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Вот некоторые новости по поводу прошедшей конференции по вопросам иммиграции
от миграционного агента с форума Бритишей.
The Migration Institute of Australia conference which was held this weekend (9,10 & 11 Oct).
Any news from MIA conference this weekend?
No I didn't want to be disloyal but PiO seems to be down and Jamie Smith has been providing all of the summary data there. I've got some of it cached, here goes:
I am not sure if this can add up to a question, but I have been re-reading the statistics report, and chewing on a few thought in relation to recent changes too (and recent changes is for me everthing since the introduction of the CSL in January 2009).
It is without doubt that Australia is a popular country for emigration. Australia needs a constant growth of its population to sustain its economy in the long run. And preferably this could be done by a large part by allowing students that have completed a eduction in skills australia need to remain in Australia. One can be ensured of quality of education and the intermediate step of TR (with all noted consequences) ensures that they find experience and work in the job skill they nominate. Big discussions ongoing on this matter, and I follow them carefully.
On the other hand skilled people that can be put to work now, in jobs that are in demand now, are needed too. It makes sense for the government to push employer sponsored visas first, and secondary state sponsored visas assuming that states can assess local demands better. Priority has always been in place for this (as far as I can see in the old reports) but the total amount of visas to be handled was relatively small.
For the total skilled migration (that includes employer sponsored, state sponsored and family sponsored applications) the following numbers can be found:
--------------- Lodgements ---- Grants ----- In pipeline at end of financial year (30-6)
2006-2007 ---- 150,623 ----- 97,920 ------ unknown
2007-2008 ---- 151,685 ----- 108,540 ----- 130,433
2008-2009 ---- 163,009 ----- 114,777 ----- 133,601
For this financial year the planning outcome is set at 108,100 grants and currently (if I remember well) about 5,100 skilled applications are lodged each month.
Basically, there is a backlog (buffer) of over 130,000 applications. With the total amount of projected grants (for this year but I don't expect major changes for 2011-2012) this backlog will not be cleared. By introducing a priority system that can change at a whim, the government created a system that allows them to collect a steady amount of application fees, pick out the cherries from the pudding (only those applicants that are in need now and that can change tomorrow) and keep the rest in queue for an undetermined time (with the current priorities the person at the bottom will stay there forever) with no chance of money back ever.
I understand how government budgets work (at least I know it for my native country), and you spend whatever is in budget otherwise your next years budget might be cut.
It is sure time for change: escrow of clients money (yes a visa applicant is a client) and to clear up the backlog it would be a smart move not to accept new applicants for a while. Current situation basically allows the government to sit on client funds indefinitely whilst they pick the best looking cherries that have just arrived. The most fair way of course is a guaranteed time after which processing will commence (no priority -> your application will be on top of queue after x months latest and processing will commence), so that a system with boosted priority handling interlaced with a first in first out (FIFO) exists.
Anyways, just my 2cts.
Jamie Smith #1
OK here's the update.
Things are not going to relax anytime soon about skilled visa processing priorities.
DIAC hold 2 years of supply of skilled migrant applications of non-CSL applicants. A total of 109,000 people right now are in Adelaide SPC alone. Brisbane has the same oversupply, as does Perth and Melbourne.
They don't need to take any more applications at all, for a year to 18 months even if a quarter of people withdrew their applications.
So the Minister can "afford" to be unkind, as he has more people applying than he can accommodate - even though the country needs all the people who have applied.
A combination of time spent in processing cases with the annual total set at that level is now the obstacle. If they lift the cap numbers for the year, and process faster, they can clear the backlog.
But they won't, because there is public fear that more new arrivals means more unemployment for Australians, when the reality is the opposite. The Government knows that's the truth and admits it, but the public don't and won't believe it so it becomes too hard to sell politically, and this Government won't try.
