Australia hikes immigration CAP, announces 2-year extra post-study work rights

Australia hikes Immigration CAP, announces 2-year extra post-study work rights

As Australia grapples with skills and labour shortages, the government has announced an increase in its permanent immigration intake in the current fiscal year. The permanent immigration intake for the year ending June 30, 2023 will be increased by 35,000 to 195,000.  

During a two-day summit of 140 representatives of governments, trade unions, businesses and industry, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced the increase. This has been envisaged as a strategy to address skills shortages exacerbated by the pandemic. 

O’Neill acknowledged that Australian nurses have been working double and triple shifts for the past two years. As she said, “Our focus is always Australian jobs first, and that’s why so much of the summit has focused on training and on the participation of women and other marginalized groups. But the impact of COVID has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term.”  

Many of the “best and brightest minds”, she said, were choosing to migrate to Canada, Germany and Britain instead of Australia. This could be because Australia’s immigration program was “fiendishly complex” with more than 70 unique visa programs. In order to rebuild its immigration program in the national interest, Australia would be establishing a panel, she noted. 

Last week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that 180,000 free places would be offered in vocational education schools next year. While this would come at a cost of 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($748,000), it was hoped that this move would further reduce the nation’s skills shortage. 

During the pandemic, Australia had imposed some of the strictest international travel restrictions of any democratic country. Starting December 2021, the nation gradually reopened to skilled workers.  

Tough border policies during the pandemic have resulted in a significant gap in many sectors. The government plans to fill these spots with ‘workers from countries including China, India and the UK – Australia’s top sources of migration.’ 

As Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said, “Our focus is always Australian jobs first… but the impact of Covid has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term. Thousands more engineers and nurses need to be brought in to ease critical workforce shortages.”