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采访移民部长记者Peter Mares关于2009年澳技术移民的论文
2010年1月4日星期一
唐林律师行
年前，唐林律师行发表了ABC电台记者Peter Mares与2009年11月13日对移民部长伊文斯的电话采访实录。在Peter Mares采访移民部长伊文斯之前，Peter Mares先生花功夫对2009年11月之前的技术移民的政策、变化及其问题进行了综合的研究。2009年11月3日，他发表了题为A blockage in the skilled migration pipeline 的长文。唐林律师行特别把它翻译出来，以方便读者更好的了解技术移民积压的情况的更深入了解。
《技术移民通道的阻塞》
2009年11月3日
Peter Mares
移民政策的剧变使许多已经递交移民申请的人来说似乎是被搁置了。关于几万名的PR申请者面临的无限期被搁置的问题，Peter Mares作了相关报道。
ZULEIKA ARASHIRO 是一位才华横溢的年轻女性，前程光明，但这些也可能无法让她生活在澳洲，发展自己的事业。她在今年年初的时候就已经递交了永久居民的申请，并被告知审理程序将会为9个月，现在她发现自己的案子已经陷入了一种官僚性的僵局。移民部不能明确的告诉她，她的案子何时能被审理，但是显然，她已经排上了队，且排队的时间会长达两年以上，有可能会更久。就目前政策而言，Arashiro博士在Melbourne的La Trobe 大学完成了博士学位后，可能要在Melbourne 无限期的等下去。而且她看到她离获得永居的目标越来越远了，因为近来愈来愈多的申请人被列为优先审理的位置，事实上，就是允许他们插队。
Arashiro博士的案子并不是一个个案：几万名已经递交申请的移民申请人，包括在岸和离岸的申请人，都面临类似的情况。他们已经递交了有效的申请，交付了几千澳币的申请费，但现在发现他们的未来仍然是不确定的。这个问题不是资格问题：澳大利亚没有改变选择技术移民人员的标准。被调整的是申请审理的顺序。
这些政策的变化是于去年年底由移民部部长Chris Evans宣布的，他提出，为应对全球经济危机，澳大利亚移民局将重新安排澳大利亚移民审理顺序。其中最为重要的变化是“紧缺职业清单”的引入，并于2009年初生效。该清单是由移民部根据澳洲经济的紧急需求，选择一些职业和资格条件列入紧缺职业清单。从今年年初开始，移民局优先审理职业在紧缺职业清单中的申请人的案件，尤其是那些被雇主或州政府担保的申请人。
三个月后，移民部长Evans又修整出一份新的清单，去掉了建筑、制造方面的技术工人（诸如砖瓦匠、水管工、电焊工、木匠和金属装配工）。现在的紧缺清单主要包括医疗保健、工程师及IT专业人员。同时，他还减少了移民名额： 2008至2009年澳大利亚技术移民名额减少了14%，从133,500人减至115,000人（本经济年度更进一步削减至108,100个名额）。今年九月，移民部宣布签证申请优先审理程序中更多的变化，明确了普通技术移民的独立申请人——那些没有雇主担保且未在紧缺职业清单上的人---将被排到最后。这在移民论坛上引发了一系列的讨论，很多困惑以及大失所望的申请人在此表达自己的惊愕与迷茫之情。
澳大利亚移民行业机构理事会理事、注册移民代理Mark Webster说：“在紧缺职业清单上的每个人都将比其他申请者优先被审理。你可能已经递交了申请，而且可能已经有12或18个月之久.但你的申请仍然不会被审理到，直到在紧缺职业清单上的所有申请人被审理、批准了。” Webster 先生说，他希望可以明确的告诉客户他们能获得签证的时间，但他表示，“在那一刻，我感到非常的难受，因为就审理时间而言，我实在是无法告知客户还要等多久。”
紧缺职业清单是根据一个已经存在的且更长的职业清单编订的。这个表格是“移民职业需求清单”（也称为MODL），是由教育部、就业部及劳动关系部联合编订的。MODL规定了澳大利亚“国家所需”的“职业”，且有“持久的雇佣前景”。如果移民者的职业在MODL上，那么他们就能在普通技术移民分数测试中获得相应的职业分数。MODL仍然有效；实际上，如果你的职业在MODL上，有至少12个月的工作经历，且能满足其他基本标准如年龄（不到45岁）和语言能力（英语流利），那么你应该就能通过普通技术移民要求的120分的门槛。
换句话说，你就能够递交一份有效的移民澳大利亚永居身份的申请，你成功的可能性就很高了—如果你的申请能被审理了，就能够获批。Arashiro博士和其他人所面临的问题是在新的审理优先顺序下，他们的申请要等多久才能被移民局审理到。
Zuleika Arashiro，作为一名律师和政治学家，也是国际贸易谈判方面的专家。她的英语、葡萄牙语、西班牙语都很流利，获得了一个Sao Paulo大学的法律学位和两个硕士学位：一个是华盛顿Georgetown大学的拉美学专业，另一个是巴西 Getúlio Vargas Foundation大学的公共行政与政府管理专业（被《外交》杂志誉为世界前五“政策制定思想智囊团”之一）。
她来澳大利亚并的目的并不是移民，但是她的学习经历在这个国家是比较有发展的。因此，在今年2月份，在她成功完成博士学位以后，她决定申请移民定居在澳洲。她说：“我已经获得澳大利亚的奖学金—一个是从La Trobe获得的，一个是从澳大利亚政府获得的。对此，我表示感激。我甚至考虑要在澳大利亚从事2、3年的教育事业，以回馈澳大利亚对我的资助。”她这么做并不是为了钱：“事实上，如果我决定在巴西联邦政府工作，我所获得的报酬要比在澳洲教书挣的多。”她还说，“有些人因为一些事情而感谢这个国家，但不是因为 “金钱”，他们与这片土地联系在一起，渴望的并不仅仅是月底的工资。”
Arashiro博士为申请移民花了4000元澳币。这些钱包括递交移民局申请费（目前是2525元澳币）；剩下的包括体检、语言和其他必要文件的准备。大部分的申请者也花费至少2000多澳币请移民代理机构协助他们申请移民。
