In a staggering return to the bad old days of the Howard Government, the federal government has made it easier for GPs, teachers, early educators and aged-care nurses with poor English, with little experience and lower qualifications, to apply for work in Australia.
Almost 13,000 overseas workers received an invitation to apply for a permanent skilled visa in August, the biggest invitation round since the pandemic. You’ve got to be joking.
Soon I’ll be inundated with migrants seeking resume help because they can’t get a job.
Either that or local workers will penalised as employers hire cheap foreign labour way under the award pay rate.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government was trying to plug the so called ‘skills shortage’, which is spin put out by the business lobby, universities and trade colleges.
The government, under pressure from the business lobby, has increased increase the annual permanent migration cap from 160,000 to 195,000 per year.
Former Department of Immigration deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said, “If you lower secondary school teachers from 90 to 65, you’ve obviously allowed in people with lesser skills, lesser English.”
“Basically, anyone who had an EOI in the system in the right occupation has been given an invitation.”
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation said the union’s concern was the migrants might not fully meet the professional registration requirements.