Ministerial Direction 119: Australia Just Reordered the Visa Queue
📌 Published by Nationwide Migration & Education
Author: Suman Dua, Registered Migration Agent (MARN: 1800859)
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You lodged months ago. Maybe a skilled visa. Maybe a partner visa. Maybe a nomination for a worker your business cannot afford to lose.
And nothing has moved.
On 25 July 2026 the Government changed the order in which that queue is worked through. Not the rules. Not who qualifies. The order. And critically, it applies to the application you have already lodged.
Here is what changed, in plain English, and what it means whether you are an applicant, a sponsor or a family member waiting.
Three new ministerial directions
The Minister made three new directions under section 499 of the Migration Act 1958. All three were signed on 24 July 2026 and commenced on 25 July 2026:
Ministerial Direction 117 covers Family visa applications and revokes Direction 102.
Ministerial Direction 119 covers certain skilled visa and nomination applications and revokes Direction 105.
Ministerial Direction 120 covers Class BX subclass 858 visas, being the National Innovation visa, the Global Talent visa and the Distinguished Talent visa, and revokes Direction 112.
Different documents, but one idea runs through all three: where you were when you lodged now matters.
What Direction 117 means for family applicants
If you are waiting on a partner, child or parent visa, Direction 117 places a new two level split over the existing order. Applicants who are onshore, where the visa can be granted while they are in Australia, now rank ahead of those who are offshore or who must be offshore at the time of grant. The familiar six level family order then applies within each of those two groups, with partner and child applications ahead of parent and other family.
The order itself is otherwise largely unchanged from Direction 102, and the compassionate exception carries over: a delegate is to depart from the order where the applicant satisfies them that the case involves special circumstances of a compassionate nature and there are compelling reasons to do so.
One technical point that matters most for parent visas. Where Direction 117 conflicts with Direction 103, which deals with applications affected by annual limits (section 85 caps), Direction 103 takes precedence.
What Direction 120 means for talent applicants
For Direction 120, the priority order and the guidance on assessing exceptional and outstanding achievement are substantially unchanged from Direction 112. The main change is scope: on hand Global Talent and Distinguished Talent applications are now covered alongside National Innovation visa applications.
Direction 119, covering skilled visas and employer nominations, is the one with the biggest practical effect, so we start there.
What Ministerial Direction 119 actually does
Direction 119 establishes five processing priority groups, applying the same five tier order to nomination applications and to visa applications.
Priority turns on two things: the occupation, and whether the applicant or nominee was in Australia or outside Australia at the time the application was made.
The order, highest to lowest:
Onshore law enforcement and defence applications, where the nominee or primary applicant was in Australia when the application was lodged and the nominated occupation relates to Australia's law enforcement or defence interests
Offshore law enforcement and defence applications
Onshore healthcare, teaching and construction applications
All other onshore applications
All other offshore applications
Visa applications validly combined with a primary applicant's application receive the same priority as the primary applicant. Where a section 85 cap applies, applications covered by the Direction are prioritised in the same order.
The honest picture
Put the skilled and family orders together and it reads simply. If you are onshore, you have quietly moved forward. If you are offshore, you have quietly moved back.
That effect is sharpest in the employer sponsored programs, which are not capped in the way the points tested visas are. An offshore applicant there is not waiting a fixed period. They are waiting behind a queue that can keep growing in front of them as onshore applications continue to be lodged. That is our assessment of how an uncapped program behaves under a location based order, not a published figure, and no wait time should be inferred from it.
The three changes that will catch sponsors out
Regional is no longer a priority tier. Direction 105 gave the highest priority to nominations and employer sponsored visa applications for an occupation to be carried out in a designated regional area. That tier is gone. If your sponsorship strategy rested on regional processing priority, it needs revisiting.
Accredited sponsor status is no longer a priority tier. Direction 105 gave a priority tier to nominations and employer sponsored visa applications lodged by accredited sponsors. That tier is also gone. Accreditation retains its other benefits. It no longer buys a position in the processing order.
The Skills in Demand (subclass 482) program is now covered. Direction 119 applies to subclass 482 nomination and visa applications. These were not included under Direction 105 at all. This is the first time the program has been inside this priority framework.
Construction has also been added alongside healthcare and teaching in the third tier.
It applies to files already lodged
This is the point employers most often miss.
Direction 119 applies to applications made on or after 25 July 2026, and to applications made before 25 July that had not been finally determined by that date. Applications already on hand are re-ordered under the new priorities rather than continuing under the arrangements that applied when they were lodged.
Your May nomination is being ranked under rules that did not exist when you lodged it.
What it covers, and what it does not
For nominations, Direction 119 covers subclass 186, subclass 187, subclass 482 (both Skills in Demand and Temporary Skill Shortage) and subclass 494. For visa applications it covers a wider list including subclasses 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 482, 489, 491, 494, 887 and 888.
It does not apply to applications remitted by the AAT or ART for reconsideration, or where the tribunal has set aside a decision and substituted a new one. It does not apply where it is readily apparent that the criteria would not be satisfied. It does not apply to nomination applications relating to a change of employer, or to applications by family unit members who did not make a combined application with the primary applicant.
And to be precise about what it is: Direction 119 creates no new visa, changes no eligibility criterion and guarantees no outcome. It tells delegates the order in which to work.
Far North Queensland DAMA: three updates worth money
If you are hiring in Far North Queensland, the Cairns Chamber of Commerce has issued updates that are worth real money to an employer.
A 50% reduction on the ENS 186 endorsement fee now applies where the permanent position is requested at the same time as its associated Skills in Demand 482 position. In practice that means requesting the 482 in Year 1 and the 186 in Year 3 together, and the second endorsement costs half. Details sit under the Endorsement Fee tab on the FNQ DAMA page of the Cairns Chamber website.
