Immigration policy
Lost opportunities from under-utilizing immigrants’ skills
Australia is taking in refugees and immigrants, but although there is a national skills gap we are allowing their skills to be wasted:
- 1 in 4 permanent skilled migrants work beneath their skill level;
- only 33 percent of permanent arrivals in Australia have their post-school qualifications recognized;
- almost two thirds of workers on temporary visas are paid less than the minimum standard;
- of those seeking asylum in Australia 57 percent are not allowed to work;
- many immigrants face discrimination in the workplace because of their ethnic backgrounds;
- in all, there is $1.25 billion a year in lost wages every five years resulting from the under-utilization of skilled immigrants: the loss of value-added would be far greater.
These are some of the findings of a report Billion dollar benefit: a roadmap for unleashing the economic potential of refugees and migrants published by Settlement Services International (SSI). It has been prepared in association with other refugee and immigration service providers, advocacy groups, and companies making particular efforts to hire immigrants who may otherwise find it hard to get work matching their skills.
You can hear Violet Roumeliotis of SSI explaining the report on the ABC – Can migrants and refugees help solve the skills shortage?. (7 minutes) She recounts that medical practitioners, dentists and engineers take years to have their qualifications recognized, and many give up, taking on unskilled jobs. She also describes pathways SSI and others have developed to accelerate recognition of qualifications and placement of immigrants into well-paid employment where their potential contribution can be realized. There is also a statement by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles on a program for refugee employment pathways.
Refugees – No one’s left on Nauru but offshore processing remains
The last few refugees have left Nauru – some in transit to other countries (New Zealand, the USA, Canada), some to hotel quarantine, some to hospital, and some to fend for themselves in the Australian community, still without permanent placement.
As Jana Favero of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre explains on ABC Breakfast, Offshore processing is to continue, in spite of Nauru evacuations. The Nauru detention centre will be kept in standby mode, at a cost of $350 million a year. (That’s about ten times the budget of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.) Also there are still 80 refugees in Papua New Guinea, trying to support themselves in the community.
In all little has changed. Some refugees have gained freedom of a sort, but they are thrown back on their own resources and on non-government agencies such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the Asylum Seekers Centre. And as Favero points out the whole process is shrouded in unnecessary secrecy.