Emigrate to australia: skilled workers wanted
Emigrate to Australia where more than one in four workers Down Under were born in another country.
Since 1945, immigrants and their immediate descendants have accounted for over half of Australia’s population growth. The foreign-born population as a share of total population is higher in Australia than in any other OECD country, except for Luxembourg and Switzerland. “Australia is actively looking for skilled workers and will continue to need more workers for many years to come,” says Darrell Todd, founder of thinkingaustralia “Opportunities for migrants are increasing. Contact us today to find out how you could live and work in Australia”. Australia’s visa and immigration policies have changed a lot in recent years. They are now focused on skilled, working holiday and international student visas. Skilled migrants have boosted Australia’s ageing population, improved labour productivity, helped businesses to source skills that are difficult to find at short notice and addressed the needs of regional areas and industries. Unemployment among skilled immigrants is negligible because they tend to be employed in high-income occupations and contribute more to government revenue through taxation than they take through public services and benefits. Just as a steady inflow of immigrants has eased Australia’s shift from a manufacturing to a services economy, they will play an important role in helping Aussie businesses to innovate in the face of intensified global competition and technological change. Article Source: thinkingaustralia |
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Many of us who speak and write about immigration — say, through the prism of culture, national security, politics or economics — are trapped in outdated ways of thinking. No doubt the past refuses to ease its grip on some: the sepia image of settlers, chosen by an Australian official abroad, with expectant eyes cast on their new home as they arrive by air or sea. This is my family’s postwar migration story; my parents were refugees from Croatia, my wife’s economic aspirants from Italy. Today, we glimpse on our personal screens a wild world awash in people; globalisation means the free flow of goods, capital, digital manias, foul viruses and, of course, labour. We look, but not too hard, at our messy globe, with perhaps 50 million displaced people, and still find solace in the echo of John Howard’s 2001 declaration: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” The collective us holds fast to the efficiency of border control, a migrant intake that we turn on and off like a tap and a queue of patient, deserving refugees waiting for a rich country like our own to give them the nod. We think of our homeland as an open, fair country, welcoming those we have chosen to join us. Overwhelmingly, it is, but the picture is changing before our eyes. When you order a wood-fired pizza in inner Sydney or Melbourne, for instance, you trigger an Italian emigre supply chain: a waitress from Rome, a dough and oven man from Naples, a barista trained in Bari and a cashier from the Veneto. Your breakfast strawberries and blueberries are picked by a German holidaymaker and her Swedish boyfriend, your chicken processed by a Taiwanese subcontracted ‘‘backpacker’’. Perhaps half the students in your daughter’s Accounting 101 lecture are foreigners. There seem to be Kiwis everywhere when you hit the Gold Coast’s theme parks and shopping strips. How come all the IT guys on that renewal project are Indians on 457 visas? The way we now ‘‘do’’ migration has changed. As Mike Pezzullo, secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the son of Italian migrants, tells it, “as with all revolutions in paradigms of thought and practice, a new reality has been steadily emerging, in the shadows of that which we used to do, and which is fixed in collective memory”. The task at the border, Pezzullo told his officials last year on Australia Day, was akin to gatekeeping, to “act as the open conduits of Australia’s engagement with the world around us”. As journalist Peter Mares details in Not Quite Australian, our nation has made a permanent shift to temporary migration and it is transforming us in fundamental and, often, perverse and worrying ways. “Of course, permanent settlement continues,” he writes, “but it is now part of a hybrid system, intricately and intimately entwined with a much larger program of temporary entry, which serves as the primary gateway to establishing a life in Australia. “What is more, we have moved from a permanent migration intake that was centrally planned and tightly controlled by government, to a temporary-migration regime that is flexible and responsive. Rather than setting targets, government manages flows: migration numbers are largely driven by employers’ demand for skilled workers, by the desires of backpackers to travel and work here, and by the capacity of Australian tertiary institutions to attract international enrolments.” Mares estimates there are more than one million long-term but temporary migrants. A decade ago there may have been only 250,000. Most ‘‘new’’ settlers are actually ‘‘old’’ temporary migrants. This hybrid migration model — try before you buy — may be more efficient than the mass migration model for the employment needs of the economy. As labour economist Bob Gregory has shown, the employment outcomes for recent two-step permanent migrants have been phenomenal. In one case, Mares reports a Greek tourist learns English, pays for a TAFE course in aged care and is sponsored for a 457 temporary work visa by a nursing home provider. “I call it pay-as-you-go migration,” says the woman’s boss. Flexible, skills-driven, efficient, responsive, business and consumer friendly, what’s not to love about the Aussie hybrid model? Yet, as Mares explains, our approach to migration has evolved so rapidly — a fusion of allied labour, tourism