AUSTRALIAN VISA AND IMMIGRATION NEWS

• "The backlog will be cleared": visa processing gets $36m boost
• Australia's Global Talent Visa fell short of Coalition promise
• Australian Student visa data indicates continued recovery
• Despite work shortages, businesses are sponsoring fewer foreign workers
• Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum
• Bali Opens to Tourists from 4 February 2022
• New figures disclose post-lockdown Job boom
• Omicron could accelerate Aussie property market cooling down
• Australia lifts section 48 bar for skilled migration - 190, 491 and 494 Visas
• New Agriculture Visa will bring more migrants to work in Australia
• Working Holidaymakers seek Re-entry to Australia
• 15,000 rich foreigners given visas to Australia
• Rush on for Elderly Parents Visas
• COVID Recovery Workforce Visa

 2 September 2022

"The backlog will be cleared": visa processing gets $36m boost

• Home Affairs will get a $36 million funding boost to clear Australia’s extraordinary visa backlog, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has announced, as hundreds of extra public servants are deployed to process applications from businesses in desperate need of workers.
  
  Labor is also poised to increase the salary a migrant must earn to qualify for a skilled worker visa, but unions and businesses disagree about how high the threshold should be.
  
  Mr Giles announced at Friday’s Jobs and Skills Summit the federal government will invest $36.1 million to hire 500 surge staff over the next nine months to process Australia’s crippling backlog of active non-humanitarian visa applications, which stood at 962,000 when Labor took office in May.
  
  Of the outstanding visa applications, 571,000 were for temporary visas, almost 150,000 were skilled applicants and 232,000 were family visas.
  
  

 1 August 2022

Australia's Global Talent Visa fell short of Coalition promise

• Nearly 60 per cent of visas issued through Scott Morrison’s multimillion-dollar program to lure overseas business leaders and entrepreneurs to Australia went to people already in the country, with the scheme falling more than a third short of sign-on targets.
  
  The former Coalition government launched a limited pilot of the global talent visa scheme in July 2018, promising to attract the best and brightest to boost Australia’s capabilities in high-tech emerging industries.
  
  The program was rapidly scaled up under the Morrison government, but more than 8300 of the nearly 14,000 visas granted between July 2019 and June 2021 went to people already living in Australia.
  
  Labor has closed the program to onshore applications after the federal election in May, and Mr Morrison’s handpicked special envoy for global talent, former Property Council executive Peter Verwer, has quietly left the role.
  
  Grattan Institute economic policy program director Brendan Coates said attracting highly skilled workers to Australia was a worthy goal but described the global talent program as "pretty ineffective".
  
  "Some of the terms are really hard to follow, whereas if you’re doing an employer-sponsored visa, you’re doing a points test and the criteria are really clear." Mr Coates said the program was scaled up far too quickly, going from a 1000-person pilot in 2018-19 to a targeted allocation of 15,000 visas two years later.
  
  

 6 July 2022

Australian Student visa data indicates continued recovery through first half of 2022

• A just-released report from Australia’s Department of Home Affairs provides some important updates on the country’s student visa programme. Of the roughly 230,000 student visas granted so far in 2021/22, just under 40% have been issued to students from the four leading countries for students returning to Australia during the period 22 November 2021 through 22 May 2022:
  
  India 34,035
  
  China 25,689
  
  Nepal 18,889
  
  Vietnam 7,172
  
  More broadly, student visa lodgements reached a high of 473,415 in 2018/19 and then dipped to 262,633 in 2020/21. Visa application volumes surged back in 2021/22 to reach 314,388 as of 22 May 2022.
  
  The important dates to note here are that the Australian government’s fiscal year ends on 30 June (that is, the current reporting year is almost complete); however, Australia’s borders only reopened to international students on 15 December 2021 after an extended closure during the pandemic. In other words, the return volumes we see noted here reflect the numbers of students travelling to the country between mid-December 2021 and May 2022.
  
  

 2 June 2022

Despite work shortages, businesses are sponsoring fewer foreign workers

• Businesses complaining about labour shortages are using employer-sponsored visas far less than during previous skill shortage cycles.
  
  Former Department of Immigration senior official Abul Rizvi said businesses urging the government to lift immigration caps had failed to directly recruit foreign workers under the 482 temporary skill shortage visa which was not bound by permanent immigration limits.
  
  "Businesses have been very, very slow to take these up," Mr Rizvi said in an interview. "If you want to fill these skills gaps quickly, don’t wait for the government, just go out and recruit. "It’s entirely demand-driven and they don’t have to worry about caps."
  
