Australian PM Targets Imported IT Workers 224
beaverdownunder writes "A debate 'down under' has started to rage surrounding the importation of 'temporary' IT workers on so-called 457 visas, with the Prime Minister promising to bring in tough new restrictions on foreign workers in a pre-election pledge, despite evidence that there are insufficient numbers of Australians to fill the skills gap. Some quarters argue the foreign workers are necessary to drive growth in Australia's IT industry, while others have cited examples where large Australian companies have imported workers needlessly, displacing qualified Aussie personnel."
Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh, mi-kol ha-leylot? (Score:5, Interesting)
And how is this different from the controversy over this exact same subject here in the US, and I'm sure in other countries too?
Re:Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh, mi-kol ha-leyl (Score:5, Informative)
It's different because the aussie leadership actually recognize it as a problem. In the US it's just business as usual.
No, they haven't (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to actually live here to understand the politics of the situation. The problem is that the government has lost control of illegal immigration (purely their fault, because they're the ones who dismantled a border-control regime that worked), so in order to signal to the electorate that they're very very very concerned about illegal immigration, they're... cracking down on legal immigration.
People on 457 visas have average annual incomes safely over ~$90k, which makes sense - the 457 program is targeted at areas of skills shortage. There is no comparison with the H1B visas in the US.
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(other than visa overstays, which is a much bigger problem which has never had a satisfactory solution here
Visa overstay has been "solved" in many other places. Why doesn't Australia just look around and pick one of the other working systems for cracking down on it? Oh, they have the same problem as New Zealand. "We want to do anything we can to crack down on this, unless it affects tourism, in which case, we'll ignore all our rules to allow it." When letting people in for tourism is more important than keeping them out for intending to break the law, or catching them when they do, then there is no problem t
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However, back on
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Which is not "illegal immigration" by the US definition at all. They just need to make sure people getting on planes have a ticket to fly home as well. This is a REQUIREMENT for visiting many countries. Australia is an island, it can't be that hard to prevent illegal entry.
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They have plenty of space in the middle.
My point was that its not nearly the same as the US-Mexico border where several MILLION people have just WALKED ACROSS.
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So does the US so what's your point?
How is this relevant to the topic? What difference do volume and mode of transportation make? Why does there need to be a comparison between the US and Australia?
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All that "space" in the middle of Australia is a giant desert with no water, no food, and really no civilization of any kind. What are you going to do, stick thousands of refugees in the middle of a desert and watch them die of exposure in a day or two? Bulding the civilization necessary to sustain all those people (not to mention getting enough freshwater to the region for them) would be a giant and expensive project.
Just because there's a bunch of open land somewhere doesn't mean it's usable for people
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Re: No, they haven't (Score:2)
They aren't illegal, because under which ever UN treaty that covers this, which we signed up to, they are quite within their rights to seek asylum. A small fact that seems to be lost or covieniently ignored by all the fucking dog whistling politicians over here
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You might want to find out which UN treaty you're talking about and actually read it. Pay particular attention to the word "directly"
Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees [unhcr.org]
"1. The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence."
Australia doesn't get a lot of refugees coming from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, the Philippines or New Zealand.
What's more, it is, in fact, illegal and the convention calls it illegal on more than one occasion. Contracting states are, however, forbidden to penalize people who enter illegally provided th
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If you have a genuine claim to asylum, then Australia, the USA, and, indeed, any other signatory of the relevant treaties is obliged to take you in.
The proportion of "illegal immigrants" who are not, after processing, granted asylum (or similar) in Australia, is infinitesimal. In the context of the number of "legitimate" immigrants who proceed to overstay their visa, or similar, they don't even qualify as a rounding error.
The complaints against "boat people" in Australia are pure dog-whistle politics. Com
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This was true in Howard's day, it remains true in Howard's shadow Government.
Blame One Nation for getting a scary (to the major parties) number of votes.
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Australian-American Translation Needed (Score:2)
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It's like a redneck, but upside-down.
Re:Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh, mi-kol ha-leyl (Score:4, Interesting)
It is of course usually harder to grow GDP by increasing productivity per person.