and education policies — we barely understand how the system functions, the effect it is having on institutions and the damage it is doing to the people we want, who live visa to visa like couch surfers, but are not welcome as full participants in our society. Mares focuses on those who don’t take the second step and are indefinitely or permanently temporary: disposable workers locked forever in the status of ‘‘not quite Australian’’. They are vulnerable to exploitation and sinking into bureaucratic abysses: Mares compiles compelling case studies — students, refugees on temporary protection visas, backpackers, 457 visa workers, marooned and disenfranchised Kiwis — to add to the toll of abuses uncovered by investigative journalists, such as Adele Ferguson’s expose of 7-Eleven’s sins. Over two decades, Mares has made this cold new territory his own by documenting with clear eyes, an open mind and persistence a Kafkaesque world of disrupted lives and ad hoc bureaucracy. As a former immigration official told the author: “The department is basically making shit up as they go along.” Mares argues the status of temporary migrants is akin to the metics of ancient Athens, foreigners allowed to work and conduct business. Although they enjoyed more freedom than slaves, metics were excluded from membership of the polis and its decision-making; they were required to join in the defence of the city but excluded from the distribution of corn. Again, so what? The numbers aren’t high (5 per cent of the population) and, as I once heard a Belgian living in Brittany say about North African migrants to France, “Nobody asked them to come.” It’s a no-promises deal. But Mares argues even temporary migration is more than a transaction. “The longer a migrant stays in the country, the more the contractual nature of the original arrangement recedes into the background and the more the sense of attachment and engagement with the host nation tends to grow.” Mares believes our policymakers are kidding themselves if they think the expansion of various forms of temporary migration can be neatly kept in a separate box from questions of settlement, residency, citizenship, rights and obligation.
He poses two key questions. First, how long is it reasonable for a migrant to live here without being accepted as an Australian? Mares argues anyone who has lived in Australia with work rights for eight years should qualify for permanent residence; a child who arrives at age 12 or younger qualifies when they turn 18. Second, what sort of country do we want to be? Are we content to allow what political theorist Michael Walzer identified as “a little tyranny” to flourish and endure, akin to well-off families with live-in servants. To get the discussion going, Mares draws a line of no more than 10 per cent of the population as temporary. Like Melville’s Redburn (also the title of the American author’s 1849 partly autobiographical novel about seafaring), who contemplates improvements to the miserable lot of Irish migrants in steerage, Mares sees himself as interested in practical politics and better outcomes. He believes these proposals, and several others aimed at 457 visa holders, seasonal workers, backpackers and international students would swing the pendulum back towards an assumption of migration-as-settlement as the basis for a citizenship-based multicultural society, the kind Malcolm Fraser envisaged when he began laying out its principles 35 years ago. Mares is indefatigable in his data gathering and scrupulously even-handed in weighing the evidence. He strikes an exquisite balance between the personal and scholarly, the humane and tough-mindedness. Article Via Source
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One of Australia’s most successful immigrants, businessman Frank Lowy, has warned that immigration must be controlled by the government rather than being a reaction to global upheavals. Mr Lowy, a Holocaust survivor who founded the $22 billion Westfield shopping empire after emigrating to Australia as a 21-year-old, made the remarks about immigration amid a growing political debate triggered by Islamic extremism and international terrorist attacks. “Australia needs immigrants, it has good natural growth, but immigrants at the time the Australian government decides to have them — not because there are major disturbances in other parts of the world,” Mr Lowy said. “A government needs to be in control of its borders.” Mr Lowy, whose global shopping centre group is building a $1.4 billion mall at the World Trade Centre in New York, the site of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack, acknowledged the humanitarian challenges facing the world. “It is up to the country to decide how many immigrants it wants to absorb at any particular time,’’ he said. “The humanitarian issue is a separate issue from the immigration issues. “There are many disturbances around the world. Immigration is one aspect. Big countries that are immigrant countries like Australia need a bigger population.” Mr Lowy, who travels widely as the Westfield chairman, said people must look to the future and not be cowed by the acts of terror around the world. “It is incumbent on us to resist and to be forward looking, not to let these terrorist activities defeat us in any way,” he said. “I worry for everybody, that most parts of the world have become insecure. “People walking the streets in France on holiday, somebody in Munich having a good time in a coffee shop or in America at the World Trade Centre. This is not a shopping centre problem, it’s a world problem, and we need to be able to manage ourselves in those circumstances.” Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, a migrant from Belgium, said this morning that Mr Lowy was “right” and the government “must be in charge” of Australia’s borders. “Immigration has played a very important role, of course, to our success as a nation … but, as a government, people expect us to determine who can come to Australia, the circumstances in which they come, they expect us to ensure that appropriate checks and balances are in place and administered effectively,” Senator Cormann told Sky News today. “There is no doubt that strong levels of migration for many many, decades indeed, for most of or our whole existence as a nation has been central to our economic success – there’s no doubt about that.” Mr Lowy was a boy in Hungary when his father Hugo was taken by the Nazis in 1944. He hid with his mother and spent the war evading capture and outwitting the Gestapo and anti-Semitic street gangs. He went to Israel in 1946 and then came to Australia in 1952, building his first shopping centre in Sydney’s Blacktown in 1959. It was not until more than 30 years later that Mr Lowy learned that his father had been beaten to death after he got off a train at Auschwitz in April 1944. Mr Lowy’s remarks come as analysis by The Australian shows the government is pursuing a strategy that makes it difficult for large numbers of Muslims from the Middle East to settle here. It is an unintended consequence of a migration policy that is focused on attracting skilled and family reunion migrants from countries such as India (now Australia’s No 1 source of permanent migrants, with 34,874 arrivals last year) and China (27,874).
The strategy, which both major parties insist is not deliberate as prospective migrants are not asked for their religion, means that while Islam was once the fastest growing religion in Australia, there are now more Buddhists (2.5 per cent of the population) than there are Muslims (2.2 per cent), and the Hindus are rapidly catching up. “There are officials and politicians who openly favour Christians including Orthodox Christians (and Jewish migrants over Muslims),” one of Australia’s eminent scholars on immigration, James Jupp of the Australian National University, said. Last year, the Abbott government undertook to permanently resettle 12,000 refugees from Syria, with a focus to be given to taking in persecuted religious minorities. In his interview with The Australian, Mr Lowy acknowledged the scale of the global terror threat, noting no one was immune. “We do whatever is absolutely possible to secure our centres,” he said.“I suppose all organisations do. We need to get on with life, and we do.” Mr Lowy will fly to New York next month for the opening of the shopping centre which sits below the rebuilt World Trade towers, the 9/11 Memorial and architect Santiago Calatrava’s soaring glass Oculus which forms the roof of the mall. About 300,000 people a day will walk through the new centre, built where 13 subway trains and New York’s PATH trains converge in Lower Manhattan. “We took possession (of the World Trade Centre site), and of course two months later the disaster happened,” Mr Lowy said of 2001 when the company lost a senior executive in the carnage of the September 11 attack. “This has special meaning because of the disaster and all the people and the organisations that were involved and their combined resources.” Westfield controls some landmark international properties, including Westfield London, Stratford City in Britain and Century City in Los Angeles, and is building a big mall in Milan. Mr Lowy said the instability caused by the Brexit and the US elections were shorter term and unlikely to affect the business. “In my experience in business, there have been ups and downs politically, there have been ups and downs economically, there have been quite a few financial crashes, but we plough on. “Where there are people, there are shoppers. Where there are shoppers, people will shop at the best place they can get to,” Mr Lowy said, noting that the mammoth Westfield London was opened in 2008 as the global financial crisis bit. Article Via Source Up to 4.6 million jobs may be at risk if Australia does not prepare its workforce for the digital future, a discussion paper has warned. The paper, Economy in Transition – Startups, innovation and a workforce for the future, was released on Thursday by StartupAUS, the national start-up advocacy group. The paper highlights the impact technological change is having on the workforce, but also the need for innovation and start-up policies to capitalise on new opportunities, StartupAUS CEO Alex McCauley said. "There's a transition coming," he said. "We have the opportunity to be on the leading edge of that, and for those 4.6 million jobs that are made obsolete to turn into a bigger number of new, forward-looking jobs. There is a whole lot on offer with this next wave of technology if we take the right steps and get behind the right sorts of policies." The paper, produced with global networking firm LinkedIn and Sydney start-ups Expert360 and CodeCamp, suggests few jobs will be entirely immune to the impacts of technology. Those most at risk from automation are in accommodation and food services, transportation and warehousing, retail, manufacturing and administrative and support services; jobs least affected will involve high levels of human creativity or social intelligence. According to LinkedIn data, 16 of the 20 most in-demand skills in Australia are technology related, and there will be a growing demand for workers with a combination of entrepreneurial, STEM, creative, and social skills. Bridget Loudon, CEO of Expert360, said the paper revealed the growing need for independent work and specialist freelancers in an "on-demand economy". In a competitive global landscape, businesses "need to be able to tap into skills quickly", she said. "Now technology allows people to connect in real time for work as they need it. Companies can get people on demand and people can get work on demand. "There's so many more jobs and projects in the system because companies realise they can get people [as they need them]," she said. "We're going to see that type of role explode in the Australian economy."
