Federal government overhaul of migration program will focus on regional skill needs

A major shake up of the federal government’s migration program will see people keen to settle in regional areas to get priority and foreign students may find it hard to permanent residency.

Foreign students will find it much harder to get permanent residence in Australia under the federal government’s major overhaul of the migration program.

An analysis of the 2019-20 program shows that applicants will face a tougher time getting enough points, while people keen to settle in regional areas will get priority.

Cities like Melbourne have been a magnet for migrants. Picture: Jason Edwards

The program will be capped at 160,000 permanent places, which is the same number of visas that were approved in 2018-19.

However, this year the number of skilled independent visas will be slashed by 16,000 to 18,652.

There will be 23,000 skilled regional visas, as well as about 25,000 places for nomination by states and territories which will mainly involve regional settlement.

A further 30,000 skilled visas will be employer sponsored.

Demographer Dr Bob Birrell says the migration reforms are far-reaching.

Australian Population Research Institute director Dr Bob Birrell said the program had been rebalanced to employer sponsorship, which meant matching skills with the jobs available.

“It’s like during the resources boom when Coalition and Labor governments pushed employer sponsorship and state sponsorship really hard to make sure that mining construction projects would get the labour they needed,” he said.

Immigration David Coleman says migration must serve the economy.

Immigration Minister David Coleman said recently that the migration program was focused on the national economy and filling skill gaps.

“We’ll continue to back those migrants who bring critical skills into the country – those who work hard, pay taxes and contribute to funding essential services for Australians,” he said.

Dr Birrell said the rebalanced program and tougher points test meant bad news for thousands of overseas students trying to stay here permanently after their studies.

About 400,000 foreigners are enrolled in Australian higher education courses.

“The points they need to get an invitation to apply have gone up sharply. They’ll have to find other routes like finding employers to sponsor them or states to sponsor them,” he said.

“On the one hand the government is still insisting that the overseas student industry is a high priority industry which they’ve bent over backwards to facilitate.”

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“On the other hand they’re changing the selection system which will make it more difficult for students who finish here to get permanent residence.”

About 400,000 foreign students are currently enrolled in higher education courses, with the industry worth about $32.4 billion in 2017-18.

Dr Birrell said that while the permanent migration program was being cut back, the government was expanding the number of temporary entry visas.

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@JMasanauskas