Bowen's acknowledgement in stark contrast with migration agent testing

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Created on Thursday, 05 April 2012 15:28

Written by Editorial staff

Recent comments by the minister for immigration and citizenship Chris Bowen are seen as being in stark contrast with developments that could impact on the services provided by migration agents.

In an address to the Arthur Calwell Memorial Lecture published on April 3, Mr Bowen examines the history of the occasion.

He strove to remind the audience that the lecture's namesake - former Labor Party leader Arthur Calwell - was the nation's first immigration minister who had helped to set the tone for overseas policies for many years to come.

Mr Bowen asserted: "He was a creature of his times but also a visionary who pushed new limits in public policy and whose vision of immigration set the course of Australian policy for the many decades since."

The minister explained that while Mr Calwell's policies were based on "existential imperative rather than some sense of grand social engineering", they served to introduce the benefits of multiculturalism that so many Australians today take for granted.

However, despite his assertions that the nation has enjoyed substantial rewards as a result of the seven million permanent migrants entering the country since 1945, Mr Bowen has yet to take action on an issue that affects the very people who help this to occur - immigration agents.

While the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) has made sweeping changes to the frameworks used to streamline applications for certain visas - namely the 457 subclass - these considerations have not been extended to the skilled professionals who make it happen.

The simple fact is that registered migration agents who operate directly with migrants have a distinct advantage in being able to converse with them in their primary language.

Any plans that reduce this capacity - such as the DIAC's proposal to enforce new mandatory language testing - will dilute their efficiency and take away from the services available to international professionals.

While the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) helps to set the bar on a number of visa and residency requirements, forcing immigration agents to sit these same exams does not serve a viable purpose in building a truly multicultural nation.

It seems that this requirement goes against the very foundations of what Mr Bowen was trying to cover in his presentation at the Arthur Calwell Memorial Lecture, especially when he makes statements of multiculturalism to the effect that it is a state to be "lived and experienced, not legislated for".