Abul Rizvi believes that Australia’s permanent migration program may contribute zero to net overseas migration (NOM) in 2020-21:
In 2019-20, the Government delivered a migration program around 20,000 places below the ceiling of 160,000. A record 70 percent of the skill stream was delivered to people already living and/or working in Australia. For the family stream, 56 percent of visas were to people already living in Australia. The balance would have been even more tilted towards onshore visas after March 2020 as the Department of Home Affairs suspended processing of offshore visa applications (possibly unlawfully).
The trend towards more onshore visas in the migration program will continue in 2020-21 to avoid putting pressure on the overseas arrivals cap but also due to concerns about the weak labour market and expiry of the suspension of the four year wait for access to social security by most newly arrived migrants. The suspension is scheduled to expire on 31 December 2020…
