- AAP
- March 09, 2013
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor said there were more than 105,000 people working in Australia at January 31 on the temporary visas for skilled workers.
“The overall trend is clear - more people are coming in on temporary skilled worker visas. This comes at a time when the unemployment rate is flat, not dropping,” Mr O’Connor said.
The release of the figures follow a week in which Julia Gillard pledged to “stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue, with Australian workers at the back".
Her comments, made during a discussion about jobs during a visit to western Sydney, led to accusations that she was exploiting foreign worker xenophobia to the Governments vote in the area. The Prime Minister has rejected the charge, arguing that the visa program had been abused at the expense of local workers.
In a statement issued today, Mr O’Connor said that the figures backed the Gillard Government’s plan to close loopholes in the 457 visa program “to ensure that local jobseekers are not disadvantaged by unscrupulous employers bringing in temporary workers from overseas”.
The government plans to restrict the number of workers a business can sponsor on 457 visas, tighten the definition of eligible jobs and toughen up rules to ensure visa-holders are paid market rates, amongst other changes to the program.
The government plans to restrict the number of workers a business can sponsor on 457 visas, tighten the definition of eligible jobs and toughen up rules to ensure visa-holders are paid market rates, amongst other changes to the program.
Mr O’Connor has previously said rorts were rife in the 457 system, citing more than 100 sanctions against visa holders, and that the presence of visa-holders had pushed down wages in some occupations.
There were 125,070 workers on 457 visas in Australia in the 2011-12 financial year, the largest annual number of the documents handed out under the program so far.
The Australian’s Paul Kelly reported today the 105,325 people working on 457 visas in January was far in excess of the number during the Howard years.
In 2012-13 Labor planned a permanent skilled migration intake of 129, 250 people, he added.
The 457 visa scheme was introduced in 1996 to allow local business to fill skills shortages with overseas workers able to stay for up to four years, bring their families and travel in and out of Australia as often as they want.
Unions have long objected to the scheme but the opposition backs it as an effective means of filling skill shortages with few rorts.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the figures released today proved nothing other than that Labor had handed out more 457 visas than any other government.
Mr Morrison said the figures jumped from December to January because it was Christmas.
"To suggest there are rorts because more visas have been handed out is like suggesting there is a drought because the sun is shining. One is not evidence of the other,'' he said.
"All I have called for in the wake of the government`s announcement is to produce the report of the inquiry or the investigation conducted by the department that demonstrates the widespread rorting and abuse that the government claims, and that is absent.''
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