AUSTRALIAN VISA AND IMMIGRATION NEWS

Table of Contents

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
Net migration to Australia's regions
Horticulture Industry minimum wage
International students campaign to return to Australia

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.

5 May 2021

Net migration to Australia's regions

Australia's regional areas have had their largest net inflow of people since the Australian Bureau of Statistics started measuring internal migration in 2001.

The ABS said a net 43,000 Australians moved to regional areas from capital cities in 2020. That is more than double the number in 2019.

Net migration is the difference between arrivals and departures, so the figures reflect not just the number of people moving to the regions, but also the number of people staying put.

ABS demographer Andrew Howe said a net loss of people from the capitals has been seen before, but the amount of people staying in the regions is new. "That's always happened for decades — Australia has had more people departing the capitals than entering the capitals. "What's happened in 2020 though, is that number of people actually leaving the regions for the capitals has come down quite substantially. "That outflow from the regions has slowed down." Greater Melbourne had a net loss of 26,000 people in 2020.

1 April 2021

Horticulture Industry minimum wage

The Australian Workers Union has won important policy commitments at this week's Australian Labor Party National Conference to combat wage theft and worker exploitation in the nation's horticulture industry.

The AWU has long campaigned for changes aimed at restoring fairness to the fruit and vegetable sector, including minimum hourly pay rates for pickers, reform of the easily exploited 88-day visa scheme, and a royal commission into industry worker abuse.

The amendments to the ALP National Platform, which were moved by the AWU, note that: Labor recognises that shocking exploitation in the horticulture industry has persisted for too long without meaningful action by the Coalition Government.

Changes secured by the AWU and Retail Supply Chain Alliance to the Labor National Policy Platform include:

1. Support for a guaranteed minimum wage for fruit and vegetable pickers. 2. Stronger oversight, enforcement and penalties for employers and labour hire firms. 3. Reform of the Working Holiday Maker program to better protect the rights and conditions of visa holders as well as assessing its impact on regional labour markets and industries.

1 March 2021

International students campaign to return to Australia

Many international students want the sterling credentials of an Australian degree, but their inability to return to Australia amid the pandemic is making this goal more unattainable by the day. Flip-flopping government announcements have left students stranded abroad high and dry and state premiers have floated proposals to bring international students back to Australia, only to later announce that they've been put on hold. Remote students have complained about the poor quality of online learning and wish to return to face-to-face learning as soon as possible.

Since December 2020, Voice of International Students Australia (VoISA) has been organising affected students in a bid to sensitise the Australian government to the plight of international students stuck offshore. On March 3, 2021, they plan to create a Twitter firestorm ahead of the upcoming cabinet meeting taking place two days later to ensure their issue gets the attention it deserves.

"Our main objective is to raise our voice to what we believe is our right to education, and our right to enter Australia to study on our campuses, explains one VoISA member, who only wanted to be known as Amna, to Study International via email. We refrain from posting any derogatory content against Australia or the Australian government and only hope for them to resolve our matter justly."

The Pakistani student, who is pursuing her PhD at a university in Melbourne, said the team had been involved in providing input to the petitioner who submitted petition EN2217 (a petition addressed to the House of Representatives calling for their exemption from Australia's COVID-19 travel border restrictions), in addition to sending out collective emails to MPs and universities to seek support for their return to Australia, and approaching reporters for media coverage. Some students are planning to treat the outcome of the March 5 meeting as the last straw unless there is positive news about their return to Australia, they plan to transfer to universities in Canada or the UK.