Australian Immigration: More Positives Than Negatives?

For people seeking a challenging and exciting career, Australia has been the dream country. Immigration to Australia is an ambition in Britain and hence the Australian Immigration Service has strict rules about the number of people that are allowed to enter Australia. Australia requires skilled workers and their work experience, qualification, and language ability are key factors in determining their migration. People enter Australia with an either an

• Investor visa
• Business Owner visa
• Business Talent visa or
• Senior Executive visa

The country’s economy is very strong and it encourages the immigration of skilled workers if they can contribute to the economy. But there are a wide range of views on the level of immigration which are more speculative in nature. CSIRO population study entitled “Future Dilemmas”, commissioned by DIM pointed out six very valid points with regard to immigration. They pointed out that the numbers of aged continued to rise but this is being debated that immigration actually can slow the ageing of Australia’s population.

CSIRO pointed out that Australia’s trade balance would worsen because of increase in imports and higher consumption of domestic products, increased gas emissions, overuse of agricultural soils, and decline in urban air quality and biodiversity. It claimed that Australia is over populated with reduced standard of living. Some claim that this rise in immigration level has led to shortage of housing and employers attempt to introduce foreign workers to avoid paying locals higher wages.

But Productivity Council has submitted a final research report that immigration cannot possibly be the only reason for all these degradations.

In contradiction to this, a study in science journal, Nature, claims that immigration does not result in global warming because although immigration increases population in one country, on a global level, immigration does not affect population.

It is being argued that:

• these immigrants to Australia actually reduce the ageing of population because they are young on average.
• Skilled workers actually add more to the economy.
• Immigration did not increase unemployment but actually it decreased unemployment because of more investments.

There is a strong emphasis in the immigration program to attract people who can contribute to the economy. The country continues to welcome migrants who are skilled and can help the well being of the country and its people.

The Productivity Commission does not accept “population pressures” as a major cause of strong increases in house prices, stating that “increased demand for better quality and better located dwellings, rather than for more dwellings, has been the primary driver”.

DIAC has found that Australia’s well-structured labor market along with the larger number of immigrants with higher education levels has tended to raise employment levels for Australians who are relatively unskilled.

“Gittens claims there is considerable opposition to immigration in Australia by “battlers” because of the belief that immigrants will steal jobs. Gittens claims though that “it’s true that immigrants add to the supply of labor. But it’s equally true that, by consuming and bringing families who consume, they also add to the demand for labor - usually by more.”

Brought to you by the Australian Immigration Experts at Synch1

Journey 1 - Destination Australia

It all started 10 years ago…

This feeling of wanting a change in life, of wanting to do something different, experience the world and what it has to offer and not be stuck in a main stream life of work, mortgage, the mundane routine that so many of us go through…

So we decided to leave our very secure jobs and buy an around the world ticket with the final destination being Australia…….

Why Australia ?

We got the feeling that the people there are nice, life not as stressed as in other countries but above all there was this mystery that appealed to us, we really knew nothing about it and this “unknown” was very attractive.

We didn’t know if we wanted to immigrate to Australia, the word immigration can sound pretty daunting doesn’t it… we decided we wanted to spend some time in Australia and our first destination was Melbourne. An amazing city that was quite embracing from the very beginning so after 2 months we realized we have to find out how we can stay there.

Our dream was to become Australian permanent residents, we knew that would enable us to stay in Australia, live and work here and have a life without limitations because nothing is really possible on a tourist visa except traveling.

We felt we needed the grounding and the legal basis of living in this amazing country. Finding the right migration agent was quite a journey but we ended up choosing somebody who seemed reliable, professional and caring enough and we felt comfortable to work with. Skilled Migration seemed to be the best option for us as I was an accountant and accountants were on high demand (appeared on the MODL).

We first had to go through the skills assessment process so I had to get my skills assessed so that I could nominate the occupation of Accountant. At that stage we felt very stressed in time and going back home was not an option so we decided to apply for a skills assessment with all assessing bodies even though only one is enough so we applied to CPAA ,ICAA and Vetassess too (in case the first 2 are not successful).

We were very stressed in time as I wasn’t working and one of the basic requirements in Skilled Migration is to have recent work experience so in our case time was of high essence.

Luckily the first stage was completed successfully and all the skills assessments were positive and once that was completed our visa application was lodged.

It took about 10 months overall but our stress levels were pretty high, I remember I used to think that our determination and perseverance is being tested here…….

Getting the visa approved was one of the happiest days in our lives, it was too good to be true! We had to go overseas and get our visas evidenced in our passports at the Australian embassy in New Zealand and there was something magical about coming into Australia with a permanent visa in your passport and later with an Australian passport. We felt very proud!

Today, 8 years after our move and Australian citizens for a few years by now I can say that migrating to Australia was one of the best decisions we made in life that opened the door to many options. We took a leap of faith and it was definitely worth it!!!

Brought to you by the Australian Immigration Experts at Synch1