The 186 visa offers a pathway to permanent residency for skilled workers sponsored by Australian employers. It comes with plenty of great opportunities. But applications can be rejected if requirements are not met exactly. You need to understand why refusals happen. It will help you prepare correctly, avoid common mistakes, and increase your chances of a successful 186 visa application.
7 Common Reasons for 186 Visa Rejection
Let’s look at why rejection happens according to the Department of Home Affairs.
1. The Employer Nomination is Not Approved
Your visa application sits on top of your employer’s nomination. Your employer must prove that they have a genuine need for your role and show they cannot find an Australian citizen to fill the position. For the Temporary Residence Transition (TRT) stream, they must also show they met the training requirements for Australian staff.
Many employers don’t realise how detailed this needs to be. They just submit a short letter with a few details. But the Department can later ask for more proof. If the employer doesn’t respond in time, the nomination gets refused, and your visa gets refused with it.
What can you do? Stay in touch with your employer. Ask if they need help gathering documents. A small reminder can save your application.
Check more: Employer Nomination Scheme 186 visa
2. Insufficient or Incorrect Evidence of Skills
For the Direct Entry stream, you need a positive skills assessment, a document from an assessing authority like VETASSESS or the Australian Computer Society confirming your skills match your nominated occupation.
The assessment must be valid. Most skills assessments are valid for three years from the date of issue, or until the expiry date stated on the assessment, whichever comes first. If yours expires before you lodge your visa application, it will not be accepted.
You also need to prove your work history matches the ANZSCO code. People often list duties from their actual job, but if those duties don’t align closely enough with the ANZSCO description, the Department may decide you’re not qualified for that occupation and refuse the application.
3. Failure to Meet the Health or Character Requirements
For health, you must complete the required medical examinations. The Department looks for conditions that might place a financial burden on the Australian community. If you have a medical condition that requires expensive treatment, your visa could be refused.
For character, you need police certificates from every country where you lived for 12 months or more in the last 10 years. Some people forget a country they lived in briefly. Others assume minor offences don’t matter.
Here’s the truth: traffic fines are usually fine, but drink driving, assault, or theft can cause serious problems. If you have a criminal record, you must declare it. Hiding it is worse than disclosing it. The Department will find out, and they will refuse your visa for providing false information.
4. Genuineness of the Position
This is a common issue with small businesses. If you work for a company with two employees, the Department may question whether they truly need a full-time Marketing Manager or whether the role was created just to sponsor you.
The same applies to family businesses. If a relative is sponsoring you, the Department looks very closely. They check whether the business could operate without that role, and they review the business size, financial records, and hiring history.
If the Department decides the position isn’t genuine, the nomination is refused. Your visa refusal follows automatically.
5. Incorrectly Calculating Work Experience (Direct Entry)
The Direct Entry stream generally requires at least three years of relevant work experience, but not all experience counts.
The experience must be at the skilled level, meaning you must have worked in a role that matches your nominated occupation. Working as a shop assistant won’t count towards a Marketing Manager application, even if you handled some marketing tasks on the side.
The experience also needs to be recent in many cases. If you worked as an IT Manager ten years ago but have done different work since, that old experience may not help you.
People also miscalculate dates, counting part-time work as full-time, or including unpaid internships that don’t meet the definition of skilled employment. When the Department recalculates, the applicant falls short of the three-year requirement.
6. Providing Conflicting or False Information
This reason appears in almost every refusal letter. The Department finds a mismatch between documents.
Maybe your resume says you started a job in January 2018, but your employment reference letter says March 2018. That’s a small difference, but to the Department, it raises questions about your honesty.
Maybe the job duties in your visa application don’t match the duties listed in your employer’s nomination. The Department will wonder which version is true.
Sometimes people make bigger mistakes, submitting fake bank statements, claiming work experience that didn’t happen, or hiding previous visa refusals.
The Department has access to a lot of data. They share information with other countries and check with banks and government agencies. If they catch you in a lie, they can refuse your visa and bar you from applying for other visas. The ban is three years for false documents or misleading information, and up to ten years if the Department cannot verify your identity. This is called the Public Interest Criterion 4020.
7. Salary and Employment Conditions Not Met
Your employer must offer you fair pay. Your salary cannot fall below the Core Skills Income Threshold (CSIT), which is $76,515 per year for 2025-26.
But the threshold is just the starting point. Your salary must also match what an Australian worker would earn for the same job in the same location. This is called the market salary rate. If you work in Sydney as a chef, your pay should be similar to what other chefs in Sydney earn.
If your employer tries to pay you less, the Department will ask questions and may decide the employer is undercutting the local labour market. The Department also checks your employment conditions. Your role must offer at least 30 hours of work per week and must be a genuine, ongoing position, not a short-term contract.
How to Avoid a 186 Visa Refusal
1. Align Your Application with Your Employer
Your visa and your employer’s nomination must tell the same story. Before they lodge, check that your job duties, title, and salary match exactly across both documents. Stay in touch during the process. A slow response to the Department can hurt you both.
2. Don’t Just Claim Things. Prove Them
Back every claim with real evidence. For work experience, use payslips, bank statements, and tax returns alongside reference letters. For skills, match your duties to the ANZSCO description and find documents that prove it. Make sure your English test hasn’t expired before you lodge.
3. Be Completely Transparent
Tell the truth about everything, every country you’ve lived in, every visa refusal, your medical history, and even minor traffic fines. The Department shares information with other governments. They likely already know. Hiding anything guarantees a refusal.
4. Check Your Skills Assessment
Make sure it hasn’t expired, matches the exact occupation in your employer’s nomination, and comes from the correct assessing authority. All three must be right.
5. Run a Final Checklist Before Lodging
Quickly confirm: valid passport, correct payment, completed health exams, police certificates for all relevant countries, valid English results, correct skills assessment, three years of employment evidence, and your employer’s nomination reference number.
Just five minutes on this checklist can save you months of problems.
What Happens If You Get a “Natural Justice” Letter?
Sometimes the Department finds an issue with your application. But they do not refuse you straight away. Instead, they send you a letter. This is called a Section 57 letter, or a Natural Justice letter.
This letter tells you what concerns they have, and it gives you a chance to respond. You usually have 28 days to provide more information about the issue. If you get a letter like this, don’t ignore it or don’t panic either. This is your opportunity to fix the problem behind the refusal.
Read the letter carefully. Understand exactly what they are concerned about. Gather evidence that addresses their concerns. Write a clear response explaining why your application should still be approved.they are concerned about. Gather evidence that addresses their concerns. Write a clear response explaining why your application should still be approved.
| Not sure if your 186 visa application is strong enough? Our team can review your situation and spot any red flags before you lodge. We check your documents against the latest Department requirements. We also look at your work history, skills assessment, and employer nomination. If something needs fixing, we tell you early. Why guess when you can know? Book a consultation today. |
