Australian migration changes to affect students
Updated
The immediate scrapping of the list of jobs used by Australia to pick migrants, replacing it with one more focused on highly-skilled work. It means that some overseas students will lose the chance to apply for permanent residency.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Gautam Gupta, advisor, Federation of Indian Students of Australia
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GUPTA: Well I think we have to put it in a context. Number one, is migration is an issue for the government and we have to understand that there are so many reasons when the governments take decisions. And I do hope that the government has their heart in the right place when making this decision because a country will always be judged by the way it treats people who are coming for example, and the way Australia is treating refugees. It'll always be a judgement call on Australia and the way we treat Aborigines, in the same way the way we treat people fairly, honestly, you know, in a very transparent way.
LAM: But overseas students are hardly refugees or asylum seekers though?
GUPTA: No they're not but then the question is that so many of them they come with a view to gain permanent residency. It's very well known that Australia has a skills cap, they put out a list and say we need 10,000 cooks for example or we need cooks or chefs or we need hairdressers or we need engineers or we need doctors. And these people they are making great sacrifices to come here and in the majority of cases they have existing skills, and then they find out that they have to upgrade their skills and do another course like a bachelors, etc, and they do that.
LAM: Do you think where the Indian students are concerned Gautam do you think that perhaps the students in India might be better informed, that permanent residency was never guaranteed to foreign students?
GUPTA: I think that should have been told before they came here and we have seen time and time again where there is investigative reports that there were all kinds of marketing going on, whether they were told that it's a short-cut to permanent residency if you do course 'X'. Now, that was well known to the government of Australia, we have the Australian High Commission in India that monitors the media constantly. We have a situation where migration agents even in Australian newspapers in Australia were putting similar ads. Now, I don't believe that the government was not aware of it, but then retrospectively instead of us analysing and fixing the problem of the rot that is set in the system, we are now punishing the students. It's again blaming the victim mentality.
LAM: You don't think the Australian government has the right to decide on skill migration intake numbers?
GUPTA: Absolutely and they should do that, and they have done it in the past. Initially it was called the critical skills list, then it was called a MODL, now it will be called something else. That's not an issue, you can call it whatever you want to call it. All we're saying is people who have already applied or people who are here, don't punish them, don't set rules retrospectively. In the Australian High Court, Supreme Court or whatever court system, we don't allow laws to be made retrospectively and applied retrospectively, why in this particular matter?
LAM: The government has said that if the students who are already here can find employers to sponsor them they will still be considered, so the door is not entirely closed?
GUPTA: That's like literally creating extra hurdles on them, for example this was not a requirement when they came here. This requirement has been sneaked up on them, and we already know that there will be another set of criteria that will be added on for employers who are going to sponsor them.
LAM: Just very briefly Gautam do you think this will have any impact on Australia's tertiary education sector?
GUPTA: I think this will definitely have a major impact. We'll be looking at not only what happened in these particular cases and what courses they chose, but they will also be looking at Australia with a view that can we really trust the government? Can we really if can figure out my people when they invest when they making investment decisions they talk about political stability, it comes down to that.
