WE ALL recall the Howard government's infamous stand on immigration during the height of the refugee debate: that ''we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come''. Ironically, the Rudd Government has been quietly implementing dramatic changes to our immigration arrangements that would justify a new catchphrase along the lines of ''Australia's employers will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come''.
Immigration department officials recently confirmed that in 2008-09 seven out of every 10 new skilled migrants were selected by employers. More than 101,000 skilled workers and their dependants were granted 457 visas in the main employer-sponsored temporary skilled visa program.
In addition, nearly 39,000 people were granted visas in the main employer-sponsored permanent residency (PR) visa programs, the Employer Nomination Scheme and the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme.
This employer dominance in the skilled migration program is not a temporary aberration. It is set to continue. Last December the Immigration Minister, Senator Chris Evans, announced changes to skilled immigration in response to the global financial crisis. Top priority in skilled migration went to employer-sponsored temporary skilled workers and PRs.
The Government has become fond of describing its decision to put employers in the driver's seat of Australia's immigration intake as ''an uncapped, demand-driven approach to migration''.
The Howard government started this approach of handing over sovereign control of Australia's immigration program to employers. It did this by expanding the use of temporary overseas work visas so much that their numbers became larger than the permanent skilled migration program.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's continuation of this line is troubling. He seems to have swallowed the Howard-era rhetoric justifying the outsourcing of skilled migration decisions to individual employers, particularly the claim that employers know best what workers the nation needs, and that government should not be ''second-guessing'' employers' decisions.
But the Government appears blind to the serious problems with this approach. Skilled immigration decisions should be made in the national interest, which often means taking a longer-term view. Individual employers are not focused on the national interest. They are driven by short-term profit considerations and their decisions on immigration, as on everything else, are shaped by their immediate self-interest.
It is this same self-interest that has motivated many Australian employers to cut their costs by refusing to train young Australians - and why wouldn't they if the Government will reward them by allowing them to hand-pick their workforce from overseas?
The simple reality is if employers can get access to cheap, compliant foreign labour, then they will do so. That is the nature of the beast.
Compounding these problems has been the Rudd Government's approach to international students. Numbers have surged recently - there were about 400,000 studying in Australia last year - with these students having work rights during term and unlimited working hours during vacation times.
Also, overseas student graduates on 485 visas (otherwise known as the Graduate Skills Visa, which allows overseas students who have graduated from an Australian institution to stay and work for up to 18 months) have unrestricted work rights in Australia and can qualify for PR visas.
There has been huge growth in overseas students in so-called trades courses promoted by dubious private colleges. And students in these programs must complete 900 hours' work experience, further adding to competition for youth jobs.
Yet while this has been happening, the number of 15 to 24-year-old Australians in work fell by more than 100,000 in the year to June 2009.
To make matters even worse, the Government has granted 45,000 temporary visas and bridging visas with unrestricted work rights in Australia to overseas student graduates, many of whom are desperate for a PR visa and the 12 months' work experience that is essential to qualify for it.
The consequence of so many temporary overseas workers and students seeking PR visas is that employers have a compliant labour force at their disposal. It also means more competition for a shrinking number of jobs, and more risk of the undercutting of Australian wages and conditions by this desperate workforce.
Temporary work visa programs that bring in vulnerable workers from developing countries are inherently flawed and will have an increasingly serious impact on the regulation of the Australian labour market. While Senator Evans has taken some steps to address the 457 visa abuses, the Government's response to date is not proportionate to the size of the problem.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union is now seeing the inevitable consequence of this flawed policy with major scams and rorts being discovered on a regular basis.
Last week our officials raided two Sydney building sites where hundreds of Chinese temporary workers, most of whom could not speak English, had not been paid their wages for six weeks.
Among the cocktail of abuses discovered were sham subcontracting, no workers' compensation insurance coverage, no award conditions, no superannuation and rates of pay barely half what they were entitled to.
Immigration policy is failing our youth and needs to be refocused on the public interest, not the narrow interests of the powerful employer and international education lobbies.
John Sutton is the national secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).
This article was first published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on August 31, 2009.
