Most recently recently-arrived skilled migrants not finding professional jobs: New report

MOST recently arrived skilled migrants to Australia have not found professional jobs and the migration program has failed to bring in needed ­workers such as tradespeople, according to a new report.

MOST recently arrived skilled migrants to Australia have not found professional jobs and the migration program has failed to bring in needed ­workers such as tradespeople, a new report says.

As debate over the nation’s mass migration program grows, the Australian Population Research Institute study said employers would hardly notice if the skilled program was abolished.

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“The skill program, and its claims to be providing essential skills, is acting as a screen for its real purpose,” said the institute’s Bob Birrell.

“This is to deliver the continued high population growth Australia’s elites want.”

Australia’s annual migration program is set at 190,000, including 128,550 skilled places.

Between 2011-16, 256,504 migrant graduates aged 25-34 came to Australia, with 84 per cent of them from non-­English-speaking-countries, according to previously unpublished census data.

Mass migration is changing cities like Melbourne.

Only a quarter of the non-English-speaking-countries group had professional jobs as of 2016, compared with half of English-speaking-background graduates, and 58 per cent of Australian-born graduates.

The report, Australia’s Skilled Migration Program: Scarce Skills Not Required, said employers could take their pick and those job applicants with good English skills and better “cultural awareness” had an advantage.

Dr Birrell said a major problem with the skilled migration program was the winding back and eventual abolition of a requirement that an applicant’s occupation had to be in national shortage.

Australian Population Research Institute’s Dr Bob Birrell says the skilled migration program is deeply flawed.

“The great majority of those visaed in the skill program are professionals, an increasing share of whom hold occupations that are oversupplied,” he said.

“On the other hand, it is delivering a negligible number of construction trade workers despite housing industry claims that continued skilled migration is crucial ...”

Dr Birrell said other anomalies in the skilled program included the right of states to sponsor migrants, but once here they could live wherever they wanted in Australia.

“The skill stream could be abolished and employers would hardly notice,” he said.

“(It) is really about numbers, the ‘Treasury’ numbers needed to sustain Australia’s rate of economic growth and the Commonwealth’s projected tax revenues.”

Australia’s skilled migration program is not targeting scarce skills, says new report.

A 2017 survey commissioned by the institute found most Australian voters wanted immigration cut.

Former PM Tony Abbott recently called for an annual cut of 80,000, while Labor figures such as former NSW premier Bob Carr and current NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley have expressed concerns about high migrant numbers.

Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison said last month that an 80,000 cut would increase the Budget deficit by up to $5 billion over the next four years.

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