8 ms·

Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

49 points by razodactyl 10y ago

EduardoBautista 10y ago
Can someone give me some context here? So now it's impossible to hire foreign workers?
- viraptor 10y ago
  The only visa removed right now is the sponsored, temporary one. That means people coming to work for a specific company for at most 4 years. Other paths are still open. For example permanent visas without sponsorship. That one is likely harder to obtain however.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  As far as I'm aware, it's being phased out in favour of two replacement visa classes, I don't know what this software company is complaining about. The 457 had a fairly weak market assessment component unlike, for example, the (successful, but stringent) Canadian temporary work visas; so they're replacing the 457 programme with two separate programmes which include market assessments. I think the replacements also don't contribute to an application for permanent residence, so you would need to qualify for an unsponsored work visa to become a permanent resident. The article seems to frame the policy as anti-immigrant, though that is pretty thin. If you qualify to immigrate under the new visa programmes, then you are no less a legitimate immigrant.
- clusmore 10y ago
  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/government-abolishing-457-visas/8450310 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/government-abolishing-... No, there are two new visas coming in to replace the 457 visa. It's fairly unclear to me specifically what will change under the new visa structure. One supposed change is that "there won't be permanent residency outcomes at the end of [the new 2 year visa]", but otherwise it sounds like it is possibly just a shrink to the list of approved jobs. Honestly, it sounds like it's just a ploy to grab back some voters who have defected to the far-right One Nation party without making any significant change. This suspicion is strengthened by another "announcement" [1] about the citizenship test which just appears to be a cheap shot at criticising Islamic culture based on a recent incident. [2] [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-20/migrants-to-face-tougher-tests-for-australian-citizenship/8456392 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-20/migrants-to-face-tough... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/islamic-groups-video-teaches-domestic-violence-michaelia-cash/8442708 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/islamic-groups-video-t...
  - cylinder 10y ago
    Not much will change at all, it's just a stunt for headlines. the most abused occupation titles are still there.
- lysp 10y ago
  Companies are only meant to use the visa to fill a need/gap where there are no local workers to fill a job. The minimum wage for the visa is $40,000 USD ($53k AUD). What companies are doing however, is hiring foreign workers (typically from India for IT based roles) and paying them $40k rather than the local average wage of $75-100k. They are using the visa as a method to decrease wage costs to almost half of what a local worker would cost. I believe companies are complaining as there is a possibility that there will be less access to cheap foreign labour and they'll have to start paying true costs for workers.
  - sanswork 10y ago
    I'm guessing you haven't had to try and hire devs in Australia before if cost of developers is what you think the main problem is.
    - xiphias 10y ago
      Can you explain?
      - sanswork 10y ago
        It's really hard to find intermediate to senior devs in Australia and has been for nearly a decade. It's even harder now with a few big companies like Atlassian grabbing them up enmasse whenever they become available.
        cynix 10y ago
        Sounds like they're simply expensive to hire, not necessarily hard to find.
        sanswork 10y ago
        Say you need a senior developer and there are none on the market so you offer mine a 10% increase and free chocolate bars to come work for you. You now have a senior developer and I'm now in need of one but there are none of the market. When you suggest someone pay developers more to hire them away from the competition you aren't solving the problem you are just moving it to another company.
yakult 10y ago
They should just replace the whole shebang with 'pay us $x to get a visa, $y for PR, $z for citizenship'. Company wants to hire from overseas? Fine, they can figure out how to split the cost between company and employee, with zero government involvement. Rich people from the US seeking doomsday shelter? A few million dollars, a clean criminal record and less than 48 hours in the queue. Much easier than the current system.
- catmanjan 10y ago
  You'll end up with a monoculture of uber rich foreigners - a problem that Australia already has. Maybe it would work when we introduce death taxes?
  - yakult 10y ago
    Almost all social problems created from this change in immigration policy can be fixed with money. And we'll be swimming in money. And we can use it to fix problems unrelated to this policy.
    - catmanjan 10y ago
      Yes money makes things easier. I think our biggest problems now are housing and the future of employment (aka the youth), unfortunately neither of these issues needs more money involved.
      - yakult 10y ago
        Do you seriously think those problems can't be fixed with money? Increasing housing supply costs money. Upgrading the education system costs money. UBI and other social services for people replaced by automation costs money. Investment in innovation and basic scientific research costs money. In the same way, preventing monoculture is a simple case of directly subsidizing people's visas/PR/citizenship on various grounds, humanitarian or otherwise, under my scheme. The only difference is that by attaching a firm market value per document, we'll finally get a clear sense on the opportunity cost of immigration policy by fiat. The current system is a mess of inefficiency and hidden cross-subsidies that can mostly be much better spent on other, more urgent problems.
hive_mind 10y ago
On the bright side, India could benefit immensely from less brain drain.
- NTDF9 10y ago
  They already are. Amazon, Linkedin, Microsoft, Uber etc have offices there, paying top talent to the tune of $60-$80/year. For comparison, this is more than median tech salaries in London and cost of living in India is peanuts.
nnd 10y ago
Just to make sure, the skilled point-based migration system is still in place in Australia? I.e. can you obtain a work visa and travel to the country to find a job there?
vacri 10y ago
> I am sad when I look into the eyes of my staff on 457 or working holiday visas .... How do I ask them to help us do our small but proud part in sustaining Australia’s economic growth and providing more jobs for Australians and other immigrants? I know that this part is entirely rhetorical, but the thought of a boss in tech coming over and trying to inspire me to do my work 'for the good of the country' is just too amusing. :)
jamhan 10y ago
Oh please. Spare us the pearl clutching. I'm willing to bet that if I filed a freedom of information act on this company's 457 applications that 1) there was little or no attempt to find a suitable candidate in the local market and 2) the 457s they did get have some relationship to employees already at the company. The 457 visa was a government program that was being exploited, and quite obviously too, for quite some time, just like any government program eventually will be. For another recent example, look at what happened to the child care subsidy program. Government programs can serve a good purpose if they are well regulated and audited but comically and sadly for citizens they never are. I just wonder if the 457 reforms would have taken so long if the Commonwealth Public Service had outsourced their IT to some South Asian consultancy and discovered that suddenly and mysteriously there were not enough skilled Australian IT workers to support them in Canberra (and elsewhere) and rather rapidly offices were filled with 457s. But this is exactly what large corporations in the private sector have done. In IT and other sectors (notably health), companies are using 457s to save on employee salaries, pure and and simple. I have knowledge of assistants in medical practices being told to accept the lower salaries that their 457 co-workers are on or lose their jobs. Oh, and it really annoys me what Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes keeps on saying. How about you invest in training locals instead of whinging all the time about not being able to import people? BTW, I'm a UNSW CompSci graduate, 40+, have a lot of international experience, can operate at the technical and business level, speak a couple of languages, and after my last (5-year) contract ended I spent 2+ fruitless years searching for more IT work, while conspicuously the suburb I used to work in (with telcos, Cisco and software companies) filled with people from certain demographics. Despite all my experience, I didn't get invited to a single interview. Not one. Ageism and 457s killed the job market for people like me.
- sanswork 10y ago
  Atlassian hires tons of graduates. > I spent 2+ fruitless years searching for more IT work, >I didn't get invited to a single interview If you didn't get a single interview in two years of looking either you are vastly overestimating your capabilities compared to your CV or your CV is junk. How many different CVs did you try during that time? What are you skilled in? You say IT work but are you a programmer, ops, support? What are you business skills like? How does ageism factor in when you didn't even make it to the interviews for them to be able to tell your age?

