States have announced that they are running out of allocations as they are working from a interim allocation of about 800 places. 800 places for all states and territories are too short to fill up the demand of the Business and Investor visa program in Australia.
Watch our full video about Business Visa news in November 2022 here:
In that, QLD and NSW have already used up their interim allocation and closed the program temporarily. VIC and SA are very careful in selecting the applicants. SA decided to temporarily close the Investor Stream 188B and Significant Investor Stream 188C streams.
Hopefully, the states can receive further allocations for the Business Visa Australia shortly after the Federal Budgets announcement and open to all the streams.
Now, let's look at some of the most popular stream in Business Visa 188 Australia and why should you go for it.
The 188A Business Innovation stream remains popular among applicants all over the world. This is because it has lower capital rewquiremetns than the investor path, and builds on the applicants existing business skills.
The 188C Significant Investor stream is the most simple one except for the amount if investment fund with NOT much criteria including:
No Age limit (good for parents who are not able to do parent visa 143);
No English Requirement (You only need to pay for the secondary fee for non-english applicant);
No Qualification or Business Skills and experience required;
No Points Test (Business Innovation stream 188A and Investor Stream 188B requires Points Testing)
In order to find your best Business and Investor Visa Australia, please use our Business Visa Compare tool:
Business and Investor Visa news recap
There is still a shadow over the 188C visa which requires a 5 million dollar investment.
"I think most Australians would be pretty offended by the idea that we've got a visa category here where effectively you can buy your way into the country,"
"I don't see a lot of great benefits to the country currently." When she was asked by Andrew from Sky News if the Golden Visa Australia (Significant Investor Visa 188C) might be abolished.
The minister has criticized the Significant investor visa to be bringing in older people who can cost the budget.
=> Applicants wish to put in a SIV application need to take actions as soon as possible.
Or, you may consider to apply for a 188B - Investor Stream instead.
Similar to 188C, 188B Visa requires applicants to invest 2.5 million Australian Dollarto the complying investment fund of Australia. It also has a pathway to Australian Permanent Residency.
The 188B Visa has grown in popularity recently and the comments on the SIV may make more people consider the visa 188 Investor stream.
The final category is the 188E Entrepreneur Stream.
While it has no capital investment requirement, the level of interest is surprising low. This may be because the of the requirements being harder to quantify or predict.
The 188E visa requires applicant to show innovated business ideas.
State such as SA and Victoria require endorsement from service providers or investor incubator bodies.
There is a pathway to permanent residency after you hold the visa for 2 years and have a successful record of entrepreneurial activities.
Ministerial Direction 100 - Business Visa Processing
Following the Federal Budget, there is a new Ministerial Direction 100 for skilled visa processing priority instruction published recently.
The new labor government has pointed out that their primary focus at this stage is to:
- Clear the visa backlogs caused by the delay in processing time during Pandemic Covid-19.
- Address skills shortages
The government will still process efficiently those skilled visas in the near future to make the visa backlogs to a manageable level before Christmas.
The following skilled visas are subject to Ministerial Direction No. 100:
In the last point of the Direction 100 Factsheet, it says that the Government will reduce priority to some programs to shift attention to skilled visas such as State Nomination, Employer Sponsorship program.
The report states that this reduction will help increase efficiencies in reducing processing times across caseloads. This is reflected by the total allocation number of those programs this financial year 2023.
However, Visa applications for the Global Talent and Business & Investment program will still be processed efficiently in line with the planning levels of the Migration Program.
Summary of current Business Investment Visa Australia situation
In summary, the allocations are now lower, at 5000. But with only 800 state allocations so far, there is still over 4000 potential places to be sending out in the next 7 months.
The demand on the Business Investment visa 188 is still high so the new allocations could be filled quickly. Imagine the 800 allocations have been filled within 2 months since announcement, the rest is expected to be running out soon in 3-4 months.
This leads to a more selective process from the government. That means your documents and profile must be clear and well-managed to be successfully get the visa 188.
An application for business or investment visa Australia must be handled with care as it involves demonstration of significant assets (AUD 2.5 - 5 million) and the preparation to liquidate the amount for transfer into the complying investments before the visa is granted.
The team at Work Visa Lawyers has extensive experience in compiling financial and business documents from different countries and submitting the information in an organised manner for the DHA to process the documents smoothly.
Australia's skilled visa programs are designed to select people who will make a positive contribution to the Australian economy and labor market and assist Australian businesses to access workers with skills that cannot be met in the local labor market.
Since the new government has been in place, the Department of Home Affairs has finalized over 2,780,000 Visas.
This includes over 43,000 temporary skilled applications and over 47,000 permanent skilled visa applications.