当Arashiro博士递交申请时被告知，移民局将在6-9个月内审理并作出决定。基于她的朋友的一些经历，Arashiro博士预想到审理可能会长达1年。一个偶然的机会，当她9月份在移民局官方网站上查看相关信息时，发现审理的优先顺序已经改变，她的申请将可能最早在2011年被审理到。这使她面临两种选择：她可以选择继续等待。她的移民申请还未被审到，是可以拿着过桥签证A不定期限的呆在澳大利亚。这类签证赋予她在澳洲工作的权利。但是，这种情况下，使她在能选择的职业中获得一份满意的工作是非常有限的。“我还算幸运获得了一份临时性的研究工作。但是像这样的工作，我基本上已经做了一年了，有时三个星期、有时一个月、有时两个月，仅此而已。”她说：“这对我来说很难，尤其是因为我研究的学术领域，一些职位都是与政府有关的职位，他们都要求至少永居身份。没有永居身份对我来说实在是太难了，我甚至都无法申请这些职位。”
Arashiro博士的另一个选择是撤回申请，那么她因此所花费的时间和金钱都浪费了。签证申请费和其他费用都是不能退回的。她也不能返回巴西等待移民局的决定：因为如果她离开澳大利亚，那么她将被视为放弃申请，她极有可能会被拒签。（她有可能短暂的离开澳大利亚，但是需要持过桥签证B，这个签证的持有人须说明他们有充分的理由离澳和重新返澳。）
根据移民局关于上一财政年度的移民报告：至2009年6月30日，有133601“客户”滞留在技术移民的“管道”中。移民局告诉我，他们无法从这个数字中细分出新政策下优先审理申请者的百分比（换句话说，职业在CSL上或者雇主担保的申请者的人数）。移民局向我提供了一些关于2009年6月30日前6个月内的平均的签证审理时间，但仅针对前5种优先审理的案件（时间从88天至399天不等）。他们并没有提供关于不在这些优先审理之列的案件审理的数据，也可能是因为在那段时间根本就没有审理这些案件。
官方网站上的一篇文章阐述了9月23日移民部宣布的这个政策变化的影响。政府表示，如果提名职业不在CSL上，在岸申请至少要等到“2011年年底”才有可能被审理；同时，离岸申请至少要等到“2012年年底”才有可能审理。甚至，在政策变化以前已进入审理的最后阶段的申请也“不能继续进行审理，直至那些排列在较高优先审理的案件审理完后再审理。”换句话说，所有的非优先审理的案件都是无限期的被搁置。
目前，被积压的移民申请案件大约是一半“离岸”，一半“在岸”（后者大部分是像Arashiro博士一样毕业于澳大利亚大学及学院的国际留学生）。无论哪一种，这种新的优先审理规则给申请者所带来的痛苦都是显而易见的。无疑，最痛苦的申请者莫过于那些签证申请人：当他们的申请已经在最后审理阶段时，这一新规则生效了。
当我刚开始为ABC 国家电台的《国家利益》栏目调查研究这个问题时，就传开了。几天内，我们就收到了许多来自申请人的详细说明：在先前的政策下他们资历本应或多或少都能确保他们申请的成功性，但现在他们却面临申请被长期搁置僵局。
其中一位名叫Rob的英国水管工人。他自递交移民澳大利亚申请已经长达2年之久，并已为此花费了几千元的费用。他经历了繁琐且昂贵的由澳大利亚相关部门所做的技术认证程序（论文和实践评估），并获得了州政府的担保（在2008年12月公布政策变化之前获得的），也获得了“可能成为其澳大利亚雇主的肯定性评价”。年前，在移民局的要求下，家庭成员也做了必要的体检和无犯罪证明（共花费$1600）。然后，根据所有迹象显示他们的申请已经在审理中并将于年底获批，考虑到房价可能会持续下跌，Rob就卖掉了在英国的房子。
9月22号，当移民部阿德莱德签证处理中心的负责人员告诉Rob，他们将在两周内审核/决定他的申请时，一切似乎看起来都很顺利。但是，就在第二天，Evans部长宣布了最新的优先审理顺序的政策变化，并公布了一份清单，说明移民局将按照新的顺序审理不同类别的申请。清单中有7个类别，而Rob的申请被归为第五类（“申请人的职业不在CSL上，但是在州政府担保之列的申请”）。Rob简直快要疯了，他写道：“这些政策变化对和我类似的所有申请者的直接影响是：我们现在都被搁置了，而我们因此面临的是更大的经济负担和压力。”
另一个联系《国家利益》的人名叫Valerie，一位瑞士的经济学家。她也在申请移民澳洲上花费了两年的时间，连同她的丈夫和三个孩子（年龄分别为8岁、5岁和3岁）。她和他的丈夫是以经济学家这个职业申请的，她如此写道：到2008年12月，他们已经“排到了队伍的前面”了。但是，优先审理的政策变化又把他们拽回了“队伍的后面”。 Valerie和她的丈夫更新了申请，以统计工作者的职业获得了维多利亚州的州政府担保。（移民局将此视为新的申请，所以他们又第二次支付了申请费用2525元澳币。）“在9月17日，我们得到移民官的通知，要求我们提供雇主信、新的无犯罪证明以及新的护照（因为我们最小孩子的护照过期了）”Valerie知道一旦移民官通知补交一些资料时，离签证批准日就差不了几个星期了，“所以我们也登出售房信息（两个星期内就有找到了买主），卖掉了孩子的玩具，家具也被邻居预定了，我们在Melbourne 也找了个经纪人帮我们看房子……瑞士的学校也知道孩子要走了，最小的孩子也已经在Melbourne的五所幼儿园的等待名单中了。”
Valerie夫妇都从悉尼大学获得硕士学位和博士学位，他们每个人都获得了145分的移民分数，州政府担保也只需要100分。但是像Rob和他的家人，他们的申请因为政策的剧变突然被排在了最后，“我们已经履行了承诺，现在我们觉得被欺骗了。我们的孩子也失去了方向，他们不理解发生了什么，他们认为就要去澳洲了……..”但现在移民局告诉他们可能要再等2到3年的时间。
Tracy也面临同样的问题。当她为从英国兰开夏移民到澳大利亚迈出第一步时，她的大孩子当时是14岁。“这一新的时间跨度让我们崩溃了”，她写道，“我们从来没有接到移民官审理变化的通知，直到我给他发邮件发现他们打算审理我的案件，考虑要求我做健康检查和无犯罪证明。这封邮件是自动邮件，并列出了优先审理的变化。”Valerie说签证签发时，她的女儿将会超过18岁，这就意味着，她的女儿将不能再是依赖父母的子女，“将不能再与我们一同移民，除非她正在接受全脱产的教育。如果我们一开始在研究我们移民澳洲可能性时就知道需要这么长的时间跨度，我们压根儿就不会申请，我们绝不会丢下一个孩子的。”
像 Rob, Valerie和Tracey这样的离岸申请人愿意呆在这个管道里，是希望目前的堵塞物能够最终克服，他们必须抱着移民澳洲的梦想继续扔钱，因为无犯罪证明和健康检查必须是每12个月更新一次。（必要的体检费用的平均成本约在每人300元澳币或者四口之家为1200元澳币。）