Mr McCauley said every job in high-growth tech companies generated as many as five tangential jobs. "Technology has tended to create more jobs than it destroyed," he said. Australia had to nurture its own talent by teaching digital literacy and STEM subjects in school, he said, "but in the meantime we need to import talent and make Australia a magnet for some of the best technical and entrepreneurial talent around the world." The paper identifies the need for specialised immigration to inject skills into the workforce and innovation hubs to attract the best talent. In his first speech as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull declared that Australia "has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative". The Compass 2015 Global Start-up Ecosystem Ranking, which examines funding, market reach, talent pools and experience, included only one Australian entry in the top 20 centres, with Sydney ranked 16th. Article Via Source Doctors working in immigration detention are challenging the government’s contentious Border Force Act in the high court for their right to speak out publicly on behalf of the refugees and asylum seekers they treat. Lawyers from the Fitzroy Legal Service, working on behalf of Doctors 4 Refugees, will file a case in the high court Wednesday morning, challenging section 42 – the secrecy provision – of the Border Force Act. Section 42 carries a two-year jail term for any “entrusted person” – anybody who works within the immigration detention system – who makes an “unauthorised disclosure” about conditions in the camps. The controversial legislation has compromised, and potentially criminalised, the actions of doctors who were only seeking to advance their patients’ interests, the convenor of Doctors 4 Refugees, Dr Barri Phatarfod, told the Guardian. “Doctors are obliged to put their patient’s interests above all other interests and to advocate for public health,” she said. “No one should expect any less from their doctor, or from the medical profession as a whole.” The Medical Board of Australia’s code of conductcontains a health advocacy clause, which requires doctors to “protect and advance the health and wellbeing of individual patients, communities and populations”. Phatarfod said doctors felt unable to reconcile their professional obligations with the constrictions of the Border Force Act and argued the government should not override doctors’ responsibility in order to keep the reality of detention hidden from the Australian public. “There should be no gagging of freedom of speech in a democracy,” she said. “The government has locked up vulnerable patients on remote islands, prevented journalists from reporting on conditions that have been implicated in at least three deaths and removed workers from the charity group Save the Children in the context of reports of rampant and shocking sexual abuse. Australians have a right to know the damage that is being inflicted in their name on innocent people, including children.” Phatarfod said the Border Force Act even affected doctors ostensibly uninvolved in the immigration detention system. Asylum seekers in detention on mainland Australia were often taken to public hospitals for treatment and doctors who saw them became entrusted persons under the act. Phatarfod said one doctor, working in a major teaching hospital in an Australian capital, had approached Doctors 4 Refugees after a patient he referred for further treatment and tests had not attended appointments. The doctor, who hadn’t known the patient was an asylum seeker, subsequently discovered the patient had been suddenly been moved to Christmas Island, and treatment discontinued, against the doctor’s clinical advice. There is no explicit protection for the freedom of expression – akin to the American first amendment – in the Australian constitution. However, the high court has, in several cases, held that an implied freedom of political communication exists as an integral part of the system of representative democracy created by the constitution. The court has said the freedom of political communication acts as a freedom from government restraint, rather than as a right conferred directly on individuals. The high court challenge will be led by Ron Merkel QC. Meghan Fitzgerald from Fitzroy Legal Service said the case would ask the court to consider “whether this piece of legislation inappropriately curtails people’s freedom to participate in political communication around conditions and care in detention”. “The case could not be more important,” she said. “We are seeking a ruling from the highest court in Australia to determine whether doctors and nurses are allowed to advocate in the interests of their patients.” Medical professionals have consistently been at the forefront of public condemnation of Australia’s onshore and offshore immigration detention regime. Last month the traumatologist and psychologist Paul Stevenson told the Guardian that, in 40 years in working with the victims of terrorist attacks and natural disasters, the conditions in Nauru and Manus detention camps were the worst “atrocity” he had ever seen. Previously, the chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers in detention on Manus and Nauru, Dr Peter Young, said the camps were “inherently toxic” and that the immigration department deliberately harmed vulnerable detainees in a process akin to torture. When an 12-month-old baby girl – given the pseudonym Asha – was transferred from the Nauru detention centre to Brisbane for an acute medical condition, doctors in Australia refused to discharge her from hospital once she had been treated because, they argued, the island was not safe for her. The doctors’ stance led to a standoff and a week-long vigil at the hospital, before the government relented and allowed Asha to live in the community in Australia. Both the Australian Medical Association and the World Medical Association have lobbied the government to wind back the Border Force Act secrecy provision.
