ACS plans handicaps for ICT migrants
ACS plans handicaps for ICT migrants
Apr 29, 2005: The Australian Computer Society has made a number of heavy recommendations to the Government to make it more difficult for workers from overseas to find jobs in the Australian ICT market.
The ACS president, Mr. Edward Mandla, says that he appreciates that Australia has one of the world's better migration systems, but he complained that there are weaknesses in the system because he believes that it is unfair to Australians.
"We consider Australia's skilled migration programs an essential component of this country's economic growth strategy. However we cannot ignore the evidence, both hard and anecdotal, which points to a significant negative impact of the current skilled migration program on the local ICT labour market - particularly for Australian graduates.
"We also cannot close our eyes to possible abuses by certain sectors of the industry that may disadvantage fair competition."
He acknowledges that there will never be a "one-size-fits-all solution", but he added that the goal of the migration systems is to be flexible to respond to the demands and needs of the time.
"We currently face some oversupply of workers in areas such as programming, computer analysts and graduate level positions - and we need to be able to improve the monitoring of migrant intake in these areas to allow the industry to catch up."
The ACS' policy addresses two migration programmes managed by the Government that it claims impacts on the ICT labour market.
These involve the General Skilled migration Programme, which is part of the Permanent Residence Programme, and the temporary residence programmes (457, 456 and 417 visas).
The ACS recommends that the intake of recent ICT graduates through the General Skilled Migration Programme should be substantially reduced until the market can absorb the level of ICT graduates from Australian universities; the intake to ICT courses stops declining and begins to increase and the unemployment rate for ICT professionals falls to levels in line with that of all other professionals in Australia.
The ACS believes this could be achieved through the development of a new category of occupation for assessing permanent residency applications under the General Skilled Migration Program - Migration Occupations in Oversupply List - with negative points awarded to applications in occupations on this list.
There are also restrictions suggested for 457 visas too, such as employers being required to include a 'no displacement undertaking' as part of their obligations covering the period three months before and after 457 Visa hiring. This also involves the employer making a declaration that in hiring the 457-visa applicant they are not displacing an Australian incumbent.
The Government is planning to formally discuss these recommendations in a few weeks.
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