The Department of Home Affairs has been quietly expanding its use of AI in processing skilled migration applications. It’s not a secret, exactly, but it hasn’t received the public scrutiny that a system making consequential decisions about people’s lives probably should.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together from departmental reports, FOI responses, and conversations with immigration professionals.

What the System Does

The AI assists with several stages of skilled migration processing.

Skills assessment triage. Applications are sorted by complexity. Straightforward applications where qualifications clearly match occupation requirements are fast-tracked. Complex cases with non-standard qualifications or unusual career paths are flagged for detailed human review.

Document verification. AI analyses submitted documents for authenticity indicators: formatting consistency, institutional verification, and cross-referencing against known qualification databases. This helps identify fraudulent documents, which is a genuine problem in skilled migration.

Priority scoring. Applications are scored on multiple factors relevant to the migration program objectives. This scoring helps case officers prioritise their work queue, focusing human attention where it adds the most value.

Natural language processing of written submissions. AI summarises lengthy written applications, extracting key information and highlighting areas that need case officer attention. This reduces the reading time for applications that can run to dozens of pages.

The Efficiency Case

The efficiency arguments are straightforward and largely valid.

Australia’s skilled migration system processes tens of thousands of applications annually. Processing backlogs are a chronic problem, causing stress for applicants and employers waiting for decisions. AI that accelerates processing of straightforward applications frees human case officers for complex ones.

Processing times for standard skilled migration applications have reportedly decreased since AI assistance was introduced. The department claims the backlog reduction is significant, though precise figures are hard to verify.

For applicants, faster processing is genuinely beneficial. People waiting for visa decisions have their lives in limbo. Anything that reduces waiting times without sacrificing decision quality is welcome.

The Fairness Questions

Here’s where things get uncomfortable.

Bias in training data. If the AI learned from historical decisions, and those historical decisions contained systematic biases (against particular nationalities, institutions, or qualification types), the AI will replicate those biases at scale. The department has not publicly disclosed whether bias testing has been conducted or what the results showed.

Transparency. Applicants don’t know whether and how AI influenced their application assessment. There’s no disclosure requirement, and applicants who are declined can’t determine whether the AI’s triage or scoring contributed to the decision. This makes it difficult to identify and challenge potentially unfair AI-influenced decisions.

Right to human review. Is there a guaranteed pathway for any applicant to have their case reviewed entirely by a human? The department’s public materials suggest human oversight exists, but the detail of how human review is triggered and what it covers isn’t clear.

Cultural and linguistic bias. AI systems processing written applications may perform differently depending on the applicant’s English proficiency, cultural communication style, and document formatting conventions. An applicant from a country with different documentation standards might be disadvantaged by AI that was trained primarily on applications from countries with standards similar to Australia’s.

What Other Countries Are Doing

Australia isn’t alone in using AI for immigration processing. Canada, the UK, and several EU countries have deployed similar systems. The approaches to transparency and oversight vary significantly.

Canada has been relatively transparent about its use of AI in immigration processing, publishing information about the systems and their governance. The UK has faced criticism for algorithmic bias in visa processing, with evidence that applications from certain nationalities received more scrutiny.

Australia’s approach falls somewhere in between: more systematised than the UK’s early efforts but less transparent than Canada’s.

What Should Happen

Publish the bias testing results. If the department has tested the AI for bias across nationalities, qualifications types, and institutions, publish the results. If it hasn’t conducted such testing, that’s a more serious problem.

Guarantee human review for consequential decisions. Any decision to decline, defer, or deprioritise a skilled migration application should have guaranteed human review. AI triage that identifies straightforward approvals is one thing. AI that contributes to negative outcomes needs human oversight.

Disclose AI involvement. Applicants should know whether AI was involved in processing their application and at what stages. This transparency is both ethically appropriate and practically necessary for meaningful review and appeal processes.

Regular external audits. An independent body should audit the immigration AI system regularly for accuracy, bias, and compliance with relevant legislation. Internal governance is necessary but not sufficient.

The Broader Principle

AI in government services affecting people’s rights and livelihoods demands higher standards of transparency, fairness, and oversight than AI in commercial applications. Immigration decisions can change the course of someone’s life. The systems that influence those decisions must be beyond reproach.

Australia has a skilled migration system that the world generally respects for its competence and integrity. Maintaining that reputation while adopting AI requires genuine commitment to the governance principles that make AI trustworthy. Not just in policy documents but in practice.

I’ll continue reporting on this. If you have experience with AI in immigration processing, whether as an applicant, an agent, or someone within the system, I’d welcome hearing from you.