The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) has advised that it is “very close” to allocating some Priority Group 5 applications to case officers.
It says there are approximately 27,347 Priority 5 applications lodged from in Australia and 15,284 Priority 5 applications lodged from outside Australia, awaiting allocation.
Priority 5 applications lodged from in Australia in 2005 will be the first to be allocated and those lodged by applicants outside Australia will be allocated when all those lodged by applicants within Australia have a Case Officer. It is possible that a small number of applications lodged by people outside Australia before September 2007 will also be prioritised; DIAC’s advice isn’t entirely clear on this point.
According to Australian immigration lawyer Chris McGrath, while this is excellent news, long waiting periods will still apply in many cases.
“DIAC has advised that before it starts allocating Priority 5 cases to Case Officers, it still has over 6,000 Priority 4 cases to allocate”, he said.
“At this stage, based on that advice and on DIAC’s current allocation rate, we estimate that processing of Category 5 applications is likely to commence during the first quarter of 2012.”
“While this is excellent news overall, DIAC itself says that many Priority Group 5 applicants still face a considerable wait until their application is allocated to a case officer for processing and may want to consider other options available.”
DIAC has also advised that the number of Priority Group 5 applications processed this program year will continue to depend on the number of higher priority applications received, and other factors such as changes to DIAC’sprocessing priorities, or changes to the migration program itself.
For further information, visit McGrath Migration Lawyers or the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
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