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Australia - The Keys to Australia's Immigration Success

By Michelle Collins—TORONTO

http://www.embassymag.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2008/october/1/immigration/


Just a decade ago, Australia and Canada faced similar challenges in reaping the benefits of newcomers, but experts say today's immigrants to the country Down Under are in faster, employed better and more quickly, and are making more money than those coming into Canada.

Speaking at a seminar about the "race for talent," hosted by the Institute for Research on Public Policy on Friday, world-renowned immigration-related researcher Lesleyanne Hawthorne said that within just two years of bringing in major changes in 1999, Australia saw an "immediate surge of outcomes" for immigrants, and the immigration-related economic benefits for the country.

Canada, however, has failed to make similar changes, only tweaking the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in 2002. Ms. Hawthorne, who has previously been commissioned by Canadian federal departments to research immigration and labour trends, said that in her opinion, those changes were not enough.

She said Canada's backlog of nearly
1 million applicants is another challenge, and, today, successful economic migrants to Australia are admitted within three months if they apply off-shore, and three weeks if they are already in Australia.

Noting that Canada and Australia have had similar economic trends and census data, Ms. Hawthorne said both countries have also given employers and regional governments a greater stake in direct selection of migrants.

"The big difference between our governments is [Canada] basically hasn't done a great deal to modify the changes to the way you select economic applicants in the context of improving employment incomes, but Australia made the decision to bring in substantial changes to placate that," she said.

Naomi Alboim, adjunct professor at the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University, also speaking at the seminar, said Canada's immigration policies have increasingly focused on short-term labour market needs at the expense of longer term nation-building. She said that as provinces have been given more control over their immigrant intake, a national framework has fallen by the wayside.

"All of these changes happened over time in a very piece-meal way," Ms. Alboim said. "[It] has resulted in a very significant policy shift."

But this policy shift, she said, has not been for the better. Research shows that immigrants are faring worse than previous cohorts, are taking longer to "catch up," and are more likely to have lower incomes than their Canadian-born counterparts.

While there are a variety of possible reasons for why newcomers aren't doing as well, Ms. Alboim said there is a lack of alignment in the immigration program between skills selection and labour market needs. This is particularly true for the skilled trades, she said, because Canada's points system does not work in their favour—a problem for what many are calling a "looming crisis" for trades industries.


Trades Call for Urgent Action

Indeed, just last week, business, education and labour representatives joined forces to form a national coalition that they hope will have the weight needed to lobby the government for drastic changes.

With 17 national organizations, including the Canadian Construction Association and Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, the coalition is calling on the government to invest money in colleges—and to fix the immigration system.

"We have a shrinking fertility rate and an immigration system that doesn't really help our skilled trades shortage," said Paul Charette, chairman of the Canadian Construction Association and chair of the coalition. "This is an issue with far-reaching consequences. Productivity eventually affects consumer costs."

Experts say that by 2012, immigration will account for all labour force growth in Canada, and that two-thirds of the available jobs will require post-secondary education.

"We need an overhaul to get more skilled trades into Canada quickly," Mr. Charette said. "When you look at Australia, they can get in in three to four days."



Success Key to Decision

As developed countries embrace mass migration on a scale not seen in decades, Ms. Hawthorne predicts the issue over the next 10 years will be the calibre of employment outcome people can achieve in a given country. In an interview with Embassy, she also said the recent changes brought in by the Conservative government, which give the immigration minister full discretion over how many and what type of immigrants get in, "makes sense."

With data that showed economic migrants to Australia were struggling to find work and make a decent wage, the government of the day brought in mandatory language testing and credential assessment for economic migrants before they immigrate.

Now that policy changes have been made, Ms. Hawthorne said, a doctor who migrates from India to Australia today has a 66 per cent chance of being employed in his or her field within five years; in Canada, they have only a 19 per cent chance. In fact, in Australia, 83 per cent of applicants had work within six months, according to figures from 2006.

She also said language testing has not proven discriminatory against non-English-speaking countries, evidenced by the fact that China is still Australia's top source country.

In Canada, however, English-speaking migration has disappeared, she said, adding that no one has yet been able to explain why.

"Employers will not accept people to work as professionals unless they have a good degree of fluency in the host country language," Ms. Hawthorne said.

Last spring, Canadian Immigration Minister Diane Finley floated the idea of language testing for immigrants, which some Liberal MPs also favoured. However, many in the immigration community and NDP Immigration critic Olivia Chow were opposed. After several weeks, the Conservatives decided not to bring in language testing, though they did not say why.

Australia also made it easier for international students to apply for permanent status and, by 2005, 52 per cent had applied to stay. Not only do these students pay high costs for their education, they "overwhelmingly qualified for positions," Ms. Hawthorne said.

Again, in a similar move, Ms. Finley recently introduced the Canadian Experience Class, a program to ease immigration for international students and highly-skilled temporary workers.

Noting that Canada's policies have been focused on increasing temporary workers to meet labour needs, Ms. Hawthorne warned not enough attention has been paid to economic principal applicants in Canada's immigration system.

"And that's what's keeping people who are the permanent kind," she said. "This is not removing migration as a source of country building...but you're picking people whose immediate work outcome is much more likely to be positive, and they're equally likely to be diverse, and they'll have better longer-term outcomes, as will their children."




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