For a long time, Australia was regarded as among the top destinations for skilled migrants and international students. But the latest waves of skilled migrants have focused their attention elsewhere, preferring Canada, the US, or the UK. This has increasingly been the case since the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, international students who used to consider Australia an option, no longer do. This has a devastating impact on the Australian labour market (already facing massive shortages) across nearly every industry.

In late 2021, recruitment platform Adventus reported that applications by international students had declined by 51% since March 2021. Whereas applications to Canada, the UK and the United States had soared by 148%-422%.

Why is this happening?

The current Australian immigration system is unfortunately designed to exploit. It is designed to make the most out of migrants and give as little back to them.

While this tactic has been effective over the past few years, it is hurting Australia ever since the pandemic hit. The system was long overdue for an overhaul, and we may not have much choice now.

A few brief examples of the broken system

• Wage exploitation without any scrutiny. From farms to restaurants – international students/migrant workers are commonly paid $8-$10 an hour (half of the legal wage) and in some cases, subjected to extreme working conditions/hours. If you walk down any street in Melbourne or Sydney for 5 minutes, chances are you will pass an establishment that does this. These are public secrets and authorities have turned a blind eye for decades. The workers end up in predicaments where they can’t report these issues to authorities, due to the risk of losing their visas.
  
• Unreasonable cost of visas – visas cost thousands of dollars more compared to other developed nations. Despite the poor service offered by Home Affairs (rarely if ever offering timelines and little to no communication during the process).
  
• IELTS, PTE, Professional Year Programs & NAATI rackets – An overpriced set of ‘qualifications’ that skilled migrants have to take now (as new hurdles were added to their migration process over the past few years). A Professional Year program costs roughly $15,000 per head to select institutions. And then highly skilled graduates will spend the next year learning how to write business letters or learning how to write a cover letter – an experience many find insulting and archaic. It’s common knowledge that these programs are a racket. To top it off, these qualifications expire in 2-3 years. For example, after Australian Immigration froze all migration processes during the pandemic, those who had their qualifications expire have had to pay these sums again and re-do them.
  
• Those students impacted by the pandemic (or any other hardship over the last decade) received no support from the government. The most they received was the Prime Minister explicitly asking them to leave the country as soon as possible, when their presence became an inconvenience to the government. Regardless of whether they’ve spent 5-10 years in their migration journey, paying taxes and contributing to the economy.
  
• Migration being a political game. This has been extremely harmful to migrants well-being. Peter Dutton was a prime example where his decisions impacting tens of thousands were not based on economic need or what is fair – but what will maintain/gain the anti-immigrant votes.

Australian business culture does not recognise overseas experience and qualifications

This is another area that is keeping skilled migrants away. It’s common for computer/electrical engineers/lawyers/doctors from a top institute in Asia to be driving taxis and working at supermarkets. For years, if not for the rest of their lives here.

This is because Australian businesses and recruitment have a strong culture of looking down upon foreign qualifications and experience – they generally regard this to be inferior. Many don’t realise this culture until they arrive here. It’s commonplace to intentionally remove foreign experience from ones’ CV to avoid prejudice.

This sentiment, coupled with the average Australian’s general distaste of Asian and African migrants, makes it very difficult to have foreign experience valued.

If you doubt this sentiment is real, ask yourself who voted for Pauline Hanson, Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison and likes to spread hate against migrants/international students over the last decade? The Australian people voted for them. Particularly outside of Melbourne and Sydney (the more progressive hubs). And politicians regularly go out of their way to secure that voter base.

Even in the desperate labour shortage triggered after COVID-19, Australia’s underlying bias in this regard hasn’t changed. Meanwhile, countries like the US are offering a completely different landscape of opportunity:

The next generation will grow up without grandparents

One of the main regrets of migrants to Australia is realised once they are settled; when young, skilled migrants finally overcome all the hurdles in the migration journey and settle down to reunite with family.

A few decades ago, when migrants to Australia were primarily European, it was happy days. All the hurdles mentioned above were non-existent. Since the 2000s, after which the majority of migrants were non-Caucasian, Australian public sentiment and government policy suddenly shifted (particularly under Liberal party governments). There is currently no practical permanent pathway to Australia for parents if they want to be re-united with their migrant children or grandchildren. Too many migrants have learned this fact too late.

There are visas touted to do so, but they contain surprises for applicants (for parents) – they’ll be dead by the time the visa is processed.

By design, the parents’ visas available take 30+ years to process! This has been the case for over a decade. There is also a path where migrants’ parents can pay upwards of $100,000 to be reunited with their families – this is promoted by the immigration department as one that will be processed in 48 months (4 years). But in reality, an application today will take about 13 years to be processed. This is extremely misleading and has been so for many years. The government is willingly misleading these families.

This kind of conduct would be highlighted in the media if the general public cared enough. But in Australia, the public sentiment strongly leans against any form of migration. Partly due to a lack of education in the community on how critical migration is for the country.

Regularly Shifting the Goalposts

Finally, there’s the fact that immigration laws and requirements regularly change in Australia – without any compassion for those already in the system for years.

This leads to:

• chaos for migrant lives that have complied with the laws and requirements for years in most cases.
• law changes being applied retrospectively – an extremely harsh move that is rarely practised in any country. But Australia chooses to apply laws this way to migrants. Sometimes eliminating a migrants’ years worth of hard work with one sudden change.
• unclear pathways in Australia for those who intend to go there.

So how is Australia going to attract talent and essential labour in this climate?

When there is a broken immigration system and a general culture that is extremely misinformed, fixing this subject will take a very long time. The 2022 election may be an opportunity to correct some of these mistakes – a fresh slate is critical.

Not just in the name of saving our economy, but to treat this essential community with some humanity.

Additional Resources:

Australia has become a ‘guest worker state’ exploiting temporary visa holders, report reveals | Migration | The Guardian