Interstaff, like others in the migration industry, has continued to experience significantly longer government visa processing times than 12 to 18 months ago.
To alleviate the issue, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has made changes to reduce processing times for 457 visas, although currently the average 457 visa processing times have remained just below the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s service standards.
Since mid October, the Department no longer allocates 457 visas to the same state where the sponsoring company is located. Subclass 457 visa processing is instead spread across its five processing centres across Australia. Under this allocation model, any associated applications (eg. visa, nomination and sponsorship) will be allocated to the one case officer at the same time.
It is expected that over time the changes will improve the consistency of decision making across the Department’s five processing centres and result in reductions in current 457 processing times.
As shown in the graph above, which has been sourced from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, visa processing times for applications, nominations and sponsorships have significantly increased over the period 2014/15 to 2015/16 period up to 30 June 2016 and this continues to be an issue that is being resolved by the Department.
You can view Interstaff’s fact sheet on government processing times and several other tools to help you plan your migration needs in our Business Migration Hub.