But the government has consistently argued that the secrecy clause in the Border Force Act would not see doctors charged for speaking out public about conditions in detention. No one has yet been prosecuted under the Border Force Act, though some medical professionals have been investigated by the Australian federal police at the government’s insistence, including having their phone records accessed. Others have been summarily sacked for voicing concerns publicly. Anecdotally, the law has had a chilling effect on people being prepared to speak out. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said when the act was introduced last year: “The airing of general claims about conditions in immigration facilities will not breach the ABF Act … the public can be assured that it will not prevent people from speaking out about conditions in immigration detention facilities.” Article Via Source A federal proposal to allow businesses to import specialist workers for up to a year without getting a 457 visa has been abandoned as the government focuses on other options to overhaul skilled migration visas to boost competitiveness. Immigration Department reforms are now centred on a new simplified system that deregulates visa requirements, improves the process for applying for visas, and reduces overlapping visa pathways. But The Australian understands that a controversial “short-term mobility visa”, flagged in a December 2014 Immigration Department proposal paper, is no longer on the table. Unions had opposed the visa, fearing it cut protections for workers and allow employers to bypass labour market testing and English language proficiency requirements. Business groups had welcomed the proposal as allowing them to avoid bottlenecks in getting visas. However, department officials are focused on reforms to simplify the framework for getting the visas. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said his department had done a “significant” amount of consultation on “developing options to reform the skilled visa system to ensure that it is best placed to support Australia’s economic future”. “The government understands that the current skilled migration and temporary activity visa programs are difficult to navigate,” Mr Dutton said. “We are committed to smarter regulation in this area, improving integrity in our visa programs and increasing the contribution of skilled migration to Australia’s productivity and economy.” The department has told a Productivity Commission inquiry into migration that it was working on “significant” reform of the skilled migration and temporary activity visas that are “expected to improve Australia’s competitiveness and ability to attract highly skilled migrants”. The new framework includes visa access for entrepreneurs, a move in line with Malcolm Turnbull’s promise of an innovation boom through a $1 billion blueprint that encourages highly skilled workers to travel to Australia.
It will also target graduates in fields where a future need for workers has been identified and simplify the processes for companies sponsoring workers. “Collectively, these reforms will increase the attractiveness of each visa within the framework, which will in turn enhance Australia’s ability to attract highly skilled migrants,” the department has told the Productivity Commission in a written submission. The reforms are expected to be implemented in three stages from July. The review started in September 2014. However, Mr Dutton said that “at this stage no final decision” has been made on the visa framework and settings that would be rolled out. Article Via Source Introduction to Australian Immigration: Everyone wishes to move to Australia. Australian immigration helps hundreds of people to immigrate to Australia every year. Immigration happens when a state needs professionals against resources. Australia is rich in resources and so it requires professionals and workers to come from different countries and work here. Many different opportunities have always been provided by Australia all around the globe. Different visa options suit different sort of people and they allow them to move to Australia. These visa plans include business visa, , job visa, student visa, state visa,skilled immigration etc. Subclass 189 is one of the types of Australian immigration visa. Individual can move to other place as either a family member or on the behalf of state. That state or family bears all of its expenses. In case, family or state is not sponsoring, he will have to move on its own. He will make money by working there. Anyone holding subclass 189 will live in Australia permanently and can work there to live his life. Most of the times, only individual uses to move to Australia through this visa system but sometimes, his family member can accompany him. All those skilled workers who don’t find any job in their country, this visa subclass is an awesome opportunity as it helps you to be the permanent resident of Australia. How to apply for Australian Immigration: To apply for the subclass 189, these are the important details to be followed:
Advantages of Subclass 189: All the holders of Subclass 189 will be enjoying all of these advantages.