The Minister apparently loves RSMS/ENS more than unsponsored skilled visas as there's an instant benefit for everyone and the issue of employability and skills/capailities has in essence already been solved. With unsponsored visass there are no guarantees that the skilled migrant will actually work in the profession or area for which they are being awarded points to migrate. ie issuing a visa to a chemist who then does property renovations doesn't solve the shortage of chemists.
Although the state Government people involved in sponsoring say the changes were news to them, THEIR bosses knew it was coming as DIAC advised the state government skilled employment representatives at the last COAG meeting (where state and federal governments meet to try and work out how to cooperate on things). I guess the head honchos decided not to, or were asked not to, leak the onfo to the public so that DIAC didn't get more in the queue than are in it now.
The last time a change was advertised something like 40% of a year's worth of cases were lodged in about 10 weeks.
So..... Jamie's crystal ball says:
The UK and many other country's migration markets to Australia will go flat and some agents will fold because of reduced demand and extended cash flow / payments as per contract.
Without viable agents, the market will go even more pear shaped.
Then, when the Aussie visa volume situation does recover, there will be a lag in applications due to reduced agent marketing and lack of interest from the UK etc.
End result, a continued shortage of workers in Australia.
A shortage now as the 2 years supply of stock on hand will include many who do what the chemist did above - change occupation to something less demanding.
A shortage now and for the near term as few employers know anything about sponsoring a person from overseas, and it will take some time to wrap their heads around sponsoring for PR without "control" over the worker as per the 457 which now has more onerous compliance obligations and huge difficulties showing DIAC their commitment to training existing staff and local hiring effort.
A shortage in the future as it will take some time for market confidence to recover and agents to start marketing Australia again.
It's frustrating and not the fault of the applicant.
The Govt would have known when they came to power that they had uncomfortably high volume in the pipeline yet did nothing due to the low unemployment rate. What they should have done then was increase the speed of processing and solve two problems at the same time, but they didn't.
Then when the unemployment rate started to rise it made political sense to cut annual migrant volumes, plus add a deterrent to existing migration inflow and not process cases as fast.
Of course people were in the pipeline months ahead of the flattening of the employment market and they didn't stop applying for visas...
So the Govt let a a back log build up because they wouldn't invest in processing resources, and now they have a big backlog they think they can afford to just kill off the inflow.
It's basic economics, supply and demand, but that doesn't factor in the issue of emotional confidence, which markets need to sustain a hit and recover later. By making agent businesses uneconomical now they undermine the recovery effort later.
It's typical of a union led Government to not think about business issues.
Will you get your money back if you withdraw - probably not, because if 50% did so the Govt would have to find about 40,000 application fees and refund them, about $40 million to come out of DIAC budget and DIAC will be saying "hang on, we already spent that money processing them to this point".
All you can reasonably expect to get with the Minister holding all the cards (more demand than capacity to supply) is a freeze on conditions, like the age of children to now be set at time of application rather than time of decision.
If they don't freeze conditions either, well consider this - in Canada some years ago, the migrant community and their agents sued the Government for deliberately slowly processing the cases by hiring too few processing staff, thereby artificially restricting inflow and robbing people of the ability to qualify for a visa when their case was decided 2-3 years later.
The migrants and agents won.
The best way forward however is to again switch visas to an ENS or RSMS, or come over on a 457 until the other visa is eventually decided if everyone still meets all the conditions later.
Unless you are on the CSL you'll now need an employer to offer you a job to get a visa - and that won't change for the next year or two.
Thanks to all of those who sent comments. I showed them to several DIAC managers (who usually shrugged and said hey I only process these things I don't set policy) and couldn't get the Parliamentary Undersecretary interested.
But I don't blame the DIAC staff, the DIAC managers are stumbling as much as everyone else trying to keep up with changes, eg they have been given the legal requirement to consider "market rate" salaries and "effort to employ and train Australians", with no clear definition of what constitutes acceptable levels of effort and pay.
