Australia relaxes visa rules to address labour shortage, increases skilled workers quota

Australia has decided to ease its visa rules in a bid to attract skilled workers. According to a report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (Ceda), Australia’s net overseas migration will not fully recover until 2024 as it is facing a cumulative loss of more than 600,000 people largely due to the pandemic. 

The report highlighted that the government should outline guidelines to address the situation, by raising migration and clearing visa processing backlogs. 

The Australian government in its 2022-23 Migration Program, which was announced in August, has increased the quota for skilled visa types. It has announced that it will issue 109,900 skilled Australian visas this financial year.  

Short of hands 

Australia has been struggling with a long-standing shortage of skilled workers for some time now. Experts in the country have been pushing PM Anthony Albanese's government to extend the visa program and solve the country's labour crisis. 

The country apparently suffers from a major dearth of construction managers, nurses, and chefs. The demand is expected to be high in the next five years. 

Unions and employers have also agreed to increase the migration intake annually to help fill skills shortages.  

New policy 

As per the Australia Migration Program (2022-23), a total of 109,900 new immigrants will get jobs under the brackets of skilled independent visas, skilled nominated visas, regional visas, etc. In total, 30,000 visa slots have been created this year under the skilled visa categories. =

Visa category	2022-23 quota
Employer Nominated	30, 000
Skilled Independent	16, 652
Skilled Nominated Visa State/Territory	20, 000
Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa	25,000

There are different categories for visas. The Skilled Independent visa lets the holder live and work in any part of Australia. Those who want to apply should be under the age of 45, choose an occupation as mentioned in the skills list, do a skills assessment, meet the English language criteria, be in good health, and be eligible as per the legislated points score. 

Some important documents required are English language test result sheet, skills assessment documents, education qualifications, employment experiences and references, sponsorship documents, tax documents, payslips, identity documents, and passport photos of the applicant and his or her family.

There are 7,00,000 Indians in Australia at present, as per the latest figures. The Ceda report has noted that in the next ten years, Indians could surpass Australians of Chinese ancestry.