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That's not on a 457 visa though ... generally if you bring enough money you can immigrate anywhere.
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Re:Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh, mi-kol ha-leyl (Score:5, Interesting)
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You do realize that any reasonably non-crap programmer ALREADY basically competes with you no matter what country you live in.
Only to a limited extent. There are still plenty of reasons to want employees who are local, or at least national. Otherwise there would be no IT people employed in Australia or the US at anything other than poverty wages. And if we truly lived in a globalized world, the same would be true of everyone from doctors to carpenters. Generally I'm staying out of the 457 visa debate because as an American I don't understand enough about the politics and the situation, but the principle I described is widely appli
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In fairness *illegal* immigrants are likely to be near the bottom of the economic spectrum, which makes them statistically far more likely to resort to crime to supplement their income. Legal immigrants on the other hand, *especially* those on work visas, are probably no more likely to commit crimes than anyone else.
You know, I'd love to see dollar-adjusted crime statistics, something like a "per-capita dollars stolen versus income level" graph. Of course at the high end the line between theft and busines
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In fairness *illegal* immigrants are likely to be near the bottom of the economic spectrum,
No, aside from the US, which is a special case because it has a large open border with a large economic disparity, most illegal immigration is from "average" or better SES (at least from their origin) who overstay a visa. Nearly all refugees and such on boats are properly processed and returned or "made legal" so that they aren't illegal immigration, even if they are a grey area of "illegal arrival" until properly processed.
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It's different because:
1. Slashdot is reporting on a political topic that isn't US-centric. That's different enough on it's own to be celebrating.
2. And because it means we get to enjoy that crocodile-tooth hat icon. I mean... who wouldn't want to see more of that?
Hat? How about the next Elle MacPherson (Score:2)
it means we get to enjoy that crocodile-tooth hat icon
To each his own mate (that's Australian right? I saw it on a Foster's commercial), but I'd rather see the next Elle MacPherson. Come to think of it, even at 48 the old one is looking pretty good.
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Labor "flushed" their "high ground" on immigration (and, indeed, pretty much everything else) a decade ago chasing LNP votes.
Since the early 2000s, Labor has been little more than the Liberals with a 5-year time delay.
If you want a soft-left party in Australia (ie: Labor's traditional position), your only option is the Greens.
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And how is this different from the controversy over this exact same subject here in the US
Well, in Australia the Prime Minister is actually OPPOSING visas that cut native IT workers out of work (and artificially lower wages). In the U.S, by contrast, the President is falling all over himself to say how great they are, and ask for even more [dice.com].
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And how is this different from the controversy over this exact same subject here in the US, and I'm sure in other countries too?
There were 4500 Australian IT undergraduate student completions in 2011, and 5800 visas.
Perhaps if they'd had 10,300 Australian IT undergraduate completions, they would have had 0 visas.
Just because you have 10,300 Australians out of work and 10,300 IT jobs open doesn't mean that you can employ those out of work people as IT workers if only 4500 of them were qualified to do IT work.
This is just politics as usual.
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Because we have a welfare program that qualified IT workers will use if foreign workers are taking local jobs. This means more taxes will be spent to give these people something to live on. I understand getting unemployment in the US is more difficult.
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is this where they hide the dingo and the youngest is sent on a quest to find it?
Just a desperate PM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Just a desperate PM (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, we are all much better off if the corporations can import a cheaper workforce. It's trickle-down economics! We will all get richer if we abolish the protectionist policies that secure our jobs, because they're just another sort of socialism standing in the way of the rising tide.
Re:Just a desperate PM (Score:5, Informative)
This is just a ploy by a desperate PM ...
Oh lovely, its blame Julia time again, do you have a spare pitchfork and ditch the witch badge ?
the public doesn't actually get the real facts...
Many in academic circles have stated that there is a clear media bias against the government. I guess its Julias fault people watch MSM too ?
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there is a clear media bias against the government
They must be doing something right then...