Subclass 189 processing time:
In subclass 189 visa program, sometime is required to get complete..It can even take up to some months. Actually, besides this, there are various different factors on which it is dependent. Verification of different documents and point test matter a lot. Priority list also matters sometimes. Australian Immigration Processing time is different for different categories. Candidates recommended by state are given the first priority. So in this way, processing time is different for all the categories. Candidates doing all this on their own come under subclass 189.Processing time of subclass 189 is more than any other subclass. There is more likely a chance that you might be directed to stage one if there is any issue in your documents. Australia’s immigration department failed to appropriately oversee the multinational that provides healthcare for asylum seekers and was unable to cope with the “commercially aggressive practices” that led to numerous failures to meet medical benchmarks, a series of damning internal reviews have found. The findings substantiated a number of key allegations published by Guardian Australia in July 2015 about the relationship between International Health and Medical Services and the immigration department. Leaked documents showed IHMS failed to meet medical targets, deliberately included incorrect data in reports and admitted it was “inevitable” fraud would occur as it tried to meet government standards. The documents also revealed that IHMS failed to undertake working with children checks and police checks on Manus Island. Three reviews were commissioned by the immigration department to examine the allegations. Two were internal and one was to be conducted by KPMG. IHMS, a subsidiary of the global healthcare giant International SOS, has received more than $1.6bn in government funding to provide asylum seeker healthcare in Australia and on Manus Island and Nauru. The detention assurance review team report, released under freedom of information, which drew together findings from the KPMG audit and the first initial internal audit, said: “Through the review processes, both internal and external reviews agree that IHMS took an approach of seeking to maximise profits, including through actively reducing opportunities for the department to seek contract abatements.” It later continued: “There is a fundamental conflict between contractual and clinical objectives where profit and cost dictate clinical operations.” The review acknowledges that the series of contracts set up to manage IHMS were simply unable to adequately meet the expansion of asylum seeker health services needed as the detention population increased over the past five years. “The department acknowledges that the existing contract was not designed for this volume and that the service delivery and staffing models for IHMS were subsequently modified to meet demand faster than good governance would normally allow,” the review said. The reviews break the allegations raised in the reports down into eight distinct issues. Of the most serious allegations surrounding the high risk of systemic fraud within IHMS, the reviews stated that they did not identify evidence of widespread fraud. They said the slide published by Guardian Australia containing this allegation was “aimed at educating the audience on the contractual performance requirements, the abatements scheme”. International SOS declined to provide a separate response. The reviews also examined allegations that personal medical records of asylum seekers had been handed over by IHMS to the immigration department for “political purposes” and potentially in breach of privacy laws. The reviews indicated they did not believe there had been a breach of Australia’s privacy laws but they contained an admission that personal data is routinely handed over to the foreign governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. “The department has confirmed that it is not inappropriate for medical information to be provided to foreign governments where transfers are being made offshore, as it is necessary to provide a certain level of disclosure to the host country,” the KPMG review said. It also disclosed that IHMS believed that it did not even need a consent form from asylum seekers to be able to hand over personal medical information to the department. The internal review noted one instance of inappropriate access by a state office monitoring team but said it was “rapidly resolved”. The immigration department has selectively redacted the most critical parts of the reviews. In the areas where allegations where substantiated – such as surrounding the failure to undertake working with children checks on Christmas Island and police checks on Manus Island and deliberately misreporting incident data – the department has blocked release of information. The basis for this decision is that it would reveal trade secrets and would be considered “deliberative” material. A department spokesman said: “Some of the redacted information details unsubstantiated allegations against IHMS. Where such allegations are not supported by evidence it would be inappropriate for the department to release them.” KPMG’s review was not a detailed audit of the materials or documents. It undertook some interviews and reviewed some information but the report emphasised it was not a “detailed investigation” and that it had “not comprehensively examined all available material.” The delivery of asylum seeker healthcare and IHMS’s role in the delivery of the contract is also the subject of a sweeping audit currently being undertaken by the Australian National Audit Office. The findings are scheduled to be tabled in June 2015. There are also several individual and class action claims against the Australian government by asylum seekers over alleged medical negligence. Some of the allegations surrounding IHMS were also referred to the Australian federal police for investigation by the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young. An investigation was initiated by the AFP but was later closed. A spokeswoman for the AFP said: “The AFP can confirm it received a referral in relation to this matter on 30 July 2015. “The matter was accepted for investigation, however there was insufficient evidence to establish any criminal offences and the matter was finalised.” Article Via Source Do you want to migrate to Australia? Are you an experienced skilled tradesman or tradeswoman looking for a job in the Australian construction industry? Experienced tradesmen and women are in demand in a number of key construction jobs in Queensland and New South Wales. Tradesmen from the UK are in particularly high demand. You can apply for entry on the basis of a skilled nominated 190 subclass visa or skilled independent subclass visa 189 which will give you Australian permanent residence. In some cases the Australian temporary work subclass 457 visa may also be worth considering. Processing times for skilled immigration visas can be as little as three to six months. It could be even less than that for 457 temporary work visas. There are currently Australian employers looking for prospective immigrants in the following occupations:
We work together with a skills assessment organisation in London that can quickly provide a skills assessment and help with jobs for tradespeople for those interested in immigration to Australia. We are including details below of some of the more popular skilled immigration visa categories: Australian Skilled nominated Subclass 190 Visa This visa is a permanent skilled immigration visa which requires nomination by a State or territory Government Agency in Australia. You must be under the age of 50 and possess a relevant occupational skills assessment and must gain at least sixty points in the points test. Australian Skilled Independent Visa Subclass 189 Subclass 189 Visas are for migrants to Australia who have not been sponsored by a State or Government Agency or family or employer. You need to be under the age of 50 and possess a suitable skills assessment. You need to be competent in the English language and gain sixty points under the points test. To apply under Visa Subclass 189 you will need to submit an expression of interest and be invited to apply by SkillSelect. Australian Skilled Temporary Work Visa Subclass 457
The employer needs to be an approved sponsor with Australian immigration and then sponsor the overseas employee for the particular position. The 457 visa is to employ skilled workers from abroad for period of up to four years. Article Via Source TV host Sonia Kruger calls for end to Muslim migration to Australia The TV presenter Sonia Kruger has called for an end to Muslim immigration to Australia, saying she agrees with the US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s stance on immigration. The host of Channel Nine’s The Voice and Today Extra was discussing the massacre in Nice when she said she agreed with the views expressed by the Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt, who argued in a column “the more Muslims we import, the more danger we are in”. “Personally I think Andrew Bolt has a point here,” Kruger said to Today’s Lisa Wilkinson on Monday. “There is a correlation between the number of people in a country who are Muslim and the number of terrorist attacks. “I have a lot of very good friends who are Muslim, who are peace-loving, who are beautiful people, but there are fanatics. “Personally, I would like to see it stop now for Australia. I want to feel safe and I want to see freedom of speech.” Kruger was backed by Channel Nine which released a statement citing “freedom of speech”. “Nine’s view is that we believe in freedom of speech and the Mixed Grill segment on the Today show is a place where that happens. Sonia, [and the other presenters] David and Lisa each expressed a variety of opinions on the show this morning.” Kruger repeated Bolt’s claim in his Monday column, Muslim migration in France opens door to terror, and said that Japan didn’t have many Muslims migrants so it had no terrorist attacks. “I want to feel safe, as all of our citizens do when they go out to celebrate Australia Day, and I’d like to see freedom of speech,” Kruger said. But her remarks were challenged by her Today Extra co-host, David Campbell, who interjected: “I’d like to see freedom of religion as well, as well as freedom of speech. They both go hand in hand.”
Campbell, who is also a singer and the son of rock singer Jimmy Barnes, said of Bolt’s piece: “This sort of article breeds hate.” But Kruger said victims of the Nice attacks would agree with her. “I would venture that if you spoke to the parents of those children killed in Nice, they would be of the same opinion.” When she came off air Kruger posted a statement on Twitter, saying that, as a mother, she felt it was vital such issues should be discussed in a democratic society. Article Via Source There is a perpetual wave of migration underway in Asia, much of it through unauthorised channels and often with grave results for both migrants and the broader society of host countries. Human security issues, which relate to people rather than artificial borders created by nation states, merit serious consideration by policy-makers. As discussed in parts 1 and 2 of this series, economic insecurity is driving many people out of their country of origin in search of better employment opportunities. This applies to both temporary and permanent, skilled and low-skilled migrants. Many skilled migrants to Australia are educated and globalised Asians. The top two source countries for Australia’s point-based (skilled) migration program are India and China, followed by other Asian nations including Pakistan, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Malaysia (see table below). These are mostly developing countries and Australia is in a global race for their talent. While many skilled migrants come to Australia, others with less education and fewer skills seek employment in neighbouring countries in Asia. Not everyone is able to migrate, even if their economic security is in danger; many simply don’t have the means to leave their country. Education, although not the only factor, is considered