Skilled Immigration Policy in Australia

Discuss about the Social Policy Analysis for Skilled Immigration Policy.

Immigration becomes a great concern of Australian government. It has been received that lower immigration level is good for the future citizenship in Australia. In the recent years, Australian government has adopted various policies to decrease the immigration rate in Australia (Ueffing, Rowe & Mulder, 2015). However, the government also focuses on skilled immigrants and their development in Australia besides reducing permanent residency scope of the immigrants in Australia. This study deals with current immigration policy in Australia and its effect on the immigrants as well as on the country.

One of the major immigration policies of Australian government is the skilled immigration policy. This policy was introduced in 2016. It has been received that Australia is a popular destination of the skilled migrants. Almost 128, 500 places are available in Australia to carry out the skilled immigration program (Hartley & Pedersen, 2015). The purpose of this policy is to give the scope to the skilled immigrants to gain a permanent visa by using their qualification (Boucher & Cerna, 2014). According to this policy, the immigrants should have work experience, quality, and language ability to meet the immigration requirements in Australia. The main objective of this policy is to boost the Australian economy. Another social policy is introduced by the Australian government in the year 2018 to reduce the number of immigration.

Australian government has taken new PR (Permanent Residency Visa) visa policy to restrict the immigrants to get permanent residency in Australia. This policy highlights replacement of 457 with temporary skill shortage visa. This policy also called temporary skill shortage visa policy (TSS) (Canetti, Snider, Pedersen & Hall, 2016). The main aim of this policy is to replace the huge number of immigrants with skilled immigrants. This visa policy has two aspects one is short-term stream and other is the medium-term stream. However, the short-term stream allows the immigrants to stay for two years in Australia. On the other hand, the long-term stream allows the immigrants to stay in Australia for four years. Therefore, in the year 2017 Australian government has introduced the special humanitarian program, which is also considered as the immigration policy in Australia. According to this policy, the applicants should meet the resettlement criteria of Australian government to stay in Australia. This policy aims to give permanent residency to the migrants in Australia. In the year 2015 and 2016 Australian government has given 190,000 places for permanent migrations. Among these places, 128,550 places are allocated for the skilled migrants (Aph.gov.au, 2014). Hence, the humanitarian policy provides a permanent visa to the migrants who have humanitarian needs. From this above discussion, it has been addressed that the current three immigration policies of Australian government mainly focus on the skilled immigrants to maximize the economy of Australia.

TSS Visa Policy in Australia

In order to determine the policies, it is important to measure the effectiveness of the policy against the objectives. The first policy shows immigration policy shows the skill immigration policy in Australia. This policy aims to boost the economy of Australia. It has been observed that introduction of this policy helped the government to strengthen the economy by giving entry to the skilled immigrants (Akbari & MacDonald, 2014). The involvement of the skilled immigrants in various business sectors maximizes the financial growth in Australia. On the other hand, the business owners invest less in skilled immigrants and get more outcomes. Therefore TSS visa policy enables the government to hire skilled candidate but they do not get permanent residency in Australia. This reduces the number of immigrants in Australia. Humanitarian policy also helps Australian government to protect the skilled migrants in their country and give them permanent residency (Dobrowolsky, 2016). This is helpful to increase the number of skilled workers in Australia.

 White policy or immigrant restriction policy is an old policy of Australian government. This policy restricted the immigrant entry in Australia. Hence, the new three immigrant policies of Australian government are best compared to white policy. However, the previous policies restricted the entry of non-white people as a result Australian government lost the skilled workers (Homeaffairs.gov.au, 2018). However, the new policies reduce the migrant’s number by reducing their permanent residency. These policies reduce migrant’s number along with utilizing the skill of the migrants. Therefore, the previous policy did not provide protection to the migrants while humanitarian policy keeps the human rights of the migrants in Australia.

These policies are considered the best social policies for immigrants in Australia. However, the above three policies bring a significant change in Australian immigrant policies. The old policy was not effective to protect and utilize the skills of the immigrants which is done by these policies. The clients, as well as the main stakeholders, are the skilled immigrants who are the target audience of these policies (Canetti, Snider, Pedersen & Hall, 2016). Therefore, the founder of these policies is Australian government. The local community is involved in implementing humanitarian policy. To protect the immigrants and reduce the discrimination against them the local community helps the government to implement this policy. Government provides a fund to implement these policies in Australia (Martinez et al., 2015).

