Slashdot Mirror
Australian PM Targets Imported IT Workers
beaverdownunder writes "A debate 'down under' has started to rage surrounding the importation of 'temporary' IT workers on so-called 457 visas, with the Prime Minister promising to bring in tough new restrictions on foreign workers in a pre-election pledge, despite evidence that there are insufficient numbers of Australians to fill the skills gap. Some quarters argue the foreign workers are necessary to drive growth in Australia's IT industry, while others have cited examples where large Australian companies have imported workers needlessly, displacing qualified Aussie personnel."
And how is this different from the controversy over this