Don't worry Bear, we'll smuggle you in one way or another.

Even though no selection was made under the family stream this year, it wasnt due to lack of applicants. It says in one of the immigration services' newsletters that they have had more family applications than they have places for. The reasoning behind no selection this year seems to be due to the change from the General Skilled category to the Skilled Migrant category, and all the complications and workload this has created, so not having the resources for the 'less important' immigration streams.

There were murmurings of scrapping the family quotas altogether, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.. at least for the time being anyway.