AS your national resource employer group, AREEA is seeking consultation with members in regards to two significant developments in the skilled migration policy space. The first is a review of the skilled migration and 400 series visa programs, and the second is the release of the recommendations made by the 457 visa integrity review panel.

Review of skilled migration and 400 series visa programs

The Department of Immigration & Border Protection has released a discussion paper called Reviewing the Skilled Migration and 400 Series Visa Programmes.

AREEA will be making a submission to the discussion paper and invites you to provide your feedback via the confidential survey below.

This review of the skilled migration program will be ongoing and the discussion paper is the first stage in the consultation process.

The review will not focus on making specific amendments to particular visas such as the 400 or 457 visa, but rather is seeking views on how the underpinning broad framework of skilled migration can be improved.

In this first stage of the process, AREEA is seeking your views on how the current skilled migration framework can be improved in relation to:

• Ensuring the skills needs of the resource industry are being met by the current lists of occupations used for skilled migration and, if not, how that can be rectified;
• Whether the current age cut-off for permanent skilled migration of 50 years should be raised or removed altogether;
• Ways in which the current sponsorship requirements could be made more flexible and responsive to industry needs;
• Whether the English language requirements could be reviewed to ensure the optimal number of skilled migrants can enter Australia to work on resource projects provided they can do so safely and efficiently; and
• What is working well and not working well under the current skilled migration scheme in general.

Given the completion of the recent integrity review of the 457 visa scheme (see below), this review will not recommend specific changes to the 457 visa program or other visas, but rather will take a big-picture, broad look at the skilled migration program generally, seeking feedback consistent with that broad-brush approach.

If you are able to, please take some time to answer as much or as little of the below survey as is relevant to your operations. You can respond electronically by completing the survey at the hyperlink below but if you prefer to receive a hard copy of the survey please contact AREEA’s Senior Workplace Policy Adviser Lisa Matthews at [email protected]. Please also contact Lisa if you have any technical problems with accessing the survey.

Click here to complete the survey electronically.

If you are participating in the skilled migration and 400 series visa programme survey, please provide your responses by the evening of Thursday 16 October 2014.

457 integrity review recommendations

The 457 integrity review panel in September 2014 has released its final report, Robust new foundations: A streamlined, transparent and responsive system for the 457 programme.

The report contains 22 recommendations for changes to the current system, for some of which the federal government has signalled early support.

Many of the recommendations pick up in whole or in part the recommendations for change made in AREEA’s comprehensive submission to the review.

The government is yet to formally respond to all the recommendations so we are interested in your views, as a valued AREEA member, on which of the review panel recommendations you support, whether it could have gone further in its recommendations, and what, if any, extra changes you would like to see made to the 457 visa scheme.

If you are able to, please take some time to answer as much or as little of the below survey as is relevant to your operations. You can respond electronically by completing the survey at the hyperlink below but if you prefer to receive a hard copy of the survey please contact AREEA’s Senior Workplace Policy Adviser Lisa Matthews at [email protected]. Please also contact Lisa if you have any technical problems with accessing the survey.

Click here to complete the survey electronically.

 

If you are participating in the 457 recommendations survey, please provide your responses by the evening of Wednesday 22 October 2014.