  The number of skilled temporary visa holders has been steadily declining for most of the past decade. There were 96,000 skilled temporary visa holders at the end of March 2022, about half the 195,000 skilled temporary visa holders in June 2014. In April, more of these visa holders left the country than arrived in Australia.
  
  Innes Willox, chief executive of national employer association Ai Group said it can cost $20,000 to $25,000 to recruit a foreign worker. "The old temporary 457 visa cost employers around $10,000 by comparison."
  
  Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said 482 visa applications took months to process and were expensive for employers. Businesses also had to advertise the job locally for at least four weeks to meet a labour market test, Mr McKellar said.
  
  

 1 April 2022

Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum

• Australian schools will have a new Teaching curriculum after Education Ministers today endorsed the revised Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum.
  
  Commonwealth, state and territory Education Ministers agreed the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has met key objectives to refine, realign and declutter the curriculum, with a focus on reducing content in primary years and lifting quality.
  
  Acting Minister for Education and Youth, Stuart Robert said the Australian Curriculum is now a much stronger document which can be taught in Australian schools from 2023.
  
  ‘The Australian Curriculum now sets a higher standard for educational achievement in Australia going forward. It has been decluttered, allowing teachers to focus on what matters most, and it is evidence-based, with phonics now embedded in the teaching of English, for example,’ Minister Robert said.
  
  The Acting Minister for education stated: ‘In the final version agreed today, Australian History content is now compulsory in both Year 9 and 10, where it had previously been optional. This will strengthen how our young people appreciate our prosperous, democratic country.
  
  ‘This means high school students will learn post-settlement history from the period 1750 to the First World War. They will also learn the impact of post-Second World War migration in Australia and the significant contributions migrants have made to Australia’s success.
  
  ‘Indigenous History remains a prominent part of the curriculum and is embedded across Foundation to Year 10, and for the first-time students will learn Deep Time Indigenous History as a compulsory part of Year 7.
  
  

 1 February 2022

Bali Opens to Tourists from 4 February 2022

• Indonesia will reopen Bali to overseas visitors starting February 4 as the country seeks to revive tourism and sustain economic recovery.
  
  However, while the ban on all foreign arrivals is being lifted, even fully-vaccinated travellers will be required to spend five days in self-isolation, said Luhut Panjaitan, a cabinet minister who also oversees the government’s pandemic response.
  
  Jetstar’s Boeing 787 jets are poised to take off from Melbourne to Denpasar (capital city and main hub of the province of Bali) on 14 February, followed by flights from Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide in early March.
  
  Qantas lists the resumption of its daily QF43 flight from Sydney on March 27, with Melbourne-Denpasar’s QF45 on Monday March 28. On March 27, there will be a triple-city kickoff for Virgin Australia, with Bali-bound Boeing 737 flights taking off from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
  
  Famous for its temples and beaches, Bali attracted some 6.2 million foreign visitors in 2019, the year before Covid-19 struck, but tight pandemic border restrictions devastated tourism, which usually represents 54% of its economy. Bali has for many years been Australia’s second most popular overseas destination after New Zealand.
  
  

 3 January 2022

New figures disclose post-lockdown Job boom

• The federal treasurer remains confident a surge in Omicron cases across the country won’t derail Australia’s economic rebound, following last year’s COVID-19 lockdowns. It comes as new figures released by the tax office showed 485,000 jobs were created across the nation since September.
  
  Josh Frydenberg said the country had experienced a jobs boom in recent months. It’s estimated there are 180,000 more people in work now compared to the beginning of the pandemic.
  
  "Small businesses across the country who did it so tough early on are now coming (back) better," Mr Frydenberg told Sky News on Monday. "We’re starting to see these jobs coming back and it’s looking very promising for the Australian economy."
  
  The Australian Taxation Office data on Monday comes after the unemployment rate recently fell to 4.6 per cent, which was a 13-year low. Job advertisements are at a 13-year high, with more than 250,000 jobs available.
  
  "What we’ve done so far during the pandemic here in Australia is avoid a repeat of the experience of the recessions that we had in the 1980s and the 1990s," Mr Frydenberg told reporters. "We’re not out of this pandemic, there is no room for complacency, and we need to lock in this economic recovery."
  
  

 1 December 2021

Omicron could accelerate Aussie property market cooling down

• The new Covid variant of concern, Omicron, could help to swing the property market back to a buyer’s market and drive down prices as homeowners scramble to list their properties before the boom ends.
  