理论上，这种长期的等待和盘旋上升的成本的前景应该能使一位新的申请者放弃签证的申请，进而有助于减轻申请通道的压力。但在10月份，一位高级官员在Melborne重要的移民会议上表示：移民部预计会在本年度收到120,000份新的永久技术移民的申请。按照目前在技术移民计划中只有108,100个名额的情况，那么不在优先列表上的申请者将会随着这一阻塞的继续膨胀而延长等待的时间。
尽管移民者们正在排着很长的队伍，他们还是会继续申请永居签证。原因有二：第一，如Mark Webster所说，这种无休止的等待队伍本身就能产生一种反常的激励。它鼓励外国毕业生，尽管成功申请的机会相对较弱，他们也会申请，仅仅是为了能在澳大利亚呆更长的时间，行使暂时在澳工作的权利。他们的永居签证申请在系统中堵多久，他们就能合法的在澳洲工作多久——照目前的情况至少为两年。“我们将会看到许多申请人都会被诱惑着这么做，因为这对他们来说是个好的结果。”Webster先生说，“他们可以工作。而且他们赚的钱要比回国赚的多，然后将钱寄回给国内的家人。”如果他们被拒签了，他们也可通过到已经超负荷的MRT上诉进而延长在澳逗留的时间。
第二，一些不道德的运作者（如离岸的教育招募人员）可能会继续鼓励人们申请，鼓吹他们的生意，作出虚假的承诺。Zuleika Arashiro有证据表明这种情况的存在。她说，南美洲的代理“仍然在发邮件鼓励人们移民澳洲，这的确是令人担忧的，因为我不知道人们是否知道现在的真实状况。”Mark Webster说代理机构们能夸下海口而不用在短期内过多的担心结果。“你可以看到一些不道德的运作者许下无法兑现的承诺说 “我会帮你拿到工作签证，我会帮你拿到永居身份.””他们可以递交申请，因为他们知道在未外来的2、3年内里是不会成功的，也不会有什么后果的。
堵塞物在审理通道中呆的时间越长，波及其他领域的问题就越多，尤其是工作条件问题。有一种方法能使签证申请摆脱排队，进入到优先审理程序，那就是获得雇主的提名担保。但从457签证的临时工作签证申请人所遇到的问题中就能看出，老板往往会提出一些不合理的要求，这就把工人们放在了一个弱势的位置。“我认为政府知道，每个人都知道，这种情况是存在的，”Arashiro博士写道，“有许许多多的学生和人们为获得雇主的担保而无酬工作、加班，饱受着老板们的剥削，这就是现实，我认为这从来都不是个秘密。”、
以何种秩序或优先性审理签证申请完全在移民部长的权限范围内，以他认为的合适的方式来进行审理。如果部长不调整技术移民每年的配额或修改广受欢迎的技术和资格条件，以顺应澳大利亚社会和经济的不断变化，那他就是没有尽职。正如政治社会学家Arashiro博士所说的，部长有责任调整移民计划以顺应澳大利亚的国家利益；她反对的是这些变化具有追溯效力的性质，“这伤害到那些曾经相信澳大利亚法律法规的人们。”
Mark Webster指出试图微观处理移民计划会得到始料未及的后果。他说：“你越是试图为移民计划选择最佳的方式，它就会变得越畸形。正因为如此，我们已经遇到了许许多多的问题了。”
一个典型的例子就是用移民来刺激澳大利亚的留学市场。2001年，联合政府提出了改革：允许国际留学生在完成课程后的6个月内在岸申请移民。以前，他们需要回国后才能提交申请。这一改革有两个目的：一方面，在经济繁荣期，他们意图打开澳大利亚劳动力市场大门，填补技术空缺；另一方面，这使得澳大利亚大学在国际教育市场上以更具竞争力的优势打败竞争对手。这看起来像是双赢政策。
但是我们现在清楚这个决定产生了始料未及的后果。当我们把自由化的职业教育产业与作为诱饵的移民连在一起时，就导致了私立学院数量的剧增。很多这些学院的教学质量都不可靠，但却为海外留学生提供课程。（仅在维多利亚州，41所学校现在正在接受政府部门的迟来的检查，看他们是不是能够提供真正如他们所承诺的课程。）将教育市场与移民结果紧密联系在一起促使大批国际留学生来澳学习，尤其是选择职业技术培训的印度学生。
Mark Webster指出，因为发型师和厨师被列为澳洲紧缺职业，具备这种技术的申请者将在技术移民分数测试中获得额外加分。“你会发现，澳洲所有的学校如雨后春笋般的开设发型师和商业厨师课程，因此成千上万的国籍留学生前来学习这些课程。”从2005年至2008年仅仅四年内，印度学生在澳学习的学生人数就增加了四倍，从13,000增加到60,000.人。那些学习职业教育的印度学生在其中所占的比例从20%左右上涨到超过50%。
Mark Webster认为，Chris Evans的最近政策变化——紧缺职业清单和修订后的优先审理程序的引入——对全球经济衰退的回应较少，更多的是尝试更正扭曲变形的移民体系，尤其是2001年政策导致的畸形体制。无疑，部长需要解决这些问题，但目前他的行动还没有解决我们所强调的任何问题。实际上，他所做的是将几万个移民申请搁置起来，期望当移民者厌倦了等待，也许问题就会消失了。
这个结果预示着这会引发一系列新的始料未及的后果。一些国际留学生毕业后申请永居仅仅是为了能够持过桥签证获得在澳工作的权利。一些雇主仗着雇主担保能够加速签证申请者优先审理，利用这些学生为自己谋利。而当学生们认识到他们所期待的移居澳洲的结果不一定能实现时，这将会进一步澳大利亚高等教育的名声。
联邦政府本该采取更多决策性的行动以修整技术移民计划。也许，在前自由党议员Bruce Baird对澳洲留学教育做总结时就可以这样做。一种选择是提高技术移民分数测试的门槛，从而提高移民澳洲的资格标准；另一种选择就是废除MODL，明确提出只有职业在CSL上或者被雇主或州（领地）政府担保的申请者才能有机会符合技术移民澳洲的条件。
正如工党后座议员Kelvin Thomso在议会中的近期发言中建议的那样，政府甚至可以采取更为有力的行动来打破留学教育和移民之间的联系。教育业一定会大声地鸣不平，支付高额学费的国际留学生人数的剧减会导致澳洲高等教育基金捉襟见肘情形的出现。但正如Thomson先生早前论证的，打破与移民的联系将会是敲响不良培训学院和低质课程的死亡丧钟。
这些变化可以是迅速及残忍的，可以仅仅通过拒绝那些未达到修订后标准的现有移民申请来实现。或者，方式可以更加的温和一些，通过同意审理现行政策下已经在通道里等候的申请，但是拒绝接受不符合更高门槛条件的新的申请。另外一种相对来说不是很唐突的方式，就是给那些因长时间的等待或因溯及力而使得申请不再符合标准的希望撤回申请的申请人退费。这些选择也许都可以使移民部长在近几个月内缓解目前混乱加剧的情形。