most significant in migrants’ decision to move to another country. The more educated and self-empowered people are, the more likely they are to be able to migrate to an economically secure place. Skilled Asians from developing countries know, through education and social networks, that in Australia they are likely to find economic survival and prosperity. However most low-skilled Asian migrant workers migrate within Asia. The list is a long one: Cambodian and Myanmar workers in Thailand; Bangladeshi workers in Japan; Philippines and Indonesian workers in Hong Kong; mainland Chinese and Malaysians in Singapore. Some of them breach immigration rules, knowingly or unknowingly, and put their personal security in danger. Cambodian seasonal workers, for example, cross the border to Thailand without travel documents. In 2014, more than 220,000 undocumented migrants reportedly migrated back to Cambodia in fear of the Thai military junta’s mass deportation of irregular migrants. In Malaysia around 1000 migrant workers were arrested in 2013 for their unlawful residential status. There are thought to be two million irregular migrants in Malaysia. These undocumented economic migrants live with a constant fear of being arbitrarily arrested, detained or deported. Among these undocumented labour migrants, however, it's important to realise there are both victims and perpetrators. Many young women and children from poor rural areas in Asia are targets for sexual, labour and other types of exploitation by human traffickers. NGOs report that women from North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia are sold to mainland China for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude. Women from the Philippines and Indonesia are going to Hong Kong and Singapore to work as domestic workers. As they work in private homes, it is difficult for authorities to monitor working conditions and domestic workers are often neglected. People are also trafficked through commercially arranged marriages. South Korean men use online matchmaking agencies to arrange marriages with young Vietnamese or Cambodian women. Once married, the men often confiscate their wives' passports and confine them to home for domestic work. Some are physically abused and several young Vietnamese are known to have been killed by their mentally-ill husbands. Such acts lead to anger among migrants' compatriots and can create diplomatic tensions between sending and receiving countries. Human trafficking in the fishing and seafood industry in Southeast Asia is another example of modern-day slavery. Fishermen are especially vulnerable to exploitation as their movements are restricted in boats at sea. Physical abuse, inadequate working and living conditions, unpaid salaries, and the lack of any avenue for complaint are widespread. Australia is connected to a degree to these exploitative practices in seafood industries as it is the fourth largest consumer of seafood from Thailand where forced labour by trafficked persons takes place. There is little reliable data on human trafficking in Australia. Project Respect estimates up to 1000 victims are currently under debt bondage, mostly from China, South Korea and Thailand. The Australian government has been criticised as it does not offer aid unless the victims assist the investigation and subsequent prosecution processes. In 2010, the University of Queensland Human Trafficking Working Group undertook a comprehensive research project on child trafficking and inter-country adoptions in Australia and identified problems with forced marriages and international adoption.
Economic insecurity in home countries will continue to drive transnational migration. Migrants seek both regular and irregular routes to a safer place. When there is no alternative to dangerous illegal channels, the human security of not just the migrants themselves but also that of hosting populations can be in danger. When they are not protected by respective states, irregular migrants can create human insecurities in all seven pillars, defined by the United Nations Development Programme in 1994 and explained in part 1 of this series. These are personal, community, political, economic, food, health and environment securities (see below for more details on human security). When not protected adequately by respective states and collectively by the international community, human insecurities through migration — both regular and irregular — can lead to racism, extremism, illicit economic activities, other criminal behaviour, and health and environmental problems. Such results, which would be of great concern to ordinary people, are overlooked when the migration debate is framed solely in terms of abstract ideas around national security. Article Via Source |
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October 2016
CategoriesGovt to review immigration numbers
The Immigration Minister says the government will review the number of immigrants entering the country, but he does not expect the policy to change.
A record 69,000 people settled in New Zealand in the year to July. That broke a run of consecutive monthly gains that lasted 23 months and reached a high of 69,100. On a monthly basis, the number of people coming to live in New Zealand, or New Zealanders returning home fell slightly to 5600. The minister, Michael Woodhouse, told TVNZ's Q + A programme this morning the numbers for the new residents programme would be reviewed by Cabinet in the next month or so. At present it is set between 45,000 and 50,000. The planning range is set over a two-year period, which expired at the end of June. Mr Woodhouse said in most of the past 10 years there had been considerably fewer new residents than the current number. Labour Party leader Andrew Little had previously said there was a mismatch between immigration and labour market needs with workers being brought in from overseas to fill jobs while thousands of New Zealand labourers were unemployed. Real estate company Harcourts, meanwhile, blamed record immigration and poor planning for the country's housing shortage. Article Source: radionz |