Australian Immigration System Needs Modifications – A Reoprt By Productivity Commission

According to the Australian immigration updates, the Productivity Commission has reported some flaws in the immigration system. In order to overcome those flaws, the Australian government has asked the immigration department of the country to make a few reforms in the system.

Productivity Report

The Australian government is concerned about targeting the younger and more skilled migrants who have better English language proficiency skills. Therefore, it has given a report to reform the issues encountered in country’s immigration system. This report is named as ‘Productivity Report’, as it enhances the productivity in the system by minimizing the shortcomings. It was released on Monday and has a few recommendations. These recommended Australian Immigration changes will attract more skilled migrants.

The shortcoming that is highlighted in this report is that it does not provide the best outcomes for Australian community as it does not properly target more skilled migrants. The report says that current system allows the employers to give permanent residency to the workers without undertaking a skills test. So there must be a single universal points test for everyone as well as the English language proficiency test.

Brexit Supporters Praised Australian Point-Based System

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who are the leading supporters of Brexit have also praised the Australian points-based system for immigration. This system controls the migration along with giving the chance to the skilled people to migrate to Australia. So the Pro-Brexit supporters have called this Australian system as a model that UK should also follow.

Vote Leave also said that the UK should adopt the same system by 2020 which will allow the entering of more skilled and better English speaking people to the country. However, Theresa May, UK PM has rejected to adopt this system.

Australia –Leading Economy of the World

At this time, Australia is the only country which is operating a skills-based migration programme. By this, the country gets to fill the labour shortages by migrants, increasing the growth rate of the economy from the past 25 years.

Learn More: Australian Immigration Processing Time

The current population of Australia is 24m which is predicted to be increased with the addition of 13m more people by 2060. Therefore, the Australian government is concerned about the Australian Immigration Program.

Point-Based System Preferred over Price-Based System

Last year, the Australian government was asked by Canberra to shift from “Point-based” immigration system to “Price-based” system. Price based system is mostly based on charging the migrants. This was suggested as it saves about A$20-A$25bn of the government. But the commission did not support it because it will reduce the number of more skilled, better English-speaking migrants.

Learn More: Australian Immigration Occupations List

As the immigrants are increasing in Australia, the commission asked if this is justified for the future of the country? This is because migration has an impact over the land and local infrastructure. Therefore, it says that these points should be taken into consideration by the Immigration department and it should make policies that attract skilled and younger migrants. This will add to the country’s economy instead of just adding more and more people and will be beneficial for the long term.

Abolishing Australia’s Investment Visa Scheme Suggested

The commission also recommended to tight the restrictions on family reunion visas and special investment visas scheme. It has also advised to abolish the Australia’s investment visa scheme. This scheme was made in November 2012 and under this,the individuals are offered residency in return of investing between A$5m to A$15m. It had generated an investment of A$7.4bn for providing 1,483 residency visas. Among these visas, 90% were given to Chinese nationals.

So the commission has warned that such a system can result in immigrants with low skills, having lower English language proficiency and of old age.In 2014, Canada also abolished the similar investment visa scheme due to the same reasons.