Pinoy Australia Information Forum

Immigration Changes 2025

June 2025

Immigration updates (Skilled, Employer and family visas)

The Department of Home Affairs has provided key developments across multiple visa categories, policy reforms, system enhancements, and procedural changes. Below is a structured summary of the key issues discussed, decisions made, and insights.

1. Skilled visa updates

2. Temporary visa updates

3. Family visa updates

4. Citizenship updates

5. Character & Cancellation updates

Skilled visa updates

TSS/SID - Sc 482

• The Sc 482 processing team are on track to finalise the Sc 482 TSS legacy caseload by the end of the program year. Most of the caseload has been initially assessed with 80% of cases either finalised or further information has been requested.

• At the implementation date of the SID on 7 December 2024, there were 51,166 TSS applications remaining. As of 4 June 2025, only 15% were still to be initially assessed which is approximately 6600 applications, but when secondary applicants are included this totals 21,000 applications across sponsorship, nomination and visas still requiring assessment.

• There has been a high demand for the SID program, the Department have added extra resources to assist with processing and once the TSS legacy caseload is finalised the resources will be redistributed to assist with processing of the SID.

• The Department and the MIA discussed that a decision ready applications session be organised for MIA members in the new program year which will hopefully assist to provide clarity on what the Department expects from a decision ready application.

• The MIA highlighted some system issues with ImmiAccount which may be preventing applications from being considered decision ready, including drop-down menus not showing a document has been attached and this could be providing incorrect information to the to the case officer.

• The MIA reiterated members’ concerns about the delays in processing however, the Department maintains that progress is being made with the backlog of the legacy caseload and the SID program and that further improvements should be made soon.

• The Department advised that MD 105 does not apply to SID applications only to TSS applications. The SID has processing timeframes of 7 days for the specialist skills stream and 21 days for the core skills stream which the Department are attempting to meet.
Regional visas – Sc 491, 494 and Sc 191

• The Department advised that it is expected that there will be Sc 491 invitation rounds in the first quarter of the next program year.

• The increase in processing times was raised by the MIA and the Department advised that there has been a 40% higher demand year on year for regional visas.

• The Sc 191 procedural instructions are going through the mandatory consultation process and legal clearance. No timeframe was provided as to when they will be published.
National Innovation Visa (NIV)

• Procedural instructions for the NIV are also going through the mandatory 4-week consultation process. No timeframe was provided as to when these will be
published. In the meantime, the Department has advised that the website information and MD112 should be relied upon.

• On 26 May 2025, the NIV processing team had 6400 applications on hand, 130 candidates were invited to apply for the visa and a there have been a small
number of grants in the 2024/25 program year.
Refund delays

• The Department has advised that there are incorrect or missing details in some refund applications which is causing further delays.

• The section that processes refunds are working in date order but once the refund is approved it can take up to 3 weeks for banks in Australia to authorise the payment and longer for international banks due to extra international money transfer scrutiny.
Migration program planning levels 2025/26

• The department advised that in the absence of any further decision the program planning levels for 2025/26 should remain the same as 2024/25, but they did not rule out further announcements or changes within the program allocation across different streams.

Temporary visa updates

Update on Training visa (Subclass 407) refusals

• The Department informed the MIA that previously there was an average of 4000 Sc 407 visa applications lodged per annum, recently this has increased to 20,000 visa applications to the end of May 2025.

• There have been 8671 visa application decisions, out of these applications 5576 visas were granted, 1328 visas were refused and 1767 were withdrawn. The Department noted that despite there being an increase in problematic applications there is still a core of good quality and genuine applications.

• To manage the processing of Sc 407 applications and ensure applicants can still have review rights, in April 2025 the Sc 407 processing team implemented a two-week gap between nomination finalisation/refusal and visa decision. This two-week timeframe allows applicants to withdraw the associated visa prior to decision, lodge a further nomination application and link it to the pending visa application or apply for review of the nomination refusal at the ART.

