As mentioned in posts earlier this month the 491 family sponsored category has 2 major issues

1) The parameters for selection of having an occupation on the MLTSSL, not being a Pro Rata occupation, and a relative to sponsor living outside Melb/Syd/Bris leaves too little EOIs to sustain the program

2) Many of the issued invites are not being accepted by applicants as instead people are waiting for a future invite in the 189 or 190 categories. Remembering that if you are granted a 491 you CANNOT be granted another skilled PR visa for 3 years.

Now for point #1 above it has to be remembered that DHA have a policy of ONLY allowing pro rata occupations to be given an invite each round if ALL the invites for that Pro Rata occupation have NOT been used for 189 invites that round. So sometimes people may get lucky through a statistical fluke for some of the lower scoring Pro Rata occupations. But in essence only non pro rata occupations should be getting an invite for 491FS each round.

There are though simply not enough eligible EOIs to make this current narrow selection process produce a significant 491FS program. Despite DHA upping the invite number to 500 in February and 300 in March.

The following table shows the current EOIs waiting for an invite

As you can see there are only 406 eligible EOIs in the NON PRO RATA category in the whole of Australia.
DHA are surely going to have to amend their policy to

– invite more Pro Rata occupations for 491FS, especially Accountants, Auditors and some Engineering professions; or
– expand the program to include some NONE-MLTSSL occupations

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