Australia tightens immigration rules to favour skilled workers

Australia today tightened its immigration rules to favour higher-skilled workers over “hairdressers” and “cooks”, a revision that will lead to the rejection of an estimated 20,000 migration applications from foreign students, including Indians.

Australia Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the revision of the immigration rules would tilt the inflow of foreign migrants to invite more doctors, engineers and IT professionals to suit Australia’s local demands.

He also announced scrapping the Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL) to limit the eligibility for independent skilled migration to “a more targeted set of occupations”.

“It (MODL) encouraged overseas students to train in particular occupations to make it easier to acquire permanent residence, in the process skewing the skilled migration programme to a narrow set of occupations,” he said.

Blaming the access of lower skilled immigrants, as against skilled professionals on the migration system hitherto in place, he said: “We were taking hairdressers from overseas in front of doctors and nurses, it didn’t make any sense”.

On the deficiencies in the existing system, Evans said: “A Rhodes Scholar would not pass the points test if he or she took a degree in chemistry or mathematics... (but) there are several occupations — cooks and hairdressers — where international students can study in Australia, acquire qualifications in 92 weeks and be on the road to permanent residence”.