Australian immigration department petitioned by frustrated visa applicants

On September 23, the Australia immigration department announced a new list of processing priorities for the General Skilled Migration program affected both unallocated applications and Australia visa applications already allocated to case officers and in the process of being finalised.

The new visa processing priorities were announced suddenly, unexpectedly and were  made effective immediately.

Frank Claassen's, publisher of the petition, said: “We feel the implementation of these changes to applications already in the process of being finalized to be an extremely unfair practice and respectfully ask the department to reconsider this decision. We ask that DIAC apply fair practice and not penalize applications already in the process of being finalized.”

It is a call that many immigration specialists and government commentators have considered unlikely to be headed given current economic pressures.

However, the soon to be announced Migration Occupations in Demand Lists or MODL review is expected to make extensive changes to the Australia immigration system and could provide some applicants with a new pathway for migration.

 The Australian Visa Bureau is an independent consulting company specialising in helping people with their Australia Visa.