The Australian government hopes to attract more skilled Indian talent to the country to meet its shortage of skilled manpower in some sectors with tweaking of its Skilled Migration Policy, David Holly, Consul-General for South India, today said. As the Australian economy returns to the pre-global fiancial crisis levels of growth, it is expected that the demand for manpower will increase. The migration policy aims at ensuring a match of demand for skills with availability of skills available from overseas.Through the reformed policy, which comes into effect from July 1, the age limit for permanent immigrant aspirants has been raised fom 45 to 50 and it has been decided to give weightage to non-Australian degrees as well, said Peter, Assistant Secretary, Labour Ministry Branch, Department of Immigration.
The migration policy would enable those keen in migrating to Australia permanently, both sponsored and independent migrants, to obtain one, based on their qualifications, skills, language ability and experience.Independent migrant aspirants could send in their details and expression of intent electronically which would be stored in a central registry and made available to companies looking for matching skills. The applicants whose skills matched requirements and demand would be invited to apply for a visa. This would also make it easier for companies head hunting to find the skilled labour they want.The policy hopes to attract 1,25,850 skilled labour world wide to fill in the shortage by June 30 next year.The policy also enables indepedent migrants to move to the country and compete for jobs after qualifying the points test which lays weightage on qualifications and skills among others.The reformed policy helps choose aspirants who could in the medium or long term could fill in the demand requirement of the country. He said the shortage for skilled manpower was largely in sectors like engineering, IT, and medical. Holly said Australia had seen a surge in the migration in the past years as a result of those coming on a student visa staying behind to settle down, leading to more migrants but not necessarily those with matching skills as per the labour demand market. The new policy hopes to change this by separating student visa from skilled manpower visa. India, he said, figured among the top three countries in providing manpower to the country. To a question on whether the recent incidents involving Indian students had impacted numbers of immigration aspirants and visitors, an official said though the number of student applicants had gone down, it had begun to pick up again. But in terms of visitors and migrant aspirants the numbers were seeing a growth. Currently there were around 300,000 people of Indian origin in Australia.
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