Key Insights from Day 1: 2025 Immigration Law Conference

Here are the key takeaways from Day 1 of the Law Council of Australia’s 2025 Immigration Law Conference in Canberra:

Subclass 482 Visa Trends

• • Significant Increase in Applications:
    • • 7 Dec 2024 – 28 Feb 2025:
        • • 7,664 applications finalised
          • 28,239 visa applications lodged
      • Breakdown by Stream:
        • • Specialist Skills: 3,764 lodgements | 2,161 finalisations
          • Core Skills: 22,050 lodgements | 5,004 finalisations
          • Labour Agreement: 2,515 lodgements | 499 finalisations

• • • Unexpected Growth: Despite the increase in minimum salary levels, visa lodgements rose rather than declined, defying the Department’s expectations.
    • High Volume of Lodgements: Over 3,000 applications per week, a 60%+ increase from last year’s program.
  • Labour market testing (LMT): plan to extend validity of LMT from 4 to 6 months likely to still come into effect – awaiting approval from Parliament and with the upcoming Federal Election, the government may move into ‘care taker mode’ and the legislation may not get through Parliament during this term.

Labour agreements

• • Changes announced last year for Labour Agreements not coming in any time soon- the Department has said this is a ‘tricky’ area and requires more time to develop.
  • Ongoing processing delays with the Labour Agreements acknowledged but no further feedback provided.

Processing Times & Backlog Reduction

• • Median Processing Times (Feb 2025):
    • • Specialist Skills: 13 calendar days
      • Core Skills: 41 calendar days
      • Labour Agreement: 71 calendar days
      • Backlog Reduction for TSS Visas (pre-7 Dec 2024 lodgements):
      • 33,372 on-hand applications as of 28 Feb 2025 (down 35.3% from 51,566 on 6 Dec 2024).
      • Challenges Remain: Processing delays persist despite improvements. The Department are aware of the big discrepancy between applications lodged pre and post 7 December and are working to address this.

Department’s Actions to Improve Processing

• • IT System Enhancements in progress.
  • New Offshore Processing Centre in Hong Kong to help manage delays. This is the first time the processing of these visas has been moved offshore. The Department is looking at processing capacity in other offshore processing offices.

Compliance & Sponsorship Integrity

• • Stricter Enforcement of Accreditation & Sponsorship Obligations for accredited sponsors.