照目前情况看，政府仍然接受新的申请的递交，仍然接受数百万元的技术移民的申请费，尽管申请者们的申请至少在2012年以前都不太可能被审理到。这种状况不会被改变，除非澳大利亚突然决定大幅度的增加永久技术移民的名额并且降低申请门槛。但在目前不确定的经济环境下，政府是不太可能做出这样的决定的，尤其是政府和雇主可以将临时移民签证作为填补紧缺技术空缺一个快速通道。
同时，Zuleika Arashiro除了空等澳洲政府解决这种混乱，还可以有其他更好的选择。如果她在未来的两个月内仍不能找到长期稳定的专业对口工作，她就会回到巴西，把移民签证申请所花费的4000元当做自己一次失败的投资。
Peter Mares代表ABC国家电台“国家利益”栏目。他本人是斯维本科技大学社会研究学院副研究员。
(移民部长Chris Evans在接受“国家利益”栏目访问时回应本篇文章所提出的问题。)
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A blockage in the skilled migration pipeline
A dramatic rule change has left many would-be migrants in limbo. Peter Mares reports on the indefinite delays facing tens of thousands of applicants for permanent residency
03 November 2009
Above: Melbourne Airport.
Photo: Amanda Kelly
ZULEIKA ARASHIRO is an intelligent young woman with a bright future – but it probably won’t be a future lived in Australia. Having applied for permanent residency at the beginning of this year, a process she was told would take up to nine months, she now finds herself in a bureaucratic limbo. The immigration department can’t tell her exactly when her case will be decided, but it’s clear that she’s in a queue that’s more than two years long and still growing. Under current arrangements, Dr Arashiro could wait indefinitely in Melbourne, where she has completed a PhD at La Trobe University, and yet see her goal of permanent residence in Australia recede ever further into the distance as more recent applicants are given priority processing and, in effect, allowed to jump the queue.
Dr Arashiro’s case is not an isolated one: tens of thousands of other would-be migrants living in Australia and overseas are in similar circumstances. Having lodged valid applications for permanent residence and shelled out thousands of dollars in application fees and associated costs, they now find that their lives are on hold. The issue is not one of qualifications: Australia hasn’t altered its criteria for selecting skilled migrants. What has been adjusted is the order in which applications are considered.
The changes flow from an announcement made late last year by immigration minister Senator Chris Evans, which he presented as a re-positioning of Australia’s migration program in response to the global economic crisis. Taking effect from the start of 2009, the most important change was the introduction of a “critical skills list,” on which the Department of Immigration and Citizenship identified a range of professions and qualifications in very high demand in the Australian economy. Since the start of this year, the department is giving priority to processing visa applications from migrants with these critical skills, especially if they are sponsored by an employer or by a state or territory government.