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yeah.. the big companies will still manage to import whoever they want for whatever they want. they got an entire department of people sorting out the arrangements to make it happen.
but smaller companies get hurt by the restrictions. say a game company would like to hire an european or indian dude? for a company of under 10 people it's hard.
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Election at any cost, screw Australia. Reality and what's even good or necessary for this country to 'move forward' are irrelevant to this woman who's twice got into the role via a backdoor.
Absolutely! Because the alternative in our 2-party system - Mr. Tony Abbott, the budgie smuggler - is going to be a clear improvement for all Australians.
[/sarcasm]
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Probably showing my political bias here, but I don't see how the current government is ruining the country - luckily they are fairly ineffectual so while they seem to be doing plenty of stupid things, the results are all fairly minor and inconsequential. So I would rate them as "tolerable".
My concern is that if the opposition gets in they will try to "fix" everything and cause all sorts of problems. And I worry that MrRabbit will allow his decisions to be heavily affected by what he thinks the imaginary man
Re:Just a desperate PM (Score:4)
Election at any cost, screw Australia. Reality and what's even good or necessary for this country to 'move forward' are irrelevant to this woman who's twice got into the role via a backdoor.
Whats good for this country is implkementing the Goonski recommendations, something this PM is committed to.
Twice go in through the back door... its called politics mate, she was pushed to the top by her peers, and she deserves to be there, best PM since Hawk.
Flat-rate benefits (Score:2)
It's a reasonable position - I don't know the particulars of the tax system in Australia, but in any country where the wealthy carry the majority of the tax burden ( = the bulk of tax income comes from flat or progressive taxes) it's hard to justify them receiving fewer direct benefits than the poor: Basically "We're the ones paying most of the bill, why are we getting the smallest portions?". Of course the reality of income-independent benefits would be that they end up paying even more in taxes to pay fo
Import the workers or offshore the jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether or not there is a shortage of native IT workers in Australia, companies could potentially switch to off shoring the jobs if the government prevents importing of workers.
Re:Import the workers or offshore the jobs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, or.... Which has been the debate over here, the hired labor costs maybe underbidding the local labor costs. Thus displacing local talent because of the cost. Most businesses doesn't run on philanthropy after all, which makes it a legislation issue to protect local jobs (albeit fighting globalization would seem futile)
We've had examples of companies (well at least one that got some press) where they show one contract to immigration services that shows the foreign IT hires as getting at least minimum wages. but the local hires also had another contract stating how much they would ACTUALLY get and that they'd be fired or fined if they did not lie about their salary to immigrations.
I was appalled, and quit the company shortly after. I continue to be amazed at the lengths people will go to turn a profit.Professional businesses should be able to see the huge impact illegal or immoral activities can have on their sales, brand or reputation in the market.and no secret is safe enough that it will never become public knowledge.
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Re:Import the workers or offshore the jobs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Where it's possible they already off-shore jobs. If it could be off-shored to India they'll do it.
The jobs which are here are the ones they can't move overseas, or, more usually, where they know the local talent is good and are trying to war the price down with imported labor that isn't actually as productive - which is exactly the same problem as in the US with H1Bs.
More importantly, the ability to import cheap foreign labor means a lot of businesses which should be employing graduates or running apprenticeship programs aren't. Which means allowing it to continue unchecked means Australia winds up being no more valuable then cheap foreign labor in the first place, which takes away the only thing we have going for us.
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Where it's possible they already off-shore jobs. If it could be off-shored to India they'll do it.
Thanks for making those points, but I'll add one more. The H-1B visa actually facilitates off-shoring rather than preventing it. There's a reason The Indian Commerce Minister himself called the H-1B the outsourcing visa. About half the H-1B's in the US go to foreign owned body shops that then rotate those people back to their native countries when they've learned enough over here.
Re:Import the workers or offshore the jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies could potentially switch to off shoring the jobs whether the government does everything, nothing, or any point in between.
The only way to prevent that is to make labour and production as cheap, disposable, exploitable and polluting everywhere as it is in the worst country in the world.
