The Morrison Government has signaled loud and clear that it will reboot mass immigration at the earliest opportunity.
The Government’s Interim Report of the Inquiry into Australia’s Skilled Migration Program recommended opening the migrant floodgates via:
- Abolishing labour market testing requirements.
- Lowering costs and speeding up approval times for importing foreign workers.
- Expanding the skilled occupation list to include almost any role.
- Providing all ‘skilled’ visa holders with a clear pathway for transition to permanent residency.
- Granting ‘skilled’ visa holders priority access to flights and hotel quarantine ahead of stranded Australians.
In announcing these recommendations Liberal MP Julian Leeser declared:
“Right across the economy we are hearing that there are real issues in relation to businesses getting the skills that they need here in Australia. During the course of COVID, we’ve lost half a million temporary visa holders. Many of those people are skilled migrants. And they are skills that just don’t exist across Australia. We need to get them back to get Australian businesses moving again…”
In June, the Morrison Government also added an extra 22 occupations to the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL). Occupations on this list, which now total 41, will be given priority processing for migration and travel exemptions. In turn, they will be granted priority access to quarantine places.
And let’s not forget the Morrison Government has also introduced a new Agricultural Visa allowing farmers to more easily hire foreign slave labour.
Yesterday, a parliamentary migration committee recommended giving ‘skilled’ visa holders and international students easier access to work rights and permanent residency, in a plan designed by business groups and universities to ease labour shortages (read lower wages) and drive both student enrollments and economic growth. Both the Coalition and Labor back the reforms:
Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who chaired the six-month inquiry, said the committee’s proposal to give all temporary skilled visa holders a pathway to permanent residency was driven by businesses saying they were struggling to find workers to fill skill shortages.
The plan would effectively reverse changes made under former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017 when his government narrowed the pathways to permanent residency by scrapping the 457 visa.
“It’s a very different time now. We’ve got an unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent”…
The committee suggested the government offer the “best and brightest” international students, who were willing to fill skill shortages, a two-year pathway to permanent residency under the employer nominated scheme, shaving one year off the process. It also recommended offering students longer temporary graduate visas of three years to give them time to find jobs.
The move was welcomed by Universities Australia chief executive, Catriona Jackson…
The report also called for workers who go to regional areas to have an easier path to residency, including easier English tests and looser experience requirements.
Labor committee member Julian Hill branded the recommendations a “remarkable and blatant repudiation” of Mr Dutton’s tenure as immigration minister… Mr Hill, speaking on behalf of the Labor committee members, said they agreed with most but not all of its recommendations…
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the nation’s largest employer lobby, welcomed the committee’s recommendation to increase pathways to permanent residency.
While we expect this type of policy malfeasance from the business-led Coalition, what the hell is the “Labor” Party thinking? They are supposed to represent Australian workers, but instead back the business lobby’s push to flood the nation with migrant workers, increasing unemployment, lowering wages, and pushing up housing costs.
Somebody should sue “Labor” and demand they change their name. They are the useful idiots of the wealthy elite that privatises the gains from mass immigration via cheaper labour costs and an expanded consumer base, while ordinary Australians bear the costs.