Three months later, Senator Evans trimmed the new list, removing building and manufacturing trades (such as bricklayers, plumbers, welders, carpenters and metal fitters) so that it is now mainly made up of health and medical, engineering and IT professions. Simultaneously, he reduced the number of migration places on offer, cutting Australia’s permanent skilled intake for 2008–09 by 14 per cent, from 133,500 to 115,000 places (with a further reduction to 108,100 places this financial year). In September the minister announced yet more changes to the priority processing of visa applications, which make it clear that independent applicants for general skilled migration – those who have no employer sponsorship and are not on the critical skills list – will remain at the bottom of the queue. This has led to a raging debate on migration chat sites, where confused and disillusioned applicants voice their dismay and uncertainty.
“Everybody on the critical skills list gets processed before anybody else,” says registered migration agent Mark Webster, a board member of the peak industry body, the Migration Institute of Australia. “So you could have your application in – and it might have been in there for twelve or eighteen months – but you won’t be allocated [a visa] until everybody on the critical skills list has been processed and granted.” Mr Webster says he likes to tell clients clearly what to expect from their visa application. But, he says, “At the moment I feel very uncomfortable, because I just can’t tell people what to expect in terms of processing times.”
The critical skills list trumps a pre-existing and much longer list – the “migration occupations in demand list,” or MODL, which is put together by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. MODL identifies “occupations” that are “in national demand” in Australia and have “sustained employment prospects.” If a migrant has an occupation on the MODL then they are assured of “occupation in demand/job offer” points under the general skilled migration points test. MODL is still in operation; in essence, if you have at least twelve months’ work experience in an occupation listed on the MODL, and you meet other basic criteria relating to age (you are less than forty-five years old) and language skills (English language fluency), then you should be able to pass the 120-point threshold for a general skilled migration visa.
In other words, you can submit a valid application for permanent residency in Australia that has a high chance of success – if your application is ever considered, that is. The question facing Zuleika Arashiro and others in her situation is how long they should wait for the bureaucratic cogs to turn under the new processing priorities.
