, and your ability to find work in Tasmania
• the suitability and transferability of your qualifications, skills and experience – including any specialist capabilities – to the needs of Tasmania’s labour market
• the skills and background of dependent family members
• your level of English language competency
• the likelihood of you obtaining a personal income that would meet the minimum taxable income requirement for the subclass 191 Permanent Residence (Skilled Regional) visa (currently AU$53,900 per year for at least 3 years in the next 5 years)
Applicants who have skills in areas of particular need within the Tasmanian economy will be held in high regard, particularly if living in an area outside of Greater Hobart. These include:
• health
• trades and construction
• engineering
• community services (including aged and disability care)”
In practice, this means that we will immediately decide highly competitive and uncompetitive applications which, according to our moderated benchmarks, would be extremely unlikely to have a different outcome if assessed against a different group of applications. The remaining applications are held for comparative assessment and an outcome determined according to the number of places we have deemed available from our quota at the time. In some borderline cases applications may be held over for assessment against another group of applications at a later date.
Those applicants that are not successful are advised that while they meet the minimum requirements, they were not sufficiently competitive to be nominated at that time. Unsuccessful applicants are welcome to apply again at any time in the future, however, unless additional information is provided with the new application that increases the competitive strength of the application, in most cases these applicants would be unlikely to achieve a different result.
We have recently updated the Migration Tasmania website with additional information and guidance for international students around our nomination requirements and priorities – we strongly encourage all prospective Tasmanian Graduate category applicants to read this information carefully before applying – https://www.migration.tas.gov.au/graduates
Realistically, merely studying a one year course in an area unrelated to Tasmania’s skills needs combined with unskilled employment is, on its own, unlikely to result in nomination.