New pathway to Permanent residency to Australia
There are two new skilled regional provisional visas introduced in November 2019 for regional Australian workers:
• Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa is for people sponsored by an employer in regional Australia.
• Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa is for people who are nominated by a State or Territory governments or sponsored by eligible family members to live and work in regional Australia.
Under these new visas, migrants will be required to live and work in a regional area of Australia for at least three years before they are eligible to apply for permanent residence.
The new regional visas will provide greater incentives for regional employers to nominate skilled workers and also has priority processing of those applications and access to additionally skilled occupations, Based on current eligible skilled occupation lists
• the Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa will have almost 700 eligible occupations and
• the Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa will have over 500 eligible occupations.
Holders of the new skilled regional provisional visas will need to live and work in regional Australia. Visas will be granted with a validity period of up to five years.
The introduction of the two new regional visas will not impact people who already hold existing permanent skilled visas. Applications lodged prior to November 2019 will continue to be processed normally.