A LAWYER and political scientist, Zuleika Arashiro has expertise in international trade negotiations. She is fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish and has a law degree from the University of Sao Paulo and two masters degrees: one in Latin American studies from Georgetown University in Washington DC, the other in public administration and government from Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas Foundation (rated by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top five “policymaker think-tanks” worldwide).
She didn’t come to Australia with the aim of becoming a resident, but her experience of study here was positive. So in February this year, having successfully completed her PhD, she decided to apply to stay permanently. “I’ve also received Australian scholarships – one from La Trobe and one from the Australian government,” she says, “so I am thankful for that and even considered that teaching here for two or three years was a means to give something back.” She is not motivated by money: “In fact, if I decide to prepare for a public career in the federal government in Brazil, I can actually make more money than I would do teaching here,” she says. “There are people who do appreciate certain things in this country beyond ‘the economy,’ who connect to the power of its landscape and aspire for more than a wage by the end of the month.”
Dr Arashiro has spent about $4000 so far on her application. The bulk of the money went to pay the upfront lodgement fee to the immigration department (currently $2525); the rest covered the cost of medical and language tests and acquiring police clearances and other necessary documents. Most applicants also spend at least $2000 more to engage a migration agent to assist them with their application.
When she lodged her application Dr Arashiro was told by the department that a decision would be made in “six to nine months.” Based on the experiences of friends, Dr Arashiro anticipated that the process might take up to a year. It was only by chance – when she was checking for other information on the department’s website in late September – that she discovered that processing priorities had changed and her application was unlikely to be considered until the end of 2011 at the earliest. This left her with two choices. She could opt to wait out the department. While her migration application is pending she can stay in Australia indefinitely on a Bridging Visa A, which grants her work rights. But the chances of landing a satisfying job in her chosen profession are limited under these conditions. “I’ve been lucky to get casual research but I’ve basically being doing casual research for the whole year, like three weeks, a month, two months, and that’s it,” she says. “It’s hard, especially because in my field some positions would be government related positions and they require at least permanent residency, so without that it’s very hard. I can’t even apply.”
If Dr Arashiro decides on the other option, withdrawing her application, then her investment of time and money will have been wasted. Visa application fees and other costs are not refundable. Nor can she return home to Brazil to await the department’s decision: if she leaves Australia then she will be deemed to have abandoned her application and it will most likely be refused. (It is possible to leave Australia for short term travel, but only after securing another visa called a Bridging Visa B, for which applicants must demonstrate that they have “substantial reasons for wishing to leave and re-enter Australia.”)
According to the department’s report on migration program outcomes for the last financial year, 133,601 “clients” remained “in the pipeline” of the skilled migration program on 30 June 2009. The department told me it was unable to break this figure down to indicate the proportion of applications that qualify for top priority processing categories under the minister’s new rules (in other words, applicants with professions on the critical skills list or with sponsorship by an employer). The department did provide me with information on the average processing times for visas issued in the six months to 30 June 2009, but only for the top five priority processing categories (times varied between eighty-eight and 399 days). It could provide no data on processing times for visa applications that fall outside these priority groups, and it may be that this is because no such applications were decided during that period.
But in a document on its website explaining the impact of the changes announced by the minister on 23 September the government advises that if the nominated occupation is not on the critical skills list then an application submitted onshore is “unlikely” to be finalised “before the end of 2011” and an application submitted offshore is “unlikely” to be finalised “before the end of 2012.” Even applications that were in “the final stages of processing” prior to the changes “cannot be processed further until those in higher priority groups are finalised.” In other words all non-priority applications are on indefinite hold.
The current backlog of migration applications is roughly half “offshore” and half “onshore” (the latter mostly being international students like Dr Arashiro who have graduated from Australian universities and colleges). Either way, the distress caused by the new processing priorities can be acute. Not surprisingly, the most upset applicants are those who had visa applications in the final stages of processing just as the rule changes took affect.
WHEN I BEGAN researching this issue for ABC Radio National’s The National Interest, word quickly spread. Within days we had received detailed accounts from applicants whose credentials would have guaranteed them more or less certain success under the old rules, but who were now languishing in a seeming limbo.
One of them was Rob, a British plumber, who has been in the process of applying to migrate to Australia for two years and has invested thousands of dollars in migration advice and fees. He has been through the cumbersome and expensive process of having his trade skills verified by Australian authorities (both a paper and a practical assessment), he secured sponsorship from a state government for his application (required after the changes announced in December 2008) and he has received “positive feedback from potential employers in Australia.” Earlier this year, at the request of the immigration department, the family obtained the necessary medical and police checks (total cost of $1600). Then, with every indication that their application was on track and that visas would be issued by the end of the year, Rob sold the family’s home in Britain out of concern that property prices would fall further if they waited.
