Skilled migration changes meet Australia's needs
Chris Evans
posted Wednesday, 17 February 2010
An analysis of the permanent skilled migration program shows that changes made by the Rudd Government in 2009 helped deliver more than 1100 extra nurses, 550 new doctors and 2000 more engineers to fill skills shortages across the nation last year.
The changes also saw reduced visa grants to cooks, hairdressers and accountants in 2009 when compared to the previous year.
Changes made to skilled migration processing in January 2009
On 1 January 2009, at the height of the global financial downturn, the Rudd Government introduced new priority processing measures for the skilled migration program to ensure skills shortages were met while protecting job opportunities for Australians. The changes included:
- The Critical Skills List (CSL) – a list of 42 occupations in critical shortage, mainly in the healthcare and engineering sectors.
- A new processing direction which gave top priority to employer sponsored visas and those from applicants who nominated an occupation on the CSL.
The priority given to sponsored visas was in line with the Rudd Government’s policy of shifting the skilled migration program to a demand rather than supply driven scheme in order to better meet the needs of the Australian economy.
Tags: Immigration, Jobs, Skilled Migration