Special humanitarian policy reduces the discrimination with the immigrants successfully. It helps them to get permanent residency in Australia. On the other hand, skilled immigration and TSS visa policy also reduce the immigrants’ issue successfully (Ueffing, Rowe & Mulder, 2015). Huge number of immigrants is a big issue of Australia. Hence, TSS visa policy restricted the entry of the immigrants. There is a strict rule based on which the skilled immigrants can stay in Australia for a certain period of time. Hence, they do not get permanent residency, which reduces the immigrant pressure on Australia. Therefore, the skilled migration policy also effective to reduce the pressure of immigrants as only those immigrants can enter into Australia who can meet the government requirements. It has been addressed from the above analysis that each policy is linked with another policy. For example, TSS and skilled immigration policy both focus on reducing immigrant entry in Australia by setting specific criteria on immigrant entrance. On the other hand, special humanitarian policy also focuses on the protection of skilled migrants by protecting and providing them permanent residency (Beine et al., 2016). However, skilled immigration, TSS, and humanitarian policies have a common aim, which highlights the limited entry and protection of skilled immigrants in Australia. The above three policies are good, however; the TSS visa policy needs some improvement. This visa policy only provides 2 years and 4 years time for the migrants to stay in Australia. Hence, the government can increase the visa period, which will be helpful to boost Australian economy by utilizing the migrant’s skill.

The policy information that is presented in this document has a great impact on the practice of the social worker. However, the skilled migration policy leads the social worker to develop the skill of the migrants and give them a permanent residency in Australia. By applying this policy the social worker will be able to work on the skilled migrants. They can focus on the skilled migrants and give effort to identify them and involve them in improving Australian economy.

The above study focuses on three current social policies for immigrants in Australia. It has been received that skilled migration, TSS visa, and special humanitarian policies are the major social policies in Australia to deal with the immigrant issues. However, these policies are linked with each other as all policies focus on the reduction of immigrant’s number and use of the skill of the immigrants.

References

Akbari, A. H., & MacDonald, M. (2014). Immigration policy in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States: An overview of recent trends. International Migration Review, 48(3), 801-822. doi.org/10.1111/imre.12128

Aph.gov.au. (2018). Migration and Humanitarian programs. Retrieved on: 25 June 2017, from: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201516/Migration

Beine, M., Boucher, A., Burgoon, B., Crock, M., Gest, J., Hiscox, M., … & Thielemann, E. (2016). Comparing immigration policies: An overview from the IMPALA database. International Migration Review, 50(4), 827-863.

Boucher, A., & Cerna, L. (2014). Current policy trends in skilled immigration policy. International Migration, 52(3), 21-25. doi.org/10.1111/imig.12152

Canetti, D., Snider, K. L., Pedersen, A., & Hall, B. J. (2016). Threatened or threatening? How ideology shapes asylum seekers’ immigration policy attitudes in Israel and Australia. Journal of refugee studies, 29(4), 583-606. doi.org/10.1093/jrs/few012

Dobrowolsky, A. (2016). Women, migration and citizenship: making local, national and transnational connections. Routledge.

Hartley, L., & Pedersen, A. (2015). Asylum seekers and resettled refugees in Australia: Predicting social policy attitude from prejudice versus emotion. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 142-160.

Homeaffairs.gov.au (2018). Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian program. . Retrieved on: 25 June 2017, from: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/60refugee

Martinez, O., Wu, E., Sandfort, T., Dodge, B., Carballo-Dieguez, A., Pinto, R., … & Chavez-Baray, S. (2015). Evaluating the impact of immigration policies on health status among undocumented immigrants: a systematic review. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 17(3), 947-970.

Ueffing, P., Rowe, F., & Mulder, C. H. (2015). Differences in attitudes towards immigration between Australia and Germany: The role of immigration policy. Comparative Population Studies, 40(4). doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2015-18en