Do you want to keep arguing the point, or just shush up now?
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Right, because the technological, ecological, economic, and regulatory considerations that make something profitable today will never change. That's why whaling and buggy-whip manufacturing are still such lucrative markets, and the ratio of off-shored to local jobs has remained constant for the last 10,000 years.
Temporary transfers too (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, this is going to be an extra-large shit for us, where me spending 2 years in Norway at head office was significantly easier than bringing people over here for 6 months at a time for skills exchange. HR tells me that Australia is the hardest country in the world they've tried to give people "bridge the world" temporary transfers to. Insular much?
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Not saying it's impossible, just that it's bloody hard.
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Shortage is NOT the Problem (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason interest in software development work peaked in the late 1990s. That was also when salary increases peaked.
International Competition Vs Cost of Living (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree, I think software companies would love to pay a competitive salary, as long as ALL of their competitors are paying it too. Your problem is that your competition is now international, and Australia has a very high cost of living. In the late 1990's the internet hadn't properly taken hold in CEO's brains so your competition for software was still mostly domestic (international companies like Microsoft, IBM, etc were the exception).
Politicians don't seem to get is whilst high tech jobs are the fut
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The causes of the high cost of living needs to be tackled
The only issue is that you have a high cost of living relative to other countries. You suggest that Australians in a particular field of work will have to work for less (in inflation adjusted AUD), but there is another way: lower the exchange rate. Because of your large natural resource exports, you have a bit of a Dutch disease [wikipedia.org] issue, but I notice that for 2012 you're back to a trade deficit (which Australia has often run). That suggests the your currency is overvalued in international exchange.
An overva
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Your problem is that your competition is now international, and Australia has a very high cost of living... Why would a company want to pay an Australian developer a high rate of pay when he can pay an Indian developer a lower wage and the Indian guy gets to live in the lap of luxury? Why would a company or consumer want to buy software developed in Australia, when Indian, American or European software can be bought cheaper over the net? (Region locks have plusses and minuses in this case)
The competition for commodity software is international. However, the companies selling this kind of software have such a first-mover advantage that they're entrenched into their market positions. For example, just about no one's developing a serious competitor for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc because Microsoft got there first. Google's close, but they've spent years developing and still don't have the same capabilities.
The other side to consider is custom software typically run by medium-sized companies
Re:Shortage is NOT the Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
This depends upon what you call competitive. If your competition is only within your borders, then you have a level playing field. When you go global, you're suddenly competing with people who don't have the same overhead, standards of living, taxes, etc., etc. So, the question for all nations to answer is if they're willing to forsake jobs for their own people, increasing unemployment, though benefiting corporations, by lowering their costs, but also driving down salaries for those still employed within their borders. It's an issue that should be agreed to at a national level.
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The solution is to make the imported workers permanent residents or even citizens. Imported workers work for substandard wages because they're better than their home country, but it's nearly impossible for them to switch jobs once their here. If that H1B or 457 expires or they lose their job, it's back to wherever they came from. Give them residency stability and the ability to switch jobs, and they'll expect the same pay as you or I.
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Those programming books, needed to keep current, cost a bundle, last I checked. No one is going to enter a field where you rack your brain all-day doing mind-bending equations, only to be forced to scrimp and save for the latest programming books. And no one is going to invest four years in a college degree that becomes obsolete faster than the latest iPhone. And those books are not even the bare minimum.
Pay your programmers, or do not. But do know that if you pretend to pay your programmers, then they will
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What are these "books" of which you speak?
They sound a little like "newspapers"—do you know that some companies actually make money from printing out news websites and selling the copy? Astounding, right?
Books for university cost a bundle because they kind of have you over a barrel, so to speak, by specifying a particular book (and sometimes edition), but you can still buy used. But if you're educating yourself, certainly an admirable thing, it'll take you a long time to exhaust the computer science m
Bloody Immigrant Workers (Score:2, Funny)
They get everywhere! Did you hear, even some government jobs are taken by them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Gillard
Oh, the irony.
