Fact Sheet 20 - Migration Program Planning Levels

Australia's permanent immigration program has two components – Migration, for Skilled, Family and Special Eligibility Stream migrants and Humanitarian, for refugees and others in humanitarian need.

The planning level for the 2008–09 Migration Program is set at 171 800 places. The Humanitarian Program is set at 13 500 places.

This maintains the Government’s commitment to an immigration policy which seeks to balance social, economic, humanitarian and environmental objectives.

Humanitarian Program

The Humanitarian Program for 2008-09 comprises:

• Refugees from overseas - 6500 places
• Special Humanitarian Program - more than 7000 places (this includes places required for onshore needs).

See: Fact sheet 60 Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program

Migration Program

The 2008–09 Migration Program is set at 171 800 places. This represents an increase of 8.2 per cent over 2007-08 Program year.

The 2008-09 Migration Program comprised of:

• 56 500 places for family migrants who are sponsored by family members already in Australia
• 115 000 places for skilled migrants who gain entry essentially because of their work or business skills
• 300 places for special eligibility migrants and people who applied under the Resolution of Status category and have lived in Australia for 10 years.

The skill balance of the program has been maintained with around 67 per cent of places in the Skill Stream.
See: Migration Program Statistics

Program Range

The program will be delivered close to the planning level depending on:

• application rates in demand driven categories such as partners, children and employer nominated and business categories
• the take up of state-specific and regional migration categories to achieve a better dispersal of the intake
• the extent of national skill shortages and the ability to attract migrants to these
• the availability of high standard applicants in the skilled categories.

Caps

A number of visa classes in the family stream can be subject to capping. This means that when the number of visas set by the Minister for a class for that program year has been reached, no further visas can be granted in that class in that program year.
See: Fact sheet 21 Managing the Migration program

Further information is available on the department's web site.
See: www.immi.gov.au

The department also operates a national telephone service inquiry line.
Telephone: 131 881
Hours of operation: Monday to Friday from 9 am to 4 pm (recorded information available outside these hours) for the cost of a local call anywhere in Australia.

Fact Sheet 20. Produced by the National Communications Branch, Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Canberra.
Revised 7 April 2009.

© Commonwealth of Australia 2009.