A case officer without a guideline is like a machine without electricity. It will do nothing just sit there, (rather than try to make a decision and possibly get it wrong.)
Your comments will now go off to the Minister by direct post.
Jamie Smith #2
The Adelaide numbers are ranked like this, reflecting priority of processing, numbers are individual applications, not total people involved:
State nominated with CSL, Unallocated 27, Allocated 720, Total 747
Family sponsored CSL, 1130, 279, 1409
All other CSL, 6335, 4289, 10624
All other State nominated, 3678, 0, 3678
MODL only, 12388, 0, 12388
Other, 15659, 0, 15659
Total, 39217, 5279, 44496
So Adelaide hold 12000+ CSL applicants, allow another 12000 for Brisbane and more for Perth etc.
That's the rest of this year's quota right there, and all have priority processing and CSL.... not much hope for the regular non-CSL applicant, sad to say.
The only positive there is that the CSL numbers built up as did all other categories while everyone was being treated evenly. CSL ratio to non CSL about 27%.
If they have double what they need and CSL inflow is 1/4 of usual numbers then , it will take six mionths at least to process the CLS now, plus 3-6 months to process the new CSL that arrive after today, adn then they can look at the oldest non CSL which will probably be State sponsored and about 6000 or 4 months processing capacity by then, and only then will they move onto MODL in no less than about 6 months plus 3-6 months plus 4 months at the earliest.
The downside is that this new situation will encourage more use of RSMS and ENS, and every one of those ENS/RSMS is one less spot for a MODL or CSL visa to be processed.
George Lombard
In fact I think it's worse than that - Jamie and I extracted those figures from DIAC together and another telling statistic is that there are 166,000 applicants in the pipeline and only 63,000 visas in the annual GSM program (less if ENS and RSMS increase), so think the real question is why doesn't DIAC suspend the 475 visa altogether if new applications will take three years and possibly five years to process? The only hope is that the CSL will disappear when the new MODL is concocted, but it seems clear enough that however they define their priorities there won't be enough visas to go around.
от миграционного агента с форума Бритишей.
The Migration Institute of Australia conference which was held this weekend (9,10 & 11 Oct).
Any news from MIA conference this weekend?
No I didn't want to be disloyal but PiO seems to be down and Jamie Smith has been providing all of the summary data there. I've got some of it cached, here goes:
I am not sure if this can add up to a question, but I have been re-reading the statistics report, and chewing on a few thought in relation to recent changes too (and recent changes is for me everthing since the introduction of the CSL in January 2009).
It is without doubt that Australia is a popular country for emigration. Australia needs a constant growth of its population to sustain its economy in the long run. And preferably this could be done by a large part by allowing students that have completed a eduction in skills australia need to remain in Australia. One can be ensured of quality of education and the intermediate step of TR (with all noted consequences) ensures that they find experience and work in the job skill they nominate. Big discussions ongoing on this matter, and I follow them carefully.
On the other hand skilled people that can be put to work now, in jobs that are in demand now, are needed too. It makes sense for the government to push employer sponsored visas first, and secondary state sponsored visas assuming that states can assess local demands better. Priority has always been in place for this (as far as I can see in the old reports) but the total amount of visas to be handled was relatively small.
For the total skilled migration (that includes employer sponsored, state sponsored and family sponsored applications) the following numbers can be found:
--------------- Lodgements ---- Grants ----- In pipeline at end of financial year (30-6)
2006-2007 ---- 150,623 ----- 97,920 ------ unknown
2007-2008 ---- 151,685 ----- 108,540 ----- 130,433
2008-2009 ---- 163,009 ----- 114,777 ----- 133,601
For this financial year the planning outcome is set at 108,100 grants and currently (if I remember well) about 5,100 skilled applications are lodged each month.