  While Australian house prices grew by 1.3 per cent in November, according to CoreLogic, taking national housing values 22.2 per cent higher over the past 12 months and adding approximately $126,700 to the median value of an Australian home, there are signs the market is starting to cool.
  
  Not only have auction clearance rates started to tumble since October, but there’s also been a tightening of lending rules, while Omicron is bringing fresh fears of new restrictions, which could cause some shockwaves in the market particularly in major cities.
  
  "Anything that pushes out a pick up in immigration will hit the Sydney and Melbourne markets – the apartment market in those cities is dependent on a recovery in immigration numbers," Louis Christopher, managing director of SQM Research, told The Australian.
  
  Professor Hal Pawson, associate director at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said if the worst case scenario in terms of public health anxieties happens, which could lead to extended international border closure — that would be good news for renters. "That could severely dent previously ‘baked-in’ expectations of renewed migration-generated population growth in 2022,".
  
  

 12 November 2021

Australia lifts section 48 bar for skilled migration - 190, 491 and 494 Visas

• Section 48 of the Migration Act prevents people who have had a visa refused or cancelled, and currently hold a bridging visa, from applying for another visa of most types while still in Australia.
  
  "They can only apply for Partner visa, Protection visa, Medical Treatment visa, Territorial Asylum, border, special category, Bridging visas from A to R, Resolution of status, Child visa, Retirement Temporary visa and Investor Retirement visa.
  
  Typically, refused applicants would have simply left Australia and applied for a different visa, but the travel restrictions because of COVID-19 have made such trips difficult.
  
  They must also wait for the results of their new application outside Australia except those who exited to New Zealand with the Trans-Tasman travel bubble," says ms Tanag.
  
  The Department of Home Affairs has announced the amendment of the legislation that will officially commence on 13 November 2021.
  
  In an explanatory statement from the Federal Government, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Alex Hawke stated, "this amendment facilitates applications in Australia by applicants who are prevented from leaving due to COVID-19 related travel restrictions but meet all other requirements for making an application for the visa."
  
  

 01 October 2021

New Agriculture Visa will bring more migrants to work in Australia

• Workers from South-East Asia will be prioritised under the new visa, which will address labour shortages in the agriculture sector brought on by international border closures.
  
  A new agriculture visa is set to bring more migrants to fill chronic labour shortages on Australian farms from November, with workers from South-East Asian countries to be prioritised.
  
  The full conditions of the visa are still being finalised in consultation with the sector, but are expected to include potential pathways to permanent residency, including regional resettlement.
  
  The first phase of the visa will see a small cohort of agriculture workers arriving in Australia between November and March 2022.
  
  More workers would enter Australia with the new visa during the second phase, which would begin in April next year. Mr Littleproud said negotiations around bilateral agreements with countries in the region were underway.
  
  Mr. Littleproud said: "The Ag Visa will be the biggest structural change to the agricultural workforce in our nation’s history". "It will be open to applicants from a range of countries and we are already in talks with a number of countries in our region who are eager to participate."
  
  

 07 September 2021

Working Holidaymakers seek Re-entry to Australia

• Backpackers in New Zealand are keen to return to Australia, in what could be a major boost for farmers desperately seeking labour ahead of the summer harvest.
  
  While the border remains closed for now, options exist for entry under the COVID-19 pandemic visa, designed to maintain employment in important industries like food production.
  
  The ongoing shortage of hotel quarantine places in Australia looms as the biggest handbrake for sourcing NZ-based workers in the coming months. Many Australians trying to return from New Zealand have been told it is likely their flights will be cancelled as limited spaces are available.
  
  In a statement, the Department of Home Affairs acknowledged the disruption the pandemic had caused to the working holidaymaker program and said refunds were available to those who had paid the application fee but were no longer aged 18 to 30 as specified under the visa conditions. However Canadian, French and Irish citizens are eligible for the program until the age of 35.
  
  Both holders and former holders of a COVID-19-affected working holidaymaker visa can make new applications fee-free on the department's website. The sectors of health, aged, disability and child care, agriculture, food processing, tourism and hospitality are designated as critical by the Australian government.
  
  People on COVID-19 pandemic visas or bridging visas are entitled to count days working in healthcare and as specified work when applying for a second or third working holidaymaker visa.
  
  The department will prioritise processing initial or second and third-year working holidaymaker visa applications for any travellers who are exempt from travel restrictions.
  
  

 1 August 2021

15,000 rich foreigners given visas to Australia

• Nearly 15,000 visas have been granted to foreign millionaires since the start of the pandemic under a scheme that has been criticised for allowing people to buy their way into Australia.
  
