Australian Immigration Daily News

Australia has intercepted another vessel, this one with 67 passengers. 

This means that over 50,000 persons have now arrived illegally into Australia since Rudd got rid of the border protection policies which were in place, and working well under the previous Liberal government.

Over 1000 people have died as a result.

Let's have a look at some raw statistics.  Since Rudd changed Howard's policies, which used to stop the boats, 50,032 people have arrived on 798 boats.  This is quite literally insane. 

Now Australia has implemented the MOU with Papua New Guinea which is being called the 'Papua New Guinea (PNG) solution' (is this something like 'Malaysia NO SOLUTION' - in my opinion - yes!).  Why?  Because now over 1,900 persons arrived since the inception of the 'P.N.G. SOLUTION'

According to Scott Morrison, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship this has led to AUD11 billion in budget blowouts.  According to Morrison this is money that could be better spent on Australia's hospitals, roads and schools.

It has damaged Australia’s international reputation and weakened our borders.

I guess my question is, does Rudd have the competence to secure the borders?  Or is this a knee-jerk reaction by Rudd to secure last-minute votes before the Federal elections on 7 September 2013.

Once again there are price increases across visa classes in Australia from 5 August 2013.  For the latest amendments please see ComLaw link:

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2013L01534

When are the visa application charges going to stop going up? 

The State Government of South Australia has updated it's occupations list (yesterday) and changed some of the demand levels for certain occupations for migration purposes.

Some of the occupations have been now ranked as higher in demand:

Quality Assurance Manager has gone from medium to high demand.

I received an email today about Australian Computer Society Skills Assessments and I wanted to share it, as follows:

Hi Liana

There's another issue that wasn't covered - it's not just about skill assessing authorities using a different basis for skill level, ACS also have decided they will ignore partial months. This impacts the many IT clients who do contract work and have many short periods of employment, and as a result their partial months at the start and end of each period are not considered. This can add up and make a difference when trying to meet the 3/5/8 years of experience to obtain points.

As an example 15/03/2013 to 15/05/2013 wouldn't be 2 months, it would be 1 month according to ACS. (The 1/2 month for March and May each would be discarded)

I do around 70 - 100 ACS skill assessments a year and while ACS have improved their communications significantly in the last few years (gone are the days where they refuse to communicate) there are still some remaining issues like this that need to be resolved.

I guess this shows us a little bit more detail about 'What PNG is getting out of this'.  I am not sure this really is a solution to the 'boat people' problem facing Australia since the Labor government came into power, but what it does do is give migrants and migration agents a little more of the nitty gritty on the 'arrangement'.  I still can't see PNG getting a whole lot of of this deal.   Will they be sending Women?  Children?  I don't think so.  

Anyway, the link to the new arrangement can be found below and is taken from the DIAC website:

https://www.immi.gov.au/visas/humanitarian/novisa/_doc/transfer-assessment-settlement-arrangements.pdf