The AFR has today revealed widespread fraud and rorting of Australia’s skilled migration program. According to confidential Department of Immigration files:
…A 2010 report states that “evidence uncovered to date indicates that fraud within the general skilled migration program is extensive with estimates at around 90 per cent . . . [or] more than 40,000 suspect visa applications lodged per year for the last three years”.
The report says limited resources restrict the department’s ability to fix the problem…
“Major organisers of fraud on Australia’s immigration and citizenship programs realistically need have little fear of detection, arrest and prosecution”…
So while successive governments have cracked-down hard on illegal immigrants arriving by boat, those arriving by plane have been largely left alone. Talk about a double standard.
Meanwhile, it appears that a significant number of so-called skilled migrants are not actually that skilled after all, placing a question mark over the efficacy of the government’s official immigration program.
Yet despite these flaws, presumably made known to the Government long ago, the Coalition is seeking to loosen requirements on so-called temporary skilled migration (known as 457 visas), by reopening a loophole that would allow employers to hire an unlimited number of temporary foreign workers.
And this loosening of immigration standards is to occur just as the Department of Employment has reported that skills shortages are at an “historic low”, with employers able to “recruit skilled workers without marked difficulty”, and “generally large fields of applicants vying for skilled jobs and employers filling a high proportion of their vacancies”.
The whole visa issue flies in the face of the Government’s war on the unemployed. By opening the system to widespread rorting, and systematically making it easier to import labour from offshore rather than training local workers, locals (particularly the young and less-skilled) are deprived of employment opportunities.
One can only assume that the Government is intent to undermine local workers’ pay and conditions, while at the same time keeping the throttle on population growth and capital’s share of profits.