Abuse is rife (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone in the IT industry in Oz who has not seen 457 visa abuse, especially by the large system integrators, is simply not paying attention. Bringing in dirt cheap labor who are on-sold to customers at a very high profit margin is rife. Some of these people are good, some are bad. But all are basically being used to reduce IT wages and increase the profit margins of the SI's.
Here's a question: if there is an IT skills shortage, why have IT wages been flat for five years.
And the opposition trying to play this as racism is beyond offensive, given their demonization and wolf-whistling around refugees. I'd like to think Abbott couldn't go lower, but I am pretty sure there are much further depths of depravity and hypocrisy that man and his supporter are capable of.
Plus their fans in News Ltd (aka. News Corp elsewhere).
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Here's a question: if there is an IT skills shortage, why have IT wages been flat for five years.
That gets to the heart of the matter. Labor follows the laws of supply and demand. Workers supply labor. Companies demand labor. The point where the supply curve and the demand curve meets is the wage. Were there an actual shortage of labor supply, we'd see increasing wages. The fact that wages are not increasing means there is no shortage of labor.
What happened to the new careers in IT? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a teenager, we were encouraged to study engineering and computing. IT jobs were sold to us as genuine careers. So we spent our four plus years at uni only to find that outsourcing is the new black, and all our study is for naught. Thanks.
well CS is not IT so you start out with a skills g (Score:2)
well CS is not IT so you start out with a skills gaps.
also tech schools and learn on the job are liked by real IT pros but not are not liked by HR.
The outsourcing firms cheat to make there people look better on paper and when things get messed up they may try to hide it under language barriers or say we foiled your specs to the letter (that works poorly)
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Indeed. Feels kind of like someone pulling the rug out from underneath you...then you take a look around, and realize that people prefer scams and fraud, inefficient ways of doing things, because it's power, their power, and that's why technology is hated.
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We're all SUCKERS...
Should have got MBAs so those degrees required 4 years of Calc to get in!!!
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More accurately (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like the BS about US corporations whining they desperately need more H1B visas, this is about increasing profits by replacing living wage jobs with the modern IT equivalent of indebtured servants; compliant, desperate folks willing to work way too hard for pennies on the pound / dollar. And if they ask for a raise or complain about 60-hour work weeks? DEPORTED.
Re:More accurately (Score:5, Interesting)
I was hoping someone would have left this comment, and was not disappointed.
Visa workers are just a way for companies to never pay for training. In the long term, that leads to your workers being unqualified, a lot of turnover, and a lot of unemployment. Congratulations for following us in everything we do, Australia.
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Visa workers are just a way for companies to never pay for training.
They don't even need visas for that anymore. Now, I'm not in IT, but as someone who recently left grad school, when applying for entry level jobs I have fond myself coming up against people that have 10-15 years of experience applying for the same job, in one case that I know of actually 20 years experience. And most job opening that I have seen label the positions as "entry level" but then still specify 1-3 years of experience, which is decidedly not "entry level". These days companies seem to have a co
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From our hiring experience, the overqualified ones are usually too expensive and the ones out of uni often useless. (Note we have taken on many graduates as a small percentage are very good)
I've seen both sides of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I've been on both sides of this as I've been to Australia three different times for work (but not with the visa they talk about). When I was brought in I was brought in because they had fewer than 10 people in the entire country that were certified to do what I was doing at the time (there were only a few hundred total worldwide). There well and truly was a shortage of the skills they were looking for and they could not have possibly met that need in country.
Cases like mine are the exception though, and most visas issued for workers to come in and perform IT work are issued to avoid hiring native workers. Someone who is working on a visa is much more likely to be able to be pressed to work additional free hours, won't have costs like retirement and is really easy to get rid of if you don't want them anymore. In short they are viewed as disposable workers that do more at less cost.
There is a relatively easy and balanced fix for these problems (it's a problem when large quantities of natives can't get work and your importing people to work). If you really want to measure if there is actually a shortage of workers for a given field all you have to do is monitor average pay and benefits for native workers. If there is a genuine shortage you will see pay and benefits rise accordingly (market dynamics). When average pay and benefits rise to a certain level you allow for more visas to be issued. This avoids a hard cap while allowing for genuine shortages to be addressed without decimating native workers careers.