• The two-week gap is given for the initial nomination refusal, then if another nomination is lodged a further two-week period will be provided for the second nomination but then no further period will be provided. The Department have previously advised that if the nomination is refused the second time the associated visa will also be subsequently refused.

• The MIA queried if anything could be done to assist applicants that were affected by the processing of applications prior to April 2025 and that do not have review rights because a decision on the visa was made on the same day as the nomination refusal/finalisation. The Department advised that these applicants are limited by existing legislation and that no review rights can be provided to these applicants as they cannot meet the requirements under s 338(2)(d)(iii) therefore, they will need to make other arrangements.

• The Department is looking at reviewing the Sc 407 visa in the future as it hasn’t been reviewed or reformed in some time and the review rights are quite limited.

• To further address processing issues, the Sc 407 processing team are currently triaging applications and prioritising long standing sponsors with good records.
Outdated procedural instructions

• The MIA raised that the 8547 procedural instructions are outdated, the Department are looking to update the procedural instructions when they have information from the government on the regional visa review. In the meantime, policy is available on the Department’s website.

• The MIA raised that Sc 485 procedural instructions are outdated. The Department advised that a redraft is going through clearance process, and it is in the last stages of the process and updated procedural instructions should be available in July/August 2025.

Family visa updates

Processing delays for Bridging visas associated with Partner visa applications

• The delays in processing of bridging visas associated to partner visas were once again raised by the MIA, the Department advised that they will be accessing more resources to assist with processing delays.

• The Department informed the MIA that the grants of bridging visas associated to partner visas are still mostly automated, but some require manual intervention when there is a failure in the system. The Department advised that to avoid a failure in the system, applicants need to ensure that ImmiAccount is used and that a valid application for a bridging visa is lodged.
Onshore and offshore Partner processing times

• The Department informed the MIA that partner visa processing section has been cleaning up older cases which affects the processing times statistics and makes them appear longer.

• In April the partner processing team reduced the processing times from 13 months to 12 months for the Sc 309 visa and from 15 months to 14 months for the Sc 820 visa.

• The MIA highlighted that there are several visitor visa refusals for offshore partner visa applicants that want to visit their Australian citizen or permanent resident spouse or de facto partner. The Department advised that there are grants for visitor visa applicants who have lodged an offshore partner visa and want to visit their partner but that some are refused on genuine temporary stay criteria.

• The Department notified the MIA that new parent visa procedural instructions will be released in the next month.

Citizenship updates

• The Department noted that there has been an increase in applications due to the New Zealand direct pathway to citizenship. There were 90,000 NZ citizens who have used the pathway which is a 30,000-increase year on year. There has been a marginal increase for standard citizenship applications.

• The citizenship team is focusing on resolving longstanding cases. They have been targeting these cases and have made policy tweaks to assist with a more streamlined processing and have reduced the backlog significantly. There are currently less than 200 cases on hand who have been waiting over 5 years and arrived by boat and these are the most complex cases.

• There has been a marginal increase in average processing times from application through to approval in the conferral pathway but there has been a decrease in processing times from application to ceremony with 83% of applicants waiting less than 3 months to attend a conferral ceremony.

Character & Cancellation updates

• The Department noted that processing times for VACCU remain significant with approximately 160 to 260 cases per month referred to VACCU. There is no average processing time for VACCU, but it can take between 3 months and 6 months to finalise a case from pick up to assessment.

• On hand VACCU have under 4000 cases, 30% of these cases are for domestic violence offending which are taken very seriously due to the Government’s strategic reduction objectives in this area. VACCU are working on ways to streamline decision making and have reviewed the referral thresholds so that they are only referred cases that pose the greatest risk to the Australian community. This strategy removed 600 cases from VACCU which were referred to processing lines to continue with visa processing.

• VACCU are currently finalising 30% more assessment than last year which is also 30% more than the year before.

• Cases in VACUU are triaged on offence type and whether the applicant is in the community, in detention and whether they are applying for a permanent visa or a temporary visa.

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