Australia has closed borders to workers and now needs to get them back

Australia closed its borders for more than two years during the pandemic, and blocked access to potential workers. Now the country is desperate to bring them back.

On Friday, the government increased its permanent migration numbers to 195,000 as of this financial year – an increase of 35,000 people.

Employers are hopeful that these people will help fill gaps in the workforce, but with nearly half a million job openings nationwide and an unemployment rate of 3.4%, the lowest in nearly 50 years, many more are people are needed.

The problem is not just related to border closures due to Covid-19 – experts say the visa system was a struggle even before the pandemic.

“I think the biggest issue right now is really getting people into the country, regardless of the boundary,” said Blair Chapman, director of Deloitte Access Economics. “We are really competing on a global scale right now, with shortages reported across the world and we need to seriously think about how we are actually going to attract people to Australia.”

Part of the problem is that hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for their visa applications to be processed, creating a disincentive for highly qualified new applicants who may be offered offers from elsewhere.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says his new Labor government has inherited a backlog of one million visa applications that authorities are working to expedite.

“Many of these (are) employees or potential employees who had agreements with employers for job offers […] and they were waiting,” he told the CNN Seven News.

At a jobs summit in Canberra, he committed 36 million Australian dollars ($24 million) to expedite the delay, but experts say the government could find itself in the same position as employers — having too few employees to do the work.

Lots of work, few workers

When the first cases of coronavirus were detected in early 2020, Australia closed its borders, restricting access to international arrivals so the numbers would not exceed the availability of quarantine in hotels.

Now, almost all Covid-19 restrictions are gone, and as of this week, positive cases only need to self-isolate at home for five days instead of seven.

Australians barred from leaving the country are now rushing to the border, and while more international visitors are arriving, numbers have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

The lack of migration has created headaches for companies – forcing some to reduce their hours or services. Farmers can’t find enough workers to harvest their crops, hospital staff are working overtime and construction workers are overworked working on various projects.

“It’s general,” said Zahan Mistry, director of Easymigrate, a company that offers migration and visa services. “We are looking for people in IT, people in hospitality, in professional services, child caretakers, elderly caretakers, construction.”

Natureworks director David Joffe wants at least 10 workers for his sculpture business outside Brisbane.

“Now we’re about to carve a giant 40-foot-tall cockatoo,” said Joffe. “We would love to build some horses here because we need some for Melbourne Cup day. There is also the life cycle of a frog – a series of 15 molds that we should be building.”

But there are simply not enough people to do the work.

“There are some German backpackers living on Mount Glorious,” he said. “(But) everyone is after them to try to get them to work from their homes,” he said. “I’d love to get a space with them too, but they’re busy.”

Why not Australia?

At first glance, Australia appears to be a strong option for skilled workers eager to relocate.

The country’s economy has recovered from the pandemic, and while the cost of living is rising, inflation at 6.1% is still lower than in the UK and US. Experts say Australia should be able to compete with Canada and New Zealand when it comes to skilled workers, but it doesn’t.

Australia’s immigration policies are notoriously tough, but Mistry of Easymigrate said that even for people with highly sought-after skills, the visa system can be frustratingly slow.

“It can take eight to 12 months to bring someone in, so it becomes a big disincentive for companies that are looking for someone to get started right away,” he said. Partner visas can take up to two years, he added.

Mistry said the problems predate the pandemic, dating back about five years to when the Border Force, the agency in charge of border control, was absorbed into a larger Department of Home Affairs. “There seems to have been a very big shift in culture from easier visas to more border protection,” Mistry said.

Australia’s former Deputy Immigration Minister Abul Rizvi said that at that time it became much more difficult for Australian employers to recruit foreign workers. “What we’ve done is we’ve made employer-sponsored visas much, much, much more bureaucratic and we’ve made processing them very slow,” he said.

Rizvi said Friday’s increase in the number of permanent immigrants is positive, but it will take time for the benefit to flow to the market.

He said a sharp increase in the number of student visas could help fill vacancies in the short term – students have full employment rights – but he said in the long term the country is “going the wrong way”.

“We need to select students who are interested in studying seriously and are able to study seriously, to complete a course that employers value, and we will give them qualified work and a path to permanent residency. That’s how the system works best,” she said.

“We are currently being sold by educational agents around the world as the place with a cheap work visa – if you want to study seriously, go elsewhere.”

He said international students on low-quality courses can be stranded without a permanent path to migration because their qualifications are not attractive to employers.

Also, he said that the processing system needs to get much faster.

“If you have the best quantum physicist in the world, you don’t want to wind him up for two years. You want to have it quickly before someone else takes it.”