Endorse across all five years, not just year one. The Department has confirmed a policy change: designated area representatives are encouraged to consider all current and future workforce requirements and endorse positions for any visa stream across all five years of the agreement, including ENS pathways for SID visa holders. Any previous advice to endorse only the first year of an initial application is no longer valid. This applies to both initial and variation requests, and it avoids repeat variation requests and the processing delays that follow.
Ask for the age and English concessions up front. Retrospective requests to add concessions that were not sought at endorsement attract admin fees and can lengthen Department processing times. Because approval of occupations and positions at the endorsement and labour agreement stages relates to the business need rather than to any particular nominee, the sensible approach is to request every concession available for the occupation, whether or not you currently anticipate needing it.
Two further points for FNQ employers:
Financial evidence should be current. Where financial evidence is provided, it should have been issued within the last 12 months. Any updates to business addresses or contact information should be submitted through a Change of Circumstances form in ImmiAccount.
Aged care occupations remain available for now. The Deed of Variation that would have removed Aged Care Industry Labour Agreement occupations, being Personal Care Assistant, Nursing Support Worker and Aged or Disabled Carer, from the FNQ DAMA is reported to be on hold. Those occupations remain available for the moment, and requests should be submitted at the earliest opportunity so they can be progressed before the clause is introduced. On hold is a pause, not a reversal.
On-hire is not supported. The Department has advised that on-hire labour arrangements are generally not supported under the DAMA Labour Agreement stream. On-hire working arrangements can only be supported through the On-Hire Industry Labour Agreement.
A warning about outsourced endorsement reports
The Cairns Chamber has reported that registered migration agents are increasingly engaging third party providers to compile Genuine Position Reports and Labour Market Testing reports for FNQ DAMA endorsement requests.
Some of those providers outsource the work overseas and use AI to generate the reports, including AI generated images. The Chamber has noted that the resulting reports are generic, repetitive, bear little resemblance to the employer's actual circumstances, and sometimes run to 50 or 60 pages. In some cases they have been considered false and misleading and have resulted in endorsements being declined.
If someone is selling you a fifty page endorsement report, that is a risk, not a service.
The cost recovery warning: $118,197 and a six month bar
One more, and this one is not optional.
A New South Wales aged care provider has been sanctioned and required to repay almost $120,000 to sponsored employees after an Australian Border Force investigation. ABF officers found the business had sponsored 19 workers under the Skills in Demand (subclass 482) visa, and had recovered sponsorship related costs from 13 of them, totalling $118,197.
Recovering those costs from a sponsored worker is prohibited under Australia's migration laws. The company has repaid all affected workers in full and is now subject to a six month bar from making new sponsor nomination applications.
The investigation began with a Border Watch report, the ABF's confidential online reporting form. Reports can be made anonymously.
For an employer, the practical rule is simple and absolute. Sponsorship costs stay with the sponsor. Not the nomination fee, not the levy, not by payroll deduction, not by a private side agreement, not by a "loan" repaid over time.
And the agencies are working together
That case is not an outlier, and enforcement is not being run by one agency in isolation.
The Australian Border Force, the Australian Taxation Office and the Fair Work Ombudsman have issued a joint media release about a compliance operation across more than 15 farms in Griffith, New South Wales, examining labour hire arrangements and suspected unlawful practices in the horticulture sector. The investigation covers possible visa breaches, migrant worker exploitation and the unlawful provision of immigration assistance under the Migration Act 1958.
The operation forms part of the Shadow Economy Taskforce and uses shared intelligence, data analysis and community tip-offs to identify higher risk businesses. Investigations are continuing.
Three agencies, sharing data, arriving together. If your labour hire arrangements or your record keeping would not survive that, the time to fix it is before somebody knocks.
What a sponsored worker can and cannot be charged
The case above matters just as much from the other side of the desk, so let us state it plainly for visa holders.
If you are sponsored, you cannot be made to pay your employer's sponsorship costs. Not the nomination fee, not the levy, not by payroll deduction, not by a private arrangement, not as a "loan" repaid over time. That is the law, not a matter for negotiation, and the sanction above shows it is enforced.
And underpayment of temporary visa holders is not rare. The Migrant Justice Institute has released Off the Books: Inside Australia's Hidden System of Migrant Worker Exploitation, drawing on almost 10,000 responses to the 2024 National Temporary Migrant Work Survey. Its findings include:
Two thirds of surveyed workers were paid less than they were owed under the Fair Work Act
More than a third were paid below the National Minimum Wage
Over a third worked on an ABN, more than four times the rate in the general workforce, which the report links to sham contracting
The report's central argument is that this is structural rather than accidental: insecure engagement is used to create leverage, and that leverage is then used to underpay, with misleading payslips and cash payment used to conceal it.
For a visa holder, the practical signals are the ones you can check yourself. A payslip that does not match your hours. An ABN handed to you for work that is plainly a job. Cash with no record. If any of that sounds like your situation, it is worth a conversation before it affects your visa.
What to do this week
If you have anything sitting with the Department right now, have someone establish where it actually sits under the new order. That is a short piece of work and it changes what you do next: whether you sit tight, whether you prepare a bridging strategy, or whether you need a different plan entirely before a visa expires.
Send us three things:
The date you lodged
What you lodged, and for a nomination, the occupation
Whether you (or your worker) were in Australia or overseas on that date
Those three facts tell us your position in the queue. We are Nationwide Migration and Education, a team of registered migration agents, and working that out is our job, not yours.
General information only, current as at August 2026. This is not migration advice for your specific circumstances. Ministerial directions, DAMA settings and Department policy change without notice.
