comments from ex-international student

While I get where you’re coming from, putting these visa restrictions and the reason why they are in place in such an overly simplistic manner undermines the importance and reason why they are there in the first place.
In some third world countries, degrees and certificates can be easily bought for about the cost of a mid-priced meal in Australia.
Australia cannot possibly run checks on every degree and qualification passing through to validate if it is genuine.
We might have some unqualified potential dole-bludger who isn’t even born Australian come and drain the already groaning system.
This is why Australian qualifications make it so worth having. It is accredited, and most of all, you can’t just pay $50 to get a fake cert. And it can be checked.
This is why Australian conversion courses are in place. They are widely popular, and they are a crucial step for someone with a foreign degree coming over - so no one tries to do a dodgy, forsaking all the honest, hardworking migrants who DO want to make a proper living, grow a family and be an upstanding citizen contributing to the country in a job they migrated under.
Besides that, the problem with the visas here is that they do not adequately ensure that the migrants who come here stay in their jobs. Yes, they come here to do 2 years of a course, get their visa and then get the PR, but then after that because there are no restrictions on their visa many of them just throw away the degree and become menial workers, taxi drivers, etc etc, anything to earn a quick buck and send it home to their family.
While I can commend the hard work and dedication which goes into even doing something like the above, you cannot deny that it doesn’t help Australia in any way when it comes to filling up that brain drain.
“Qualified” accountants are coming in, but they don’t seem to be filling that accountancy gap, for example. Why? Where do they all go? Of course, they dump the job to do a quick and easy job, because ultimately the aim for many of them, who can’t get jobs in the Australian market because they either 1. Spent too much time working and ended up having to plagiarise/buy paper/do dodgies to pass 2. Can’t speak the language adequately or efficiently enough to perform in the job 3. Are not industry equipped nor flexible enough to perform in the job.
Believe me, I was an international student before this, and saw all these things happening in front of my eyes, from friends who repear these stories to me, to classmates who actually do these dodgies in front of me.
While we can admire the migrants who come in, willing to work their brains off to earn money because of their currency rate or their financial circumstances, we have to separate emotion from objectivity, and try to solve the problem of the brain drain, while allowing the right migrants in.
While I was applying for my PR, I did everything right and legally. Yet many of my friends who did ‘dodgies’, and their friends - all got their PRs earlier than I.
I’m not resentful of this, but many of the people I knew who did everything by the book, also working hard but adhering to immigration rules and school rules, who really would help fill in that job and brain drain gap Australia is facing, faced much more scrutiny and difficulty than those who were doing dodgies every single day.
The dodgies were flouting visa rules, not attending classes, working illegally, plaguarising and buying papers online/off friends - all telling us of their plans to ditch the degree and work as taxi drivers, construction workers, anything that made a quick buck, but no one did anything, immigration didn’t bat an eye - so long as the paperwork “seems right”, even if the guys had numerous attendance warnings and so on.
Guys who take 6 month cookery courses to get their PR, then become menial labourers, taxi drivers or whatever else. No wonder we still have so many job shortages!
It isn’t one person, its heaps and heaps and heaps of them I saw who did the same thing.
This is a case of the immigration laws failing the job it was set up to do.
Unless this is fixed, Australia will continue to see its job shortage increase, and the number of migrants whom, instead of contributing to Australia positively, place further strain on the system.

Jojo (Reply)
Fri 01 Aug 08 (02:18pm)