Basically, there is a backlog (buffer) of over 130,000 applications. With the total amount of projected grants (for this year but I don't expect major changes for 2011-2012) this backlog will not be cleared. By introducing a priority system that can change at a whim, the government created a system that allows them to collect a steady amount of application fees, pick out the cherries from the pudding (only those applicants that are in need now and that can change tomorrow) and keep the rest in queue for an undetermined time (with the current priorities the person at the bottom will stay there forever) with no chance of money back ever.
I understand how government budgets work (at least I know it for my native country), and you spend whatever is in budget otherwise your next years budget might be cut.
It is sure time for change: escrow of clients money (yes a visa applicant is a client) and to clear up the backlog it would be a smart move not to accept new applicants for a while. Current situation basically allows the government to sit on client funds indefinitely whilst they pick the best looking cherries that have just arrived. The most fair way of course is a guaranteed time after which processing will commence (no priority -> your application will be on top of queue after x months latest and processing will commence), so that a system with boosted priority handling interlaced with a first in first out (FIFO) exists.
Anyways, just my 2cts.
Jamie Smith #1
OK here's the update.
Things are not going to relax anytime soon about skilled visa processing priorities.
DIAC hold 2 years of supply of skilled migrant applications of non-CSL applicants. A total of 109,000 people right now are in Adelaide SPC alone. Brisbane has the same oversupply, as does Perth and Melbourne.
They don't need to take any more applications at all, for a year to 18 months even if a quarter of people withdrew their applications.
So the Minister can "afford" to be unkind, as he has more people applying than he can accommodate - even though the country needs all the people who have applied.
A combination of time spent in processing cases with the annual total set at that level is now the obstacle. If they lift the cap numbers for the year, and process faster, they can clear the backlog.
But they won't, because there is public fear that more new arrivals means more unemployment for Australians, when the reality is the opposite. The Government knows that's the truth and admits it, but the public don't and won't believe it so it becomes too hard to sell politically, and this Government won't try.
The Minister apparently loves RSMS/ENS more than unsponsored skilled visas as there's an instant benefit for everyone and the issue of employability and skills/capailities has in essence already been solved. With unsponsored visass there are no guarantees that the skilled migrant will actually work in the profession or area for which they are being awarded points to migrate. ie issuing a visa to a chemist who then does property renovations doesn't solve the shortage of chemists.
Although the state Government people involved in sponsoring say the changes were news to them, THEIR bosses knew it was coming as DIAC advised the state government skilled employment representatives at the last COAG meeting (where state and federal governments meet to try and work out how to cooperate on things). I guess the head honchos decided not to, or were asked not to, leak the onfo to the public so that DIAC didn't get more in the queue than are in it now.
The last time a change was advertised something like 40% of a year's worth of cases were lodged in about 10 weeks.
So..... Jamie's crystal ball says:
The UK and many other country's migration markets to Australia will go flat and some agents will fold because of reduced demand and extended cash flow / payments as per contract.
Without viable agents, the market will go even more pear shaped.
Then, when the Aussie visa volume situation does recover, there will be a lag in applications due to reduced agent marketing and lack of interest from the UK etc.
End result, a continued shortage of workers in Australia.
A shortage now as the 2 years supply of stock on hand will include many who do what the chemist did above - change occupation to something less demanding.
A shortage now and for the near term as few employers know anything about sponsoring a person from overseas, and it will take some time to wrap their heads around sponsoring for PR without "control" over the worker as per the 457 which now has more onerous compliance obligations and huge difficulties showing DIAC their commitment to training existing staff and local hiring effort.
A shortage in the future as it will take some time for market confidence to recover and agents to start marketing Australia again.
It's frustrating and not the fault of the applicant.
The Govt would have known when they came to power that they had uncomfortably high volume in the pipeline yet did nothing due to the low unemployment rate. What they should have done then was increase the speed of processing and solve two problems at the same time, but they didn't.
Then when the unemployment rate started to rise it made political sense to cut annual migrant volumes, plus add a deterrent to existing migration inflow and not process cases as fast.
