Immigration: We can choose our skills, but we can't choose our family

Picture source: DIBP

Whilst boat arrivals, asylum seekers, skilled permanent and temporary programs and even students have kept immigration featured in our politics and newspapers, family migration receives little share of public debate. This is intriguing as family migration is a bigger part of permanent migration than official planning levels would lead us to believe.

Migration Program planning levels fluctuate according to the political, social and economic imperatives of the government of the day. In the mid-1970s, the planned annual intake reached a low of 50,000 places and gradually climbed to the 1988 peak of 145,000 and then reduced to 80,000 by 1993.

Measuring success in skilled migration policy: the subclass 457 visa program

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

With the unemployment rate edging higher over the past year, and against a backdrop of high OECD unemployment, jobs will continue to be a focus over the next term of Government.

A new report by Monash University’s Centre for Population and Urban Research reveals that recently arrived migrants are dominating the growth in the number of employed persons in Australia. It also points to local young workers being adversely affected by the competition for employment, with a global pool of ‘job hungry temporary migrants looking for the same work’. According to the OECD, the young and the low-skilled will continue to be hardest hit across OECD nations through 2014.

Temporary skilled migration and the 457 visa



Image source: www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au

On 23 February 2013, the Government announced that there would be changes to the temporary skilled (subclass 457) visa program to ensure that employers are ‘not nominating positions where a genuine shortage does not exist’ and that ‘employers give Australian workers a fair go’.

The changes listed on the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) website, ‘Strengthening the integrity of the 457 program’, include the introduction of a ‘genuineness criterion’ and the removal of English language exemptions for certain positions. According to DIAC, it is envisaged that the changes (to take effect on 1 July 2013) will not affect the ‘vast majority’ of ‘genuine’ 457 visa applicants.