UK Point Based Immigration System | Australia-style | UK PR & Immigration | UK Visa 2020
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Executive Summary
Points systems are used in Australia and several other countries to select skilled migrant workers. They are a way of ranking or prioritizing applicants for jobs based on their characteristics, such as education, language skills, and work experience. In Australia, candidates that score the highest number of points based on these characteristics are invited to submit a visa application. Australia allows people to migrate without a job offer, although other countries with points tests, such as Austria and New Zealand, either require or prioritize job offers.
The UK’s current system for admitting non-EU citizens is known as ‘The Points-based System’ although it is quite different from the Australian model and relies heavily on employers to decide which workers have the skills that they need. Compared to the UK’s employer-driven system, Australia’s points system is more centrally planned as the government, rather than employers, plays a key role in deciding who should be admitted. There is also more scrutiny of migrants’ personal characteristics such as their age and qualifications, and not just the jobs they will do. Unlike in the UK, many skilled workers migrating to Australia receive permanent residence rights immediately.
The effects of introducing an ‘Australian-style’ points system in the UK would depend on how it was designed – for example, what points were awarded to and whether the role of employers in the immigration system changed. Australia has used its points system to generate relatively high levels of migration, but it is possible to design more restrictive points systems that would not have this effect.
What is a points-based system?
A points system is a way of selecting labor migrants based on their characteristics, such as their educational qualifications, language proficiency, work experience, and occupation. Points systems are generally used to select migrants for economic purposes, not for family migrants, refugees or international students.
The best-known examples of points systems are from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Points systems can be designed in many different ways, but key features that have traditionally defined points systems are that:
Applicants are given points for different characteristics, and their score on a ‘points test’ is used to decide whether they can migrate (though it will not necessarily be the only factor considered).
There is some flexibility about how applicants meet the criteria – so a person who has less of one sought-after quality (e.g. skilled work experience) can make up for it if they have more of another (e.g. language proficiency).
Some people planning to migrate for employment can qualify for visas without having a job offer lined up in advance.
Most countries do not use points-based systems to select work migrants but instead, rely on ‘employer-driven’ work-visa systems. In employer-driven systems, prospective migrants must have a job offer lined up with an employer who is willing to sponsor them.
However, the gap between employer-driven systems and points-based ones in which migrants can move without a job lined up has narrowed over the past decade, as some of the governments using points systems have tried to increase the role of employers (e.g. by prioritizing migrants who have job offers).
How does the Australian points-based system work?
The debate about whether the UK should introduce an Australian-style system after Brexit can be confusing because it is not always clear what aspects of Australia’s immigration policy are being proposed for the UK. There are many different types of work visas in Australia, with different eligibility criteria.
The best-known points-tested visa in Australia is known as the ‘Skilled Independent’ route, which provides visas for permanent residency. However, variants of the same points test are used in other visas, such as devolved state/territory nominated routes. There is also a separate points test for investors and entrepreneurs.
How does it work? To apply, prospective migrants first submit an ‘expression of interest’ online. Some are then invited to make a visa application if they meet various basic requirements (e.g. minimum language and age criteria) and if they score highly on the points test summarized in Table 1.
In the ‘skilled independent’ route, you must earn a minimum of 65 points from the points table below, although in practice candidates often need more points than this to be invited, because only the highest-ranked candidates are invited to apply. In June 2019 as the migration ‘program year’ drew to a close, applicants had to score at least 85 points to be invited, up from 70 points 6 months earlier in December 2018.
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