I also think you should allow people who come in like this to stay for a limited number of years with a fast track for citizenship. If they don't obtain their citizenship after X years they return home. /Loved Australia
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If there is a genuine shortage you will see pay and benefits rise accordingly (market dynamics).
Thank you! Someone who's willing to apply basic economics. For some odd reason that isn't done by the H-1B proponents in this country. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but could that be because the objective data doesn't support their position?
And as to people who have genuinely rare skills or are truly exceptional, there are lots of visa categories here in the US for them, and I know no one who objects to their use.
Sounds like the same problem as the US - freedom (Score:2)
In each case, businesses want a captive worker - ideally a slave - and contract workers like this are the means for accomplishing that goal.
How about making it so that nobody legally allowed to work can be forced to a particular work arrangement(e.g. can't be forced to be a contractor unless you really want to be one)?
This kills me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I hear people whining about a "skills shortage" I call bullshit. There's no "skills shortage", there's a "people who will work for low wages" shortage. If companies wanted to hire domestic workers, they could, they just don't want to. They love it when supply-and-demand benefits them, but when the workers try to do the same thing (salaries go up when the demand for the skills goes up), well, we can't have that, can we. Those executives might have to forgo that second vacation home or have to settle for a BMW instead of a Bentley.
Bill Gates interview around 2008-9 (Score:2)
He was on TV as a corporate expert on what we could do to deal with the remarkable rate of job losses at the peak of the Recession. His ingenious solution was to increase H1B visas. That's just the mentality of the people in power and the people with access to their ear holes.
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STFU Bill.
Fellow Australians, .... GROW UP. (Score:2)
Have a look at yourselves in a mirror.
GROW UP.
This whole discussion is an unseemly airing of our collective political "dirty linen".
Oh, sorry, we do that every so often, and make the rest of the world wonder what being "down under" (standing on our heads) does for the collective blood-flow to the brains, and also wonder shy they would bother to visit and get the same malady.
As I said, GROW UP!
Please... ?!?!?!!!!!!
Both are true (Score:2)
the foreign workers are necessary to drive growth in Australia's IT industry, while others have cited examples where large Australian companies have imported workers needlessly, displacing qualified Aussie personnel."
Oddly, this seems paradoxical as probably both are true. Australia probably needs to import IT workers, just not to displace current workers.
This is a good thing for me (Score:2)
As someone living in Perth who has been trying (and failing) to find a job in software development (or IT more broadly) for quite a while now, I support this idea if it means people like me get hired instead of some foreign guy here on a work visa.
Re:So more jobs for Aboriginal Australians? (Score:5, Interesting)
But they got to Australia BEFORE the pale people did, and you didn't follow THEIR immigration laws, did ya?
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Yeah and the aborigines arrived second http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/01/01/2813404.htm possible wiping out other inhabitants - but lets all ignore that and the fact that aborigines will not let further DNA testing on the remains even though the oldest fossil remains in Australia DO NOT match current modern day aborigines. http://www.convictcreations.com/aborigines/prehistory.htm
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Are you attempting to elaborate on the reality of the situation, endorsing the policies that have created it or both?
Jobs don't belong to anyone, but a nation is defined by geographical borders and a population which mostly lives inside those borders. The government of that nation SHOULD be enacting policies which represent the best interests of the population. Allowing the nation's borders to be overrun with immigrants is hardly in the best interests of the majority of the population. Forcing domestic b
Only if you ignore reality. (Score:2)
The reality is that they do belong to citizens - just that you've not seen the damage. That said, the best interests are automatically to serve the citizens, not sell them down the river like what you're advocating. Nationalism is alive and well in the 21st Century, and it does poorly to drop it for transnationalism.
Diplomacy won't help you if you're not willing to back it up with a well-armed and well-protected populace.
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No, not really, or we wouldn't have borders and the political theater of immigration.