Visa processing delays to continue

Over the past 20 months we have experienced long processing times across the board for all visa programs. There will be further processing delays at Home Affairs due to changes in the program management forecasting, increase in the number of visa applications received in most visa programs and no funding available in the budget to engage and train more staff members in the processing of the increased number of visa applications. Therefore, unless the number of applications is somehow reduced the processing delays are here to stay.

General Skilled Migration (GSM) program

There were only a few invitation rounds, most recent one in August 2025, and three rounds in 2024, namely, June, September and November.

In the current fiscal year 2026, the Federal Government has not yet finalised the state and territory numbers. Furthermore, there is a plan to reduce the numbers given to the states and territory. There was a small number of a few hundred spots released to each of the state and territories in September 2025.  The demand for these few hundred spots was significant with some 30,000 to 50,000 registered applicants with each of the state or territories with NSW having the highest number of registrations of interest.

There is a plan for reduction in the numbers in GSM is aligned with an increase in the numbers of employer sponsored visas which will be given priority. The main reason for the shift is that the employer nominated migration program have higher positive outcomes than the GSM program.

Employer Nominated temporary and permanent migration program

At present the permanent pathway under the Employer Nomination Scheme (ENS) has 44,000 spots available per year. At the same time there are about 58,000 applications under ENS currently pending for processing with Home Affairs. An increase of 34% from the previous year.

The temporary Skills in Demand (SID) subclass 482 visa program currently has about 55,000 applications pending, representing 36% increase from the previous year. In total there were 130,000 migrants processed through the SID program since its introduction in December 2024.

Permanent migration under the National Innovation subclass 858 visa

This program is not new. It was previously known as Distinguished Talent, and subsequently, as Global Talent, prior to the most recent changes and its introduction in the current format as a National Innovation visa in December 2024. Since then, Home Affairs received about 9000 expressions of interest (EOI). Out of these EOIs, Home Affairs issued about 300 invitations to new visa applicants.

Family migration programs

We can expect delays in the processing of partner visas of up to 20 months. There are 40,500 planning places for the FY 2026, and 98,000 partner visa applications currently in the processing pipeline, of which 58% are onshore, moving from some temporary visa such as visitor, student or temporary employer visas. Whilst the majority of the applicants would be able to continue residing with their Australian spouse in Australia, work and have access to Medicare, this is a significant period of time apart for 32% of the applicants who lodged their applications offshore.

There is a policy that applicants for an offshore partner visas can apply for a visitor visa to travel to Australia to be with their Australian partner. However, there has been a significant increase in the refusals of such visitor visa applications. The most appropriate risk management to avoid such refusals is to present the visitor visa by the offshore partner as a Partner visa including all the relevant evidence that would have otherwise been provided in their pending Partner visa.

Another program with delays in processing is the child visa program. Applicants are likely to wait for approximately 20 months for a child visa to be finalised.

The various Parent visa programs have notoriously long processing time in excess of 12 years for contributory parent and more than 20 years for parent visas. Other family migration programs are impacted by these delays too. 

The temporary parent subclass 870 visa is perhaps the only visa program where parents are likely to receive their visa within 12 months of lodgement.

Refugee and humanitarian programs 

There are about 270,000 offshore applications in these cohorts of visas, in addition to about 28,000 onshore applications, with an annual cap of about 20,000. This leads to significant delays in the processing in the offshore cohort which could take about 8 years even in the Community Support Program cohort. There is high demand for these programs and limited numbers available per year, leaving the majority of the applicants in these cohort in decades of living in a limbo.

Student and training visas programs

Since the changes in June 2024 protecting the integrity of the student visa program, there have been longer processing times, higher refusal rates as well as greater number of student visa cancellations. Most of these were for international students engaged in the VET sector. Many VET providers were closed by government agencies for various reasons. The impact on the integrity of the student visa program was therefore, significant.  The policy view is that there are many international students who are not receiving or even seeking education outcomes, but rather, are paying for a visa with part time work rights, with the work being the primary goal of their stay.

The Training visa program has also seen a massive increase of about 300%, leading to significant processing delays. The applications in this program are subject to greater scrutiny due to concerns that employers and applicants alike are using the training visa program to achieve migration outcome, a visa with full time work rights, circumventing the very purpose of the training program. As such there have been high refusal rates in the Training visa program too.

Working Holiday MATES program

The newly introduced program part of the long term geopolitical collaboration between Australia and India had about 89,000 applications since it opened, where there were only 1000 temporary visas available. This begs the question of whether ballot is the most adequate pathway in this space.

Photo by John Lambrechts on Unsplash