Much of the reaction to the government’s scrapping of the 457 visa program has been premised on the idea that, welcome or not, the move is largely political and practically inconsequential. Responding to Malcolm Turnbull’s insistence last week that “Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs,” Bill Shorten described the surprise move as a “con job” not a “crackdown”. After all, he said, foreign nurses and mechanics would continue to be able to come here to take local jobs.
The commentariat, by and large, has bought into this line: that is, whatever their merits, the changes will have little practical effect, apart from serving as a red meat offering by Turnbull to the increasingly alienated conservative base of his party. Accordingly, media reports have described the changes as “an illusion act,” “merely symbolic” and “meaningless”.
[Poll Bludger: 457 visa changes are naked populism]
As my partner and I have learned firsthand, however, there’s nothing illusionary about the changes. Just days before the announcement, she secured a study visa on the expectation of finding work and sponsorship after graduation, putting us on the path to eventual permanent residency. Now, despite committing thousands of dollars and significant time and effort to the promise of being able to stay here, we will most likely have to leave Australia at the end of her study. Her area of interest, beauty therapy, is among the several hundred occupational fields to be culled or downgraded on the skilled occupations list, which sets out which jobs firms can sponsor foreign workers to do. With the introduction of new work experience requirements, she won’t be eligible for sponsorship. More importantly, even if she could qualify, we wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the country after four years of employment.
Ultimately, we’ve invested in a future that was closed off with literally no advance notice. Unsurprisingly, our investment feels a lot less worthwhile today than it did two weeks ago. Even at a conservative estimate, there must be thousands of other productive and law-abiding foreign residents in similar situations, many of whom probably have more sympathetic stories than ours.
Nations, of course, are entitled to manage their borders as they choose, and there will no doubt be Australians, especially those anxious about their work prospects, happy to see the back of people like us.
But for all the discussion of labor market needs and skill shortages, there has been remarkably little reflection on the impact of the 457 program’s demise on the pool of future Australians. This is odd for a country built on immigration like Australia, especially when the indications are that the effect of these changes will be profound.
[The 457 ways to keep foreign workers while pandering to racists]
On Monday’s Q&A, assistant minister for immigration and border protection Alex Hawke couched the issue in the usual terms of gaps in the labour market, remarking: “These are temporary visas. These have never been about permanent visas.”
In fact, 457 visa-holders have been one of the main sources of long-term migration, with almost a fifth of the 190,000 permanent residents accepted last year coming via the employer-sponsored route. With the list of occupations under which you can apply for residency slashed from more than 600 to just a third of that, it’s now much less feasible for migrants to settle down after several years of working and contributing to society.
This is the great irony in the debate about “Australian values” and citizenship following the separate announcement, just a day after the 457 bombshell, of tightened rules for naturalisation. While predictably generating more debate about national identity than the visa changes, the tougher citizenship criteria will in fact probably have less of an impact on the future makeup of Australia.
With the 457 visa scrapped, a large swathe of would-be Australians — for most of whom questions of English proficiency are irrelevant, never mind support for FGM or child marriage — will never get a chance to take the citizenship test at all.
Whilst I am sorry for your personal circumstances, please get a grip!
The 457 visa is supposed to be about importing temporary special skills which are NOT available in the current workforce.
Why on earth would we want to give 457 visas to journalists and beauty therapists right now? If the media is to be believed, we have a huge surplus of redundant journalists already…and a trip to any shopping centre will tell you that the ‘beauty industry’ is more than adequately catered for.
Added to this is the fact that there is an avalanche of young Aussies who could do either or both of these jobs if given a chance. Your disappointment is regrettable, but really this is NOT what 457 visas should be about!!
This is as CML states a reality that has faced many people that have come here. But there unfortunately has to be a limit, the current rate of immigration isn’t sustainable, whether those that are caught up in the 457 visa changes, people realistically need to be prepared for such changes in laws. If your partner had been trained to do something that was a shortage within in the country yeah maybe, but we really need to stop & take stock of what the increase not only in birth rate & immigration is doing to our ecological situation.
The thing that bothers me most is that Australia has a fragile ecosystem & I hate to say it but we need to think of the original inhabitants of this land, specifically our flora & fauna, they are suffering under the human influx, it’s time to determine a liveable limit & stick to it.
Huh? With youth unemployment at over 20% and unemployment (including under-employment) generally at between 10 and 20%, why on Earth do we need more beauty therapists? Or anyone?
Why can we not train our desperate youth to do these jobs?
457’s are, and were designed to be an immigration racket. Why a racket? Because without the 200,000 immigrants coming entering each year Australia’s economy would not be “growing.” And this would make our Governments embarrassed for their poor economic management.
Sorry, but we really do not need you.
190,000 permanent resident visas per year is not sustainable for Australia ecologically, nor is it sustainable in terms of available infrastructure, services, and housing. We should be cutting the total migration intake to no more than 100,000 per year, of which 70,000 should be refugee and humanitarian visas. Our ethical priority is to respond to people who are suffering the greatest hardships due to conflicts to which we have contributed. It isn’t ethical to grab the most skilled people from other societies, especially when it isn’t compatible with our ecological constraints and the availability of infrastructure, services, and housing.
You are not the first person to have issues getting a partner into permanent residency, like this is some radically new situation that never happened before the change. The Immigration Dept has always sucked. What tinkering is done to the laws, they will not change the fundamental fact that there is a bureaucracy dedicated to restricting the movement of people in and out of this continent. There will continue to be sad stories of people separated by borders so long as borders exist.
I see, however, that you do not question the borders, insisting that nations are entitled to do this. They aren’t, they drew up these borders when they tore up the previous ones. If we are to call this entitlement, then I guess entitlement grows out of the barrel of a gun.
It’s sad to hear stories like this. My partner had to jump through ridiculous hoops to remain in this country, and he is exactly the sort of good person most Australians would like to see become a citizen. I really do feel we block the wrong people sometimes, and it looks like it’s about to get worse.