AUS: Working Holiday Visas Paused

Australian Working Holiday Visas are in the news this week, with the government quietly pausing working holidaymaker visa applications from 24 countries with annual visa caps.

The timing is somewhat unusual given that applications for countries subject to annual caps under the Work and Holiday (subclass 462) program open each year on 2 July (Australian Eastern Standard Time) — which is less than six weeks ago.

A country cap may change from ‘open’ to ‘paused’ or ‘closed’ during a program year. A pause is implemented to limit the number of applications received at any given time, to spread out lodgements and facilitate visa processing throughout the program year, or to closely monitor the number of applications when a country is close to its annual grant cap.

There are two types of working holidaymaker visas. The first visa stream is uncapped (which means places are demand driven) and fortunately applications from these countries have not been paused. The 19 uncapped partner countries include:

The United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Taiwan.

The second visa stream is capped. It applies to a further 29 countries, which are allocated between 100 and 5,000 places a year. Three of the countries in the capped category — China, India and Vietnam — have a lottery system regulating who can apply at what time of year. The remaining countries have all been put on pause, except for Turkey and San Marino, which have just 100 places each.

The Department of Home Affairs website says applications can be paused when the cap is nearly filled, or to spread applications throughout the year.

The government has indicated it could expand the lottery system to other countries to manage arrivals. And while the first year visa is capped, the second and third years are not.

First Work and Holiday visa application cap status

Please note that applications for Indonesia and Mongolia may open later in the year. Further detail on timing will be provided in due course.

If you would like advice on how these changes affect your plans, please get in touch with our team.