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The Pros And Cons Of Visas In Australia

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‘We will no longer allow 457 visas to be passports to jobs that could and should go to Australians’. This is what Mr Turnbull said in a video posted to Facebook on April 18 this year marking the beginning to a series of changes to the 457 visa.
The Temporary Work (skilled) (subclass 457) visa is a visa that lets a skilled worker travel to Australia to work in their nominated occupation for their approved sponsor for up to four years (Australian Government Department of Immigration and Border Protection), most importantly this can only happen providing that the sponsor could not find an Australian citizen to do the work (The Australian, April 18, 2017). Earlier this year in April, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the government …show more content…

In April, the same month as Mr Turnbull’s announcement, the 651 professions eligible for a 457 visa was cut down to 435 eligible occupations. This 33% cut might appear to be a drastic change, however 18 of these occupations haven’t been used in the past decade and include jobs such as deer farmers and turf growers. Additionally, 46 occupations have never been approved to foreign workers for the twenty years that the 457 visa has been in place.
Removing occupations such as foreign Ship’s masters and picture framers will not ‘return’ jobs to Australians. But not only did the government remove these trivial occupations, they also decided to remove certain scientist, ICT support technicians and engineers.
The IT sector employs the largest percentage of 457 visa workers by field (14.1%) and is one of Australia’s fastest growing industries with a current value of $79 billion projected to grow to $139 billion in 2020 accounting for 7% of Australia’s GDP. According to a report released by Deloitte Access Economics, in Australia there were 640,000 workers employed in IT in 2016, approximately 2% (14,000) of whom were sponsored by the 457 visa. Not only is the problem of foreign workers stealing our jobs over exaggerated, the report projects that 100,000 more IT workers will need to be employed in the next five years for Australia to

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