Immigration Vital To Welfare of Down Under But Impact Requires Additional Study

As per a comprehensive report, there is a pressing need of more research into the labour market implications of the employment rights of the global students, graduates and the Working Holiday Makers (WHMs) in Australia, with the reason being at present they are not understood the way it should be.

Australian Productivity Commission (ABC), the concerned organization, has reportedly advocated a public probe, to identify the labour market effects of impermanent immigrants and administrative improvements to allow for the utilization of matched tax and visa statistics to inform policy.

The particulars of the Commission’s latest inquiry report, into the migrant intake in the country, reportedly indicates that as of September 2015, Oz had nearly 426,000 students and 26,000 impermanent graduate visa holders even while the bank of international students with work rights was duly enhanced by approximately 144,000 WHMs.

The report indicates that the Student Visa holders have a right to do a job for a maximum of 40 hours in any two week time-frame while their course is continuing even while those on a temporary graduate visa, on the basis of their specific qualifications, may do a job for anywhere between 18 months and four years, post graduation.

The report also indicates that though the primary goal of the Working Holiday Visa scheme is to motivate cultural exchange and closer links between Australia and entitled nations, over the past couple of years, the same has been duly extended to jobs across regional areas.

The report also takes a look at the 457 Visas and states there were 190,000 temporary 457 visa holders and it has invited disapproval for making it very easy for the recruiters/firms to offer employment opportunities to the workers from abroad.

The same explains that in general the well-targeted temporary immigration schemes can be a useful answer to the labour market famines even as the 457 Scheme can play a crucial part in enabling organizations/groups to source trained workers in peak labour demand time-frames, and access a global bank of specialized workers who may not be obtainable locally.

Still, in recent times, the scheme has been employed rather comprehensively to fill skill needs in some specific domains, like medicine and nursing, and mining. The CSOL, the relevant list for 457 visas, at present, comprises 651 professions that necessitate a Bachelor Degree or advanced qualification through to those that are matching with a certificate level III or IV.

The report suggests that the CSOL is just a list of skilled professions. It is not or aimed to be a list of professions in impermanent short supply. The absence of transparency around the compilation of the list generates possibility for the vested interests to unjustifiably control its composition.

The same also explains that global students and the WHMs are essentially more vulnerable to abuse, vis-à-vis other employees since they are expected to be young, face language hurdles, be not much aware of their work rights, and regularly be looking for a permanent visa.

The report states that besides since they typically work in low to semi-skilled jobs--for which workers are usually not in short supply--they have less capacity to oppose the coercive actions of the crooked recruiters/firms. They are also less likely to have access to economic or social r support networks able to respond to any market power of their recruiters/firms or to help them in shifting to another job.

Aside from the unhelpful effects on the individuals involved, there is a lurking danger that the abuse of the impermanent migrant employees, by some recruiters/firms, may contaminate the appeal of these temporary plans.

Additional resources to identify and act against threats to the reliability of these visa schemes, cut down the information asymmetry between provisional manpower and their recruiters, and improve access to complaint apparatus would assist to handle these dangers, the report adds.

It concludes that immigration rule has lasting effects on several dimensions of the Australian life even while getting the policy settings correct is decisive to making the most of the society welfare.