The Irish Echo reports that there has been an increasing number of Irish illegals in Australia in recent years who have been located by DIBP and deported. But this is only a small part of a larger and growing problem.

The number of people living in Australia illegally is steadily increasing at a rate of about 5% per year or about 3000 people a year. As at 30 June 2013, DIBP statistics estimate that about 62,700 people were unlawfully living in Australia compared to 2010 when the figure was about 53,900.

Freelancer.com chief executive Matt Barrie has described a federal government report asserting there is no skills shortage in the information technology sector as “rubbish”, reports the Australian Financial Review.

In a scathing attack of the 2012-13 Skills Shortage report which concluded there is no shortage of seven specific types of IT workers, including analyst programmers, developer programmers and software engineers, Mr Barrie asserts that the report is misleading

““What they’re talking about are technician level jobs, literally IT tech support roles. They’re not talking about software engineering or the real jobs that you need in a modern technology company,” he said.

“I would like someone to explain what the difference between ‘developer programmer’ and ‘software engineer’ is, because being an adjunct associate professor in the space and having hired hundreds of people in the industry I have no idea.

In concluding that no reasonable tribunal would have refused the adjournment request the primary judge found, the Tribunal’s decision that the Applicant should not be able to submit test results corrected following a re-mark “lacked an evident and intelligible justification”.

The Federal Courts have held that the Tribunals refusal to grant a short adjournment was unreasonable and stressed that it is critical that Tribunals act reasonably when reviewing cases.

The decision came in a case where the applicant requested from the Tribunal an adjournment to seek a review and re-mark of the applicant’s IELTs score. The applicant who failed several times to achieve the English proficiency standard for a sc485 application was also at the same time scheduled to sit several more IELTs tests.

However, the Tribunal decided to proceed to make its decision because it formed the view the applicant has had a reasonable period of time to obtain evidence of competent English – he made his visa application in June 2010 and had sat the IELTS test several times.

The Federal Court however referred to the High Court’s decision in Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Li (2013) 297 ALR 225; [2013] HCA 18 (Li) and noted that there is a presumption of law that Parliament intends an exercise of power to be reasonable.

The review of student visa refusals takes up most of the MRTs time and has reportedly been the source of caseload backlogs in the recent past. The reported surge in student visa applications must surely now be a source of concern.

The MRT is established under the Migration Act 1958 (the Act) to review DIBP decisions and make the correct or preferable decision. The MRT is required to be ‘fair, just, economical, informal and quick’ (ss. 353(1).

Recent statistics from the Migration Review Tribunal (MRT) indicate that the MRT is generally taking less time for a decision as it edges closer to the time standards it has set for decisions. For refusals review, the MRT decided matters within 398 days on average, which is just under 2 months from the target time standard. Cancellation reviews however took twice the time standard of 150 days.

A spike in the permanent residence grants for cooks and hairdressers has had the media reporting that skilled migration policy has lost its way.

Cooks have topped the skilled migration list. Over 8000 cooks got permanent visas in 2012-13, followed by 5700 accountants, 2160 software engineers, 1550 IT business analysts and 1500 hairdressers, reports the Herald Sun.

The Herald Sun report also noted that skilled migration is dominated by Indians and Chinese, who comprised about half of the 129,000 places approved last year.

It is suggested that the students, who were caught out by changes to the skilled migration rules, have been ‘unwisely told’ that they could continue to apply for residency.

In an interview with the Herald Sun, Monash University migration researcher Dr Bob Birrel claimed that the number of highly skilled applicants wishing to enter the country is now falling, causing immigration officials to fill their quotas with ‘warehoused applicants’.