  "The contributory visa charge of just under $50 000 meets only a fraction of the fiscal costs for the annual intake of roughly 7200 contributory parents. And an additional 1500 parents make a minimal contribution. Overall, the cumulated lifetime fiscal costs (in net present value terms) of a parent visa holder in 2015-16 is estimated to be between $335 000 and $410 000 per adult, which ultimately must be met by the Australian community. On this basis, the net liability to the Australian community of providing assistance to these 8700 parents over their lifetime ranges between $2.6 and $3.2 billion in present value terms. Given that there is a new inflow each year, the accumulated taxpayer liabilities become very large over time. This is a high cost for a relatively small group".
  
  Figures from the Department of Home Affairs show it issued 10,210 of the 188 provisional visas and 4396 of the 888 permanent visas in the 15 months since the international border closed.
  
  The pace has picked up since the department told a parliamentary inquiry last year that between 20 March and 14 September it had only granted 485 business innovation and investment visas.
  
  The figures, from March 21, 2020 to June 30, 2021, also show almost 3500 people holding a business innovation and investment visa have entered Australia during that time. That includes 2904 provisional visa holders and 524 permanent visa holders.
  
  The Morrison government last year removed the requirement for people holding a business innovation and investment visa, whether permanent or provisional, to apply for a travel exemption.
  
  Grattan fellow Henry Sherrell said: "A lot of countries sell residency and citizenship. This is the way Australia does it."
  
  

 6 July 2021

Rush on for Elderly Parents Visas

• In its 2016 Migrant Intake into Australia report, the Productivity Commission (PC) estimated that the circa 9,000 elderly permanent parental visas granted every year cost Australian taxpayers between $2.6 and $3.2 billion in present value terms, or between $335 000 and $410 000 per elderly adult, with the cost rising over time as numbers increase. The PC also explicitly recommended that parental visas be abolished, noting that they divert scarce funding away from Australia’s broader welfare system:
  
  "The contributory visa charge of just under $50 000 meets only a fraction of the fiscal costs for the annual intake of roughly 7200 contributory parents. And an additional 1500 parents make a minimal contribution. Overall, the cumulated lifetime fiscal costs (in net present value terms) of a parent visa holder in 2015-16 is estimated to be between $335 000 and $410 000 per adult, which ultimately must be met by the Australian community. On this basis, the net liability to the Australian community of providing assistance to these 8700 parents over their lifetime ranges between $2.6 and $3.2 billion in present value terms. Given that there is a new inflow each year, the accumulated taxpayer liabilities become very large over time. This is a high cost for a relatively small group".
  
  Data obtained from the Department of Home Affairs by SBS Hindi indicates a steady increase in the number of parent visa applications lodged by the Indian-Australian community over the past three years. Over the period January-May 2021, Indian nationals lodged 1,362 parent visa applications as compared to 1,049 in the similar period of 2020. The same figure during January-May 2019 stood at 662 and at 671 lodgements in Jan-May 2018.
  
  There is no magic pudding when it comes to public finances, and the massive fiscal cost of parental visas necessarily diverts funding away from other social programs, such as: funding for schools and hospitals; funding for infrastructure; funding for the Aged Pension and Newstart; and funding for the NDIS.The fiscal cost of these visas is already enormous and growing, and poses a threat to Australia’s welfare state as we know it.
  
  

 2 June 2021

COVID Recovery Workforce Visa

• Restaurant and Catering Australia CEO Wes Lambert says the shortage of skilled workers is impacting the entire Australian hospitality sector.
  
  "Our members tell us there are up to 100,000 unfilled positions in the hospitality industry across the country, the worst it has ever been in the history of Australia. While there are 600,000 fewer people in Australia as though it was pre COVID, about 227,000 of those individuals actually had the right to work,” says Mr Lambert.
  
  Mr Garg has welcomed the federal government’s recent decision to lift a 40-hour fortnightly employment cap on international students, but he says Australia must open doors for vaccinated skilled workers. "We are aware that government has some strict Covid procedures in place, but we believe that provided those conditions are met, the vaccinated skilled workers must be allowed to come to Australia. If it happens, that would be a great relief for the hospitality sector, which is currently struggling to meet skill shortages," he says.
  
  Meanwhile, the government has included hospitality among critical sectors listed for a pandemic event visa, but the industry experts say more is needed. "We've made a submission to the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, for a COVID recovery workforce visa, which would then allow vaccinated, highly skilled workers to return to Australia, and long before we open the borders to tourists," says Mr Lambert.