49 points by razodactyl 10y ago

EduardoBautista 10y ago

Can someone give me some context here? So now it's impossible to hire foreign workers?

viraptor 10y ago
The only visa removed right now is the sponsored, temporary one. That means people coming to work for a specific company for at most 4 years. Other paths are still open. For example permanent visas without sponsorship. That one is likely harder to obtain however.
microcolonel 10y ago
As far as I'm aware, it's being phased out in favour of two replacement visa classes, I don't know what this software company is complaining about. The 457 had a fairly weak market assessment component unlike, for example, the (successful, but stringent) Canadian temporary work visas; so they're replacing the 457 programme with two separate programmes which include market assessments. I think the replacements also don't contribute to an application for permanent residence, so you would need to qualify for an unsponsored work visa to become a permanent resident. The article seems to frame the policy as anti-immigrant, though that is pretty thin. If you qualify to immigrate under the new visa programmes, then you are no less a legitimate immigrant.
clusmore 10y ago
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/government-abolishing-457-visas/8450310 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/government-abolishing-... No, there are two new visas coming in to replace the 457 visa. It's fairly unclear to me specifically what will change under the new visa structure. One supposed change is that "there won't be permanent residency outcomes at the end of [the new 2 year visa]", but otherwise it sounds like it is possibly just a shrink to the list of approved jobs. Honestly, it sounds like it's just a ploy to grab back some voters who have defected to the far-right One Nation party without making any significant change. This suspicion is strengthened by another "announcement" [1] about the citizenship test which just appears to be a cheap shot at criticising Islamic culture based on a recent incident. [2] [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-20/migrants-to-face-tougher-tests-for-australian-citizenship/8456392 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-20/migrants-to-face-tough... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/islamic-groups-video-teaches-domestic-violence-michaelia-cash/8442708 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/islamic-groups-video-t...
- cylinder 10y ago
  Not much will change at all, it's just a stunt for headlines. the most abused occupation titles are still there.
lysp 10y ago
Companies are only meant to use the visa to fill a need/gap where there are no local workers to fill a job. The minimum wage for the visa is $40,000 USD ($53k AUD). What companies are doing however, is hiring foreign workers (typically from India for IT based roles) and paying them $40k rather than the local average wage of $75-100k. They are using the visa as a method to decrease wage costs to almost half of what a local worker would cost. I believe companies are complaining as there is a possibility that there will be less access to cheap foreign labour and they'll have to start paying true costs for workers.
- sanswork 10y ago
  I'm guessing you haven't had to try and hire devs in Australia before if cost of developers is what you think the main problem is.
  - xiphias 10y ago
    Can you explain?
    - sanswork 10y ago
      It's really hard to find intermediate to senior devs in Australia and has been for nearly a decade. It's even harder now with a few big companies like Atlassian grabbing them up enmasse whenever they become available.
      - cynix 10y ago
        Sounds like they're simply expensive to hire, not necessarily hard to find.
        sanswork 10y ago
        Say you need a senior developer and there are none on the market so you offer mine a 10% increase and free chocolate bars to come work for you. You now have a senior developer and I'm now in need of one but there are none of the market. When you suggest someone pay developers more to hire them away from the competition you aren't solving the problem you are just moving it to another company.

