The Australian government has broadened the scope for skilled migration to Australia for highly skilled individuals in the tech sector by expanding the Global Talent Independent (GTI) program.
The GTI program, which was initially designed to attract applicants with an income potential of more than $153,600 in seven “future-focused fields,” has now been augmented with Education, Tourism and Circular Economy to bring the total number of target sectors under this program to ten.
With this latest change, the ten sectors under the GTI program are Agri-Food and Agtech, Energy, Health Industries, Defence, Advanced Manufacturing and Space, Digitech, Financial Services and Fintech, Education, Tourism and Circular Economy.
The changes are announced just a few months after the Australian government increased the migration cap under the GTI program to 15,000 places – a threefold increase from the previous year.
The expansion of the GTI program is designed to “maximise opportunities” in order to sustain Australia’s economic growth and build resilience for creating new jobs in case of future global shocks similar to the Covid-19 pandemic.
So far in this fiscal year, more than 5,500 Expressions of Interest (EOIs) have already been lodged by applicants in tech sectors looking to apply for skilled migration to Australia with the GTI program.
More than 4,100 applicants were granted GTI visas in the first seven months of the program from 5,923 EOIs lodged.
Figures released by Australia’s Home Affairs show that the majority of EOIs approved in 2019-20 were submitted by applicants in the Quantum Information, Advanced Digital, Data Science and ICT Sector, which as a whole is encompassed by the Digitech sector after the latest changes.
