The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) is expecting to commence allocating case officers to Priority Group 5 applications in this program year 2011 to 2012.
At moment there are about 42631 applications in priority group 5 including 27346 onshore applications and 15284 offshore applications.
Processing priority group 5 onshore applications will begin with the remaining applications lodged before September 2007; the oldest case was lodged on 28 July 2005. There are around 756 cases in this group.
Processing priority group 5 offshore applications will begin with the visa applications in subclasses 495 and 496 which were lodged before September 2007; the oldest case was lodged on 10 July 2006. There are around 594 applications in this group.
The number of higher priority applications received, and other factors including any change in the size of the migration program or variation of the processing direction will have an impact on the number of the priority group 5 applications which will be processed in this program year.
(Read more details, please visit the DIAC website
http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/gsm-priority5-processing.htm)