yakult 10y ago

They should just replace the whole shebang with 'pay us $x to get a visa, $y for PR, $z for citizenship'. Company wants to hire from overseas? Fine, they can figure out how to split the cost between company and employee, with zero government involvement. Rich people from the US seeking doomsday shelter? A few million dollars, a clean criminal record and less than 48 hours in the queue. Much easier than the current system.

catmanjan 10y ago
You'll end up with a monoculture of uber rich foreigners - a problem that Australia already has. Maybe it would work when we introduce death taxes?
- yakult 10y ago
  Almost all social problems created from this change in immigration policy can be fixed with money. And we'll be swimming in money. And we can use it to fix problems unrelated to this policy.
  - catmanjan 10y ago
    Yes money makes things easier. I think our biggest problems now are housing and the future of employment (aka the youth), unfortunately neither of these issues needs more money involved.
    - yakult 10y ago
      Do you seriously think those problems can't be fixed with money? Increasing housing supply costs money. Upgrading the education system costs money. UBI and other social services for people replaced by automation costs money. Investment in innovation and basic scientific research costs money. In the same way, preventing monoculture is a simple case of directly subsidizing people's visas/PR/citizenship on various grounds, humanitarian or otherwise, under my scheme. The only difference is that by attaching a firm market value per document, we'll finally get a clear sense on the opportunity cost of immigration policy by fiat. The current system is a mess of inefficiency and hidden cross-subsidies that can mostly be much better spent on other, more urgent problems.

hive_mind 10y ago

On the bright side, India could benefit immensely from less brain drain.

NTDF9 10y ago
They already are. Amazon, Linkedin, Microsoft, Uber etc have offices there, paying top talent to the tune of $60-$80/year. For comparison, this is more than median tech salaries in London and cost of living in India is peanuts.

nnd 10y ago

Just to make sure, the skilled point-based migration system is still in place in Australia? I.e. can you obtain a work visa and travel to the country to find a job there?

vacri 10y ago

> I am sad when I look into the eyes of my staff on 457 or working holiday visas .... How do I ask them to help us do our small but proud part in sustaining Australia’s economic growth and providing more jobs for Australians and other immigrants? I know that this part is entirely rhetorical, but the thought of a boss in tech coming over and trying to inspire me to do my work 'for the good of the country' is just too amusing. :)

jamhan 10y ago

Oh please. Spare us the pearl clutching. I'm willing to bet that if I filed a freedom of information act on this company's 457 applications that 1) there was little or no attempt to find a suitable candidate in the local market and 2) the 457s they did get have some relationship to employees already at the company. The 457 visa was a government program that was being exploited, and quite obviously too, for quite some time, just like any government program eventually will be. For another recent example, look at what happened to the child care subsidy program. Government programs can serve a good purpose if they are well regulated and audited but comically and sadly for citizens they never are. I just wonder if the 457 reforms would have taken so long if the Commonwealth Public Service had outsourced their IT to some South Asian consultancy and discovered that suddenly and mysteriously there were not enough skilled Australian IT workers to support them in Canberra (and elsewhere) and rather rapidly offices were filled with 457s. But this is exactly what large corporations in the private sector have done. In IT and other sectors (notably health), companies are using 457s to save on employee salaries, pure and and simple. I have knowledge of assistants in medical practices being told to accept the lower salaries that their 457 co-workers are on or lose their jobs. Oh, and it really annoys me what Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes keeps on saying. How about you invest in training locals instead of whinging all the time about not being able to import people? BTW, I'm a UNSW CompSci graduate, 40+, have a lot of international experience, can operate at the technical and business level, speak a couple of languages, and after my last (5-year) contract ended I spent 2+ fruitless years searching for more IT work, while conspicuously the suburb I used to work in (with telcos, Cisco and software companies) filled with people from certain demographics. Despite all my experience, I didn't get invited to a single interview. Not one. Ageism and 457s killed the job market for people like me.

sanswork 10y ago
Atlassian hires tons of graduates. > I spent 2+ fruitless years searching for more IT work, >I didn't get invited to a single interview If you didn't get a single interview in two years of looking either you are vastly overestimating your capabilities compared to your CV or your CV is junk. How many different CVs did you try during that time? What are you skilled in? You say IT work but are you a programmer, ops, support? What are you business skills like? How does ageism factor in when you didn't even make it to the interviews for them to be able to tell your age?