Of course people were in the pipeline months ahead of the flattening of the employment market and they didn't stop applying for visas...
So the Govt let a a back log build up because they wouldn't invest in processing resources, and now they have a big backlog they think they can afford to just kill off the inflow.
It's basic economics, supply and demand, but that doesn't factor in the issue of emotional confidence, which markets need to sustain a hit and recover later. By making agent businesses uneconomical now they undermine the recovery effort later.
It's typical of a union led Government to not think about business issues.
Will you get your money back if you withdraw - probably not, because if 50% did so the Govt would have to find about 40,000 application fees and refund them, about $40 million to come out of DIAC budget and DIAC will be saying "hang on, we already spent that money processing them to this point".
All you can reasonably expect to get with the Minister holding all the cards (more demand than capacity to supply) is a freeze on conditions, like the age of children to now be set at time of application rather than time of decision.
If they don't freeze conditions either, well consider this - in Canada some years ago, the migrant community and their agents sued the Government for deliberately slowly processing the cases by hiring too few processing staff, thereby artificially restricting inflow and robbing people of the ability to qualify for a visa when their case was decided 2-3 years later.
The migrants and agents won.
The best way forward however is to again switch visas to an ENS or RSMS, or come over on a 457 until the other visa is eventually decided if everyone still meets all the conditions later.
Unless you are on the CSL you'll now need an employer to offer you a job to get a visa - and that won't change for the next year or two.
Thanks to all of those who sent comments. I showed them to several DIAC managers (who usually shrugged and said hey I only process these things I don't set policy) and couldn't get the Parliamentary Undersecretary interested.
But I don't blame the DIAC staff, the DIAC managers are stumbling as much as everyone else trying to keep up with changes, eg they have been given the legal requirement to consider "market rate" salaries and "effort to employ and train Australians", with no clear definition of what constitutes acceptable levels of effort and pay.
A case officer without a guideline is like a machine without electricity. It will do nothing just sit there, (rather than try to make a decision and possibly get it wrong.)
Your comments will now go off to the Minister by direct post.
Jamie Smith #2
The Adelaide numbers are ranked like this, reflecting priority of processing, numbers are individual applications, not total people involved:
State nominated with CSL, Unallocated 27, Allocated 720, Total 747
Family sponsored CSL, 1130, 279, 1409
All other CSL, 6335, 4289, 10624
All other State nominated, 3678, 0, 3678
MODL only, 12388, 0, 12388
Other, 15659, 0, 15659
Total, 39217, 5279, 44496
So Adelaide hold 12000+ CSL applicants, allow another 12000 for Brisbane and more for Perth etc.
That's the rest of this year's quota right there, and all have priority processing and CSL.... not much hope for the regular non-CSL applicant, sad to say.
The only positive there is that the CSL numbers built up as did all other categories while everyone was being treated evenly. CSL ratio to non CSL about 27%.
If they have double what they need and CSL inflow is 1/4 of usual numbers then , it will take six mionths at least to process the CLS now, plus 3-6 months to process the new CSL that arrive after today, adn then they can look at the oldest non CSL which will probably be State sponsored and about 6000 or 4 months processing capacity by then, and only then will they move onto MODL in no less than about 6 months plus 3-6 months plus 4 months at the earliest.
The downside is that this new situation will encourage more use of RSMS and ENS, and every one of those ENS/RSMS is one less spot for a MODL or CSL visa to be processed.
George Lombard
In fact I think it's worse than that - Jamie and I extracted those figures from DIAC together and another telling statistic is that there are 166,000 applicants in the pipeline and only 63,000 visas in the annual GSM program (less if ENS and RSMS increase), so think the real question is why doesn't DIAC suspend the 475 visa altogether if new applications will take three years and possibly five years to process? The only hope is that the CSL will disappear when the new MODL is concocted, but it seems clear enough that however they define their priorities there won't be enough visas to go around.
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