Australian Immigration Daily News

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has recently published the following paper:

Skills-Deficit---Immigrant-Workforce.pdf

The paper delves into the post-global economic crisis era, where employment and growth of national economies remain at the forefont of policy agendas in countries, including Australia.

The following information was sent to me today as it was probably sent to other Migration Alliance members.  For those of you who have not seen it I thought it might be a good idea to share it here, with permission from the author:

Dear Migration Specialist,

The following migration industry snapshot is useful to analyse at this time of the year, being one-quarter past midyear DIAC changes.

Industry Snapshot

The September quarter 2013 has seen lower activity within both skilled and business migration industry when compared to the same period last year. This is primarily due to the more stringent criteria in making migrants eligible for any given visa subclass.

The graph below provides an illustration of year to date figures on individual visa streams. Employer sponsored visas are currently leading in the number of application outcomes followed by partner and skilled independent.

Graph: 2012-13 skill stream by visa category, onshore versus offshore

Unregistered Practice has to stop.....seriously.

Australia invests a lot of time and money regulating Australian Citizens and Permanent Residents who are RMAs.  And yet the DIBP accept visa applications from organisations like this one who make these kinds of shonky assessments for Australian visas  (see below).

This was received annonymously in the post yesterday, marked for my attention.  I guess the sender was hoping that I would write a news article about this and expose it.  They were right.  Here we have an 'technical evaluation report' being provided to a person from India who is seeking to migrate to Australia.  He is listed on the form as being a 'salesman cum driver' and eligible for the 'SIM' visa as a 'Dairy Cattle Caretaker' and passing the points test. (see below)

I cannot believe that DIBP's system is being clogged up with these type of applications.  What a drain on our resources and what a waste of hopes, dreams and money for the intending migrant. 

Migration Alliance has received communication from registered migration agent Karl Konrad this morning as follows:

Australian Computer Society (ACS) admits 1 year work experience requirement is being considered as a compulsory requirement for international students in Australia before they can apply for permanent residency.
 
Disaster Looms for International IT Students 
 
The Australian Computer Society's Professional Assessment Manager, Berny Martinez, confirmed today that a 1 year work experience employment option after an Australian Bachelor IT degree is being considered as a requirement for international students to obtain the skill assessment for permanent residency.

It is also confirmed that the ACS is now moving to use a 2 stage assessment process, one being  for the Temporary Graduate - 485 skills assessment and the next being a Graduate Assessment - for permanent residency. This will effectively dash the hopes of thousands if international students study IT in Australia.

In an email to IMMIGRATION NEWS, Mr. Martinez stated "Currently, our Graduate result letters do not specify it is a Temporary Graduate - 485 skills assessment.  This is a straight forward change to ensure applicants are submitting the correct skills assessment to DIBP."
 
"The change will involve a name change of the application type and a statement in the ACS result letter outlining it is a Temporary Graduate - 485 skills assessment.  The criteria will remain the same."

Hmmmm.

The skill assessments now issued by the ACS are not for the sole purpose of the Graduate 485 visa and have never been for the sole purpose of the Graduate 485 visa. They are simply skill assessments for migration purposes, pure and simple. It is an assessment letter which has been used for years for many visa purposes both permanent and temporary applications.

To try and now say it is really for the Graduate visa only is just gobbledygook.

Since the current skill assessment for international students is really on for the 485 visa purpose, the ACS is justifying their new Graduate Skills Assessment. As Mr. Martinez explains;

"The Graduate Skills Assessment is a different matter.  We are looking at the best way to help applicants meet their permanent residency skills assessment requirements as post graduates.
 
We understand the real world challenges graduates face in finding employment in their first year after graduation and how this will affect their chances of meeting permanent skills assessment requirements.
 
We hope to release the final criteria for the Graduate Skills Assessment by the end of this week.  We are considering a 1 year employment option after the completion of an Australian Bachelor degree and an alternative option of the completion of an ACS Professional Year Program after the completion of an Australian Bachelor degree.
 
These 2 options will give applicants 2 avenues to help them meet the permanent skills assessment requirements."

So it looks like we are going to be right after all. A second skill assessment layer which of course must be harder than the first level otherwise one cannot justify a two stage process. While of course the official line is that the ACS have not decided on the final announcement yet, I wouldn't bet on the fact that the one year work experience component won't be a requirement.

In my opinion we will find it will be just as we predicted. Students will be offered the carrot of the mighty Professional Year Program (PYP). Of course the PYP will be a fine substitute for real life one year of work experience, won't it? Of course it has nothing to do to the probable 200% increase enrollments into the ACS administered PYP programs, does it?

"Of course not" I hear you scream out.

Let's see what happens when the ACS announce their official policy sometime this week.
 
The ACS lets the cat out of the bag, a little early

It appears the News Update page on the ACS web site that appeared on the 16th October about the new two stage assessment criteria, should not have been made available to the public. According to Thomas Shanahan the Communications Executive of the ACS;

"I also want to make it clear that we are not being deceptive or hiding information. It is correct that some information was posted in error, as it was in draft and under review. That information was removed to avoid any confusion and procedures have been strengthened to ensure this error does not occur again."
 
Yes we at IMMIGRATION NEWS are happy to stand corrected that the sudden change on the ACS web site was just an extraordinary coincidence and had nothing to do with our article we printed in Volume 267 on Friday the 18th. Amen.

Migration Alliance would like to thank Karl Konrad for his contributions to these blogs.

Migration Alliance members will be interested to read that more stories are emerging about the Office of the MARA.  Here, ex-migration agent Ronald Wright tells his story.  There will be more on this to come.  Interestingly I have read the decision record and note that the decision-maker and their position number have been removed from the decision record.  Nameless declsions.

Hello Migration Alliance,

I send this email to you after reading the story on Mr Kang.

I have been through this situation before. This is my story.

I was contacted by a Mr Michael Fu back 2009 about mangering a  migration business call MIGR8
After i check out the office and saw that this business was sound and clients applications were  processed correctly.

I agree with Mr Fu to take over the business where he would run the office and i do the migration applications.