Things still seemed to be moving smoothly on 22 September, when Rob was told by staff at the department’s Adelaide visa processing centre that a “case officer would review/finalise” his application “within two weeks.” But the very next day Minister Evans announced the latest changes to processing priorities and released a list showing the revised order in which the department would process different categories of application. There are seven categories on the list and Rob’s application had fallen to number five (“Applications from people who are nominated by a state/territory government whose nominated occupation is not listed on the Critical Skills List”). Rob is distraught: “As a direct result of these changes all applicants in our position have now been left in limbo, facing further financial burdens and stress,” he writes.
Another person who contacted The National Interest is Valerie, a Swiss economist who has also spent two years on an application to come to Australia with her husband and three children (aged eight, five and three). Both she and her husband originally applied as economists, and by December 2008 they were “getting to the front of the queue,” she writes. But the first round of priority processing changes sent them “back to square one.” Valerie and her husband revised their application and obtained state sponsorship from the Victorian government to migrate as statisticians. (The department treated this as a new application so the family had to pay a second application fee of $2525.) “On the eleventh of September we got a case officer asking for work references, new police checks and a new passport for our youngest because it had expired,” writes Valerie, who understood that once a case officer was assigned to a file it would only be “a matter of weeks” before a visa would be issued. “So we put the house for sale (had buyers in two weeks), sold the kids’ toys, the furniture was booked by neighbours, we had an agent appointed to look at houses for us in Melbourne… the school in Switzerland knew the kids were leaving, the youngest is on waiting list for five kindergartens in Melbourne.”
Valerie and her husband both have masters degrees and PhDs from Sydney University and each scored 145 points on the migration test, well above the 100 points needed for state sponsored migration. But like Rob and his family, their application was suddenly moved down the processing queue as a result of the changes announced by the minister. “We were committed. Now we feel cheated. Our kids are disoriented, they don’t understand what is happening, they were supposed to leave…” And now the department was telling them it might take another two to three years.
Tracey is in a similar position. Her eldest child was fourteen when she took the initial steps to migrate to Australia from Lancashire. “This new timeline has devastated us,” she writes. “We were never informed of the changes by our case officer, until I emailed him to find out if they were going to process my visa, considering they had requested the medicals and police checks be done. The reply I received was an automated response, outlining the new priority changes.” Valerie says that by the time a visa is issued her daughter will be more than eighteen years old, which means she will no longer qualify as a dependant and “will not be able to migrate with us unless she is in full time education. If we had been given these timelines when we were first investigating the possibility of emigration to Australia, we would have never pursued it, as we would never leave a child behind.”
If offshore applicants like Rob, Valerie and Tracey wish to remain in the pipeline in the hope that current blockages will eventually be overcome, then they must continue throwing more money at the dream of moving to Australia, since police and medical clearances must be renewed every twelve months. (The average cost of the necessary medical tests is around $300 per person or $1200 for a family of four.)
In theory, the prospect of such a long wait and spiralling costs should deter new applicants from seeking a visa and help reduce the backlog of applications. But in October a senior official told a major migration conference in Melbourne that the department expects to receive 120,000 new applications for permanent skilled migration this financial year. Given that there are only 108,100 places in the skilled program, the wait for applicants not on the priority list is going to lengthen as the blockage continues to swell.
Despite the fact that their applications will sit in a lengthening queue, migrants will continue to apply for permanent visas for two main reasons. First, as Mark Webster points out, this never-ending waiting list can itself create perverse incentives. It can encourage foreign student graduates with relatively poor chances of achieving permanent migration to apply anyway, simply in order to remain longer in Australia and make use of temporary work rights. They will be able to work legally in Australia as long as their application for permanent status is stuck in the system – on current indications for at least two years. “We’ll see a lot of applicants who might be tempted to do that because that’s a good outcome,” says Mr Webster. “They can work, and they’ll be earning better money than they would back home, sending it back to the family.” If they are rejected, they may be able to extend their stay in Australia (and their work rights) further by lodging an appeal with the already overburdened Migration Review Tribunal.
Second, unscrupulous operators (such as offshore education recruiters) might continue to encourage applications and drum up business with false promises. Zuleika Arashiro has evidence that this is happening. She says that agents in South America “are still sending emails to promote immigration to Australia and that’s really a concern because I’m not sure that people are being told about the current situation.” Mark Webster says agents can make big promises without having to worry too much about the consequences in the short term. “You may see some unscrupulous operators making promises that can’t be kept and saying, ‘I’ll get you work visas, I’ll get you permanent residence.’” They can lodge the application “knowing that it’s not going to succeed and they won’t have the fallout from that situation for another two or three years.”
The longer the blockage in the processing pipeline remains, the more the problem will spill over into other areas, particularly the workplace. One way of moving your visa application up the migration queue, of qualifying for priority processing, is to get sponsorship from an employer. But, as has been evident from the problems with the visa 457 temporary skilled worker program, this can put workers in a vulnerable position with bosses who make unreasonable demands. “I think the government knows and everyone knows that this is happening,” says Dr Arashiro. “There has been a lot of exploitation of students and people who are working underpaid and over hours just to get the sponsorship. That’s a reality. I don’t think it is a secret at all.”
