Government between a rock and a hard place on permanent migration program

In its attempt to repair the immigration system chaos caused by the Coalition, the Albanese Government has instead created a new set of challenges to overcome. Dr Abul Rizvi reports.

THE ALBANESE GOVERNMENT has allowed the emergence of a very large backlog of permanent visa applications, as well as rapid growth in the number of long-term temporary entrants in Australia to record levels. These will make it difficult for the Government to continue to criticise the Coalition for allowing even larger backlogs or that it is giving greater priority to permanent migration over temporary migration.

The '22-'23 migration program was delivered at 195,400 against a planning level of 195,000. The migration program counts the number of permanent visas issued, irrespective of whether the applicant was in Australia or overseas.

This contrasts with net migration in '22-'23 which is likely to be around 470,000 (and still growing). Net migration measures all long-term and permanent arrivals minus departures irrespective of citizenship or visa type. It is the way the Australian Bureau of Statistics measures the impact of immigration on total population.

Pressure on Government as net migration yet to peak

Arrivals and departures data for the September quarter of 2023 suggests record net migration has still not peaked.

Delivery of the migration program very close to the planning level is fairly standard, other than during a few years when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was Immigration Minister and the program was delivered at levels well below the level agreed by Cabinet, partly through illegal restrictions on the number of partner visas issued. It was just a case of Dutton playing politics and ignoring the views of his Cabinet colleagues or, indeed, the law.

Despite delivery in '22-'23 of the largest permanent migration program in Australia’s history, the number of long-term temporary entrants in Australia grew sharply, as did the backlog of applications for permanent visas. Overall permanent visa applications lodged grew by 63.5% from 185,030 in '21-'22 to 302,434 in '22-'23.

In terms of source countries, 41,133 places went to Indian nationals, followed by around 23,934 to Chinese nationals, around 13,082 to Philippines nationals, 12,041 to Nepalese, 11,437 to UK nationals and 10,847 to New Zealand nationals.

The number of permanent places taken by NZ nationals will decline in 23-24 as these citizens now have a direct pathway to Australian citizenship. The growth in visas granted to nationals from India, China, Nepal and the Philippines will continue given the rapid growth in students and temporary graduates from these nations.

Family stream

The family stream was delivered in '22-'23 at 52,500 places with 40,500 places (or 77%) in the partner category; 3,000 child visas; and 8,500 for parent visas. Of the family stream, 52.9% was granted to people already in Australia. Of partner visas, 64% were to people already in Australia. By contrast, 10.3% of parent visas and 28.3% of child visas were to people already in Australia.

New applications lodged in the family stream increased by 27.3% in '22-'23 compared to '21-'22. As at 30 June 2023, there were 213,993 family visa applications on hand, an increase of 10.6% from the situation at 30 June 2022. The family stream backlog continued to be dominated by applicants for parent visas at 140,615 followed by partners at 58,515.

Growth in temporary entrants plateaus after hitting record

After growing by over 90,000 in July to an all-time record of 2.554 million, temporary entrants in August plateaued at 2.552 million.

While the partner backlog grew slightly in '22-'23, it is well down on the 96,361 at end June 2020. That was when the Coalition Government was clearing the partner backlog having realised that it had previously been illegally restricting the number of partner places available.

The backlog of child visa applications grew from 3,499 at end June 2022 to 7,093 at end June 2023. Given the Government is also not allowed to restrict places in this category, it will need to allocate more resources and places for child visas in '23-'24.

Skill stream

The skill stream was delivered in '22-'23 at an all-time record of 142,344, with 65.1% of visas going to temporary entrants already in Australia (this is broadly as expected). Due to the surge in new applications, the skill stream backlog increased from 119,857 at 30 June 2022 to 184,879 at 30 June 2023.

The main categories in the skill stream in 22-23 were:

35,000 employer-sponsored visas plus another 7,004 for employer-sponsored regional visas;
32,100 skilled independent visas;
state/territory nominated, including 26,707 in the provisional visa subclass 491 (which is dominated by South Australia) and another 31,000 in the permanent sub-class 190;
5,000 in the business innovation and investment category; and
5,000 in the global talent category.

Coalition immigration policies set to undergo massive changes

The Albanese Government will reverse a large number of Coalition immigration policies that helped drive net migration to record levels in 2022-23.

With priority being given to the health and education sectors, the main occupations of primary applicants granted visas were:

registered nurses — 10,181;
accountants — 4,789, which is likely to reflect the large number of overseas students undertaking study in this area;
software and applications programmers — 3,437;
chefs — 2,841;
civil engineers — 1,884;
industrial, mechanical and production engineers — 1,744;
early childhood teachers — 1,741;
ICT business and systems analysts — 1,664;
motor mechanics — 1,499; and
secondary school teachers — 1,358.

Challenges for '23-'24

The 23-24 migration program has been set at 190,000 plus another 3,000 places for the new lottery-based Pacific Engagement Visa (which for an unknown reason is a permanent visa that is not counted as part of either the migration program or the humanitarian program — that is poor practice as it misleads the Australian public).

With NZ citizens now having been given a direct pathway to Australian citizenship, few will need to apply for a permanent residence visa. That will effectively increase the number of permanent visa places available (and put upward pressure on net migration).

The key policy challenge for '23-'24 will be the major increase in permanent visa application backlogs, particularly in the skill stream, and the ongoing pressure from overseas students, temporary graduates and others for a permanent visa.

The Government has already announced a major reduction in the allocation to state/territory governments for state/territory nominated visas as there is a very large backlog of nominations that state/territory governments have already made that will be processed first. At end June 2023, there were 47,614 applications on hand in the skilled work-regional category (subclass 491) and another 49,735 applications in the permanent subclass 190.

In addition, the Government has 28,625 skilled independent visa applications on hand. It is this large backlog that explains why the Government has not issued an invitation round in this category since May 2023.

The Government has set up an impossible policy tension — it will be reluctant to increase the number of permanent places available but has created a massive permanent visa backlog and temporary entrant cohort (mainly students and temporary graduates but also working holiday makers and Pacific Australia Labour Mobility workers) whose expectations for a permanent visa it cannot possibly meet.

Between a rock and a hard place!

Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.