Australia is leading the world in removing barriers

Global Migration Solutions

GMS e News

May, 2012

AUSTRALIA is leading the world in removing barriers for foreign workers with an agenda for ready recognition of overseas credentials which is "radical in global terms", according to a world authority on skilled labour migration.

AUSTRALIA is leading the world in removing barriers for foreign workers with an agenda for ready recognition of overseas credentials which is "radical in global terms", according to a world authority on skilled labour migration.

The "privatisation" of the skilled migration program was well advanced, she said, as 70 per cent of Australia's labour migrants were employer-sponsored by 2009.

Temporary skilled migrant arrivals surpassed permanent arrivals in 2007-08 at 110,570 compared with 108,500. Though they had since dropped back, it was clear Australia's "old paradigm" of permanent migration was disappearing, Professor Hawthorne said.

Occupations preferred by employers for importing labour were significantly dierent from those selected by government. The top five professions selected by government in order were accounting, computing, architecture/building, engineering and nursing. For employers it was nursing, computing, business professionals, engineers and sales and marketing professionals. The choice of source countries also diered, with the government favouring Asian countries and employers favouring English-speaking countries.

The country's skilled migration program had undergone a revolution from permanent to temporary entry and from points-tested to employer-nominated as the dominant basis of entry, said Lesleyanne Hawthorne, a consultant to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on migrant labour to meet global skills shortages.

The recent decision to allow skilled US workers to get work licences on arrival instead of in the US, and the introduction of Enterprise Migration Agreements for large-scale resources projects, are the latest steps in a decades-long process of freeing up entry to the Australian workforce. This started under the 1980s Hawke government, said Professor Hawthorne, from the University of Melbourne."

In what the OECD has dubbed the "looming war for skills", foreign credential recognition strategies were "a policy imperative", Professor Hawthorne said.

Permanent skilled migration to Australia had almost quadrupled in the past 15 years.

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The 19th-century credential recognition systems which had forced many professionals to wait sometimes for years before their overseas q u a l i fi c a t i o n s w e r e recognised in Australia "are not fit for purpose in the 21st century".

public scrutiny. He fears Australian job seekers might have no opportunity to apply for jobs, and that "compliant" foreign workers "beholden to employers" are at greater risk of exploitation in terms of wages and conditions.

A spokesman for the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, said there was a need for temporary workers to "help keep our economy strong". By law, such workers could not be used to undercut local wages or labour costs, and the government was committed to identifying and penalising employers who did the wrong thing.

Bob Birrell, a demographer at Monash University, objects to the details of Enterprise Migration Agreements being kept confidential and so not open to

Single focus on Australian immigration IT’S ALL WE DO!

Report showed bright future of Australian IT industry Extracted from “IMMI”, “EIU” and “Migration Expert” Edited by Global Migration Solutions A new report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) named "The Means to Compete: Benchmarking IT industry Competitiveness" showed that Australia was ranked third of countries providing the most positive competitive conditions for IT firms in the Asia-Pacific region, following South Korea, and Taiwan.

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According to the EIU's report, Australia was also ranked fifth in the world in terms of the overall competitiveness of its IT industry, along with the U.S. topping the index table, then Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Similarly, Australia was ranked fourth in the world in terms of Advanced IT and communications infrastructure, preceded only by US, Canada, and Switzerland and ranked first in the Asia-Pacific.

In the report, Australia’s mobile phone penetration had been showed to be high at 94.5 percent.

In addition, Australia’s IT industry has kept making steps in becoming more green-friendly for many years.

Environment and energy are concerned factors of se veral major Australian organizations recently.

However, Australia is now facing the skills shortage in IT professionals, which affects IT project delivery times and drives up salaries, creating highly paid IT job opportunities in Australia.

Employers in Australia are now looking oversees to bring in IT skilled professionals on the 457 visas for Australia.

Australia REALLY needs your skills, it’s time to move on a better life! www.PRforAUSTRALIA.com enquiry@PRforAUSTRALIA.com

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