IT IS ENTIRELY within the powers of the minister to deal with visa applications in any order or priority he considers appropriate. And the minister would not be doing his job if he did not adjust the annual quota for skilled migration or revise the list of sought-after skills and qualifications in line with Australia’s changing social and economic circumstances. As a political scientist Dr Arashiro acknowledges that the minister has a responsibility to adjust the migration program in line with Australia’s national interests; what she objects to is the retrospective nature of the changes, “which hits those who trusted Australian institutions and rules.”
Mark Webster warns that attempting to micro-manage the migration program can have unintended consequences. “The more that you try to cherry pick the migration program, the more distorted it becomes. A lot of the problems we’ve arrived at have been because of cherry picking,” he says.
A glaring example is the use of migration in the marketing of Australian education overseas. In 2001 the Coalition government introduced changes that enabled international students to apply for migration onshore within six months of completing their course. Previously they’d had to return home before lodging an application. The changes had two purposes. On the one hand, they were designed to help fill the skills gaps that had opened up in the Australian labour force during the boom years; on the other, they would help give Australian universities a competitive advantage over their rivals in the international education market. It looked like a win-win policy.
But we now know that the decision had unintended consequences. When combined with the liberalisation of the vocational education sector, the dangled carrot of permanent residence resulted in an explosion in the number of private colleges, many of dubious quality, offering training places to overseas students. (In Victoria alone, forty-one colleges are now under review by state authorities belatedly checking whether they can actually deliver the courses they promise.) Linking education marketing with migration outcomes encouraged a rapid growth in the number of international students coming to Australia, particularly students from India undertaking vocational training.
As Mark Webster points out, because hairdressers and professional cooks were listed as being in short supply in Australia, applicants with qualifications in these trades received extra points in the skilled migration points test. “And so what you found was that all these colleges started springing up in Australia offering – you guessed it – hairdressing and commercial cookery courses, and so thousands and thousands of international students ended up doing these courses.” In just four years, between 2005 and 2008, the number of Indian students commencing study in Australia more than quadrupled from 13,000 to 60,000. The proportion of those Indian students taking vocational courses jumped from around 20 per cent to more than 50 per cent.
Mark Webster sees Chris Evans’s recent changes – the introduction of the critical skills list and revised processing priorities – less as a response to the global economic downturn than an attempt to correct distortions in the migration program, particularly the distortions created by that 2001 decision. There is no doubt that the minister did need to tackle those problems, but his actions to date have not resolved any of the underlying issues. Effectively, all he has done is put thousands of migration applications on hold, perhaps hoping the problem will go away as migrants get sick of waiting.
The result threatens to bring a new set of unintended consequences. Some international student graduates will apply for permanent residency purely in order to obtain the work rights associated with a bridging visa. Some employers will exploit student graduates reliant on employer sponsorship to lift their visa applications up the processing queue. And Australia’s reputation as a destination for tertiary study could be further damaged when students realise the anticipated outcome of permanent residency won’t necessarily materialise.
The federal government could have acted more decisively to fix the skilled migration program, and perhaps it might do so once former Liberal MP Bruce Baird delivers his review of international education in Australia. One option is to increase the threshold on the skilled migration points test to make it harder to qualify for migration to Australia. Another option is to scrap the MODL and make it clear that only applicants on the critical skills list, or those sponsored by an employer or by a state or territory government, have any chance of qualifying for skilled migration to Australia.
The government could take even more radical action and break the link between international education and migration, as recommended by Labor backbencher Kelvin Thomson in a recent speech in parliament. The education industry would scream blue murder and the resulting drop in fee-paying international students would expose the truly parlous state of higher education funding in Australia, but as Mr Thomson argues persuasively, breaking the link with migration would sound the death knell for dodgy training colleges and low-quality courses.
These changes could be made swiftly and brutally, simply by refusing all existing migration applications that do not meet the revised criteria. Or it could be done more gently, by agreeing to process applications already in the pipeline under current rules but refusing to accept any new applications that do not meet the higher threshold. Another less abrupt option would be to offer to refund the application fees of all those who wish to withdraw their applications because of the long delays or because their applications were retrospectively disqualified. These are the options that are likely to confront the minister in the months ahead as disquiet over the current mess intensifies.
As things stand, the government is still accepting new lodgements, and still cashing in millions of dollars in lodgement fees from skilled migrants who have very little chance of having their visa applications considered before 2012, at the earliest. This will only change if Australia suddenly decides to increase its permanent skilled migration intake dramatically and reduce the barriers to permanent entry. In the current uncertain economic climate such a decision is unlikely, particularly now that business and government can turn to temporary migration as a fast way of filling critical skills shortages.
Meanwhile, Zuleika Arashiro has better things to do than wait for the Australian government to sort out the mess. If she cannot find an ongoing professional job in the next two months, then she will return home to Brazil and write off the $4000 spent on her visa application as a bad investment. •
Peter Mares presents The National Interest on ABC Radio National and is an adjunct research fellow at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology.
Immigration minister Chris Evans responds to the points raised in this article in an interview on The National Interest |
发表于 4-1-2010 15:35:55
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发表于 4-1-2010 22:56:26
