| ISAS Consultants

Newsletter July 2019

The month of June has again been very exciting in terms proposals and changes in the immigration policies of major migrating countries. Some of the highlights includes:

The Trump’s government has proposed US’ immigration policy’s shifting from family immigration and H-1B visas to a points based skilled migration plan like Canada and Australia. This gives an indication that the world’s talent hunting race between the major countries will become more competitive. The expected entry of USA into the points based skilled immigration might help to lower down the points selection criteria of Australia and Canada. On the other hand Australia, New-Zealand and Canada will continue to promote  regional sponsored pathway for migration instead of independent visa class. Furthermore, Australia’s skilled category quota for this financial year 2019/2020 has been lowered by 30000 whereas Canada’s hasincreased their quota of number of skilled migrant for the current financial year.

Overall it is expected that the residence policies of most countries will shift from offering direct permanent residency to a regional based sponsorship visas.
As getting closer to Brexit, UK’s new ‘start up’ and  “Innovator Visa” are slowly but gradually gaining popularity in the market. It is expected that the “Start Up Visa” in particular will be a very successful visa for young entrepreneurs.
Germany is beginning to gain ground to attract foreign talent by offering a similar point based immigration system as other countries to do. The skilled category is expected to be launched in early 2020.

Currently, Switzerland and Singapore have been rated as the largest skilled talent hunting countries of the world.
Saudi Arab has recently announced a premium residence program in which first time permanent residence stream has been made accessible to aspiring applicants.
UK and Canada are shaping up their student visa policies to become more attractive destinations in the coming years, while it appears that international student visapolicies of Australia, USA and New Zealand would not be as promising as before. Consequently, it is expected that new policies of the countries would not allow a permanent settlement options for international students after studies.

Top News for July 2019

Newsletter June 2019

The overall skilled migration trend indicates a downward movement mainly due to the governments’ policies of localization and the unemployment level in the major skilled workforce attracting countries. However, new policies are currently in the pipelines that will dissipate this situation.

There are some changes in the immigration policies are expected in the US and UK in near future which would attract the world’s skilled work force towards these countries. Meanwhile, countries like Germany, Singapore and Switzerland show promising prospects for people having skills in the engineering and information technology fields. Apart from the above there were quite a number of approvals seen for Family Sponsorship Cases of USA during the last month.

Coming towards the New Zealand, Australia and Canada region – the skilled immigration points criteria has continued to remain at the higher side. In Canada it went up to 470 points earlier in end of May and then again showed a downward trend later in mid-June. In Australia the last 02 rounds’ selections have been as high as 75 and 80 points for most of the occupations with only 100 each EOIs were picked up for processing. Experts suggest that keeping high points and slow processing of applications are being used by the governments to manage the immigrant inflow in these countries.

On the contrary, the present situation in the Gulf region will remain vulnerable for the skilled workforce but it is expected that this uncertainty in the market will only last for temporary period. The recently announced investment and business migration policies by UAE and KSA is a highly encouraging indicator for those considering these markets as a good business and investment prospects .

The countries like USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand would continue to increase the inflow of students but without compromising quality – for a serious and genuine students particularly for post graduate STEM programs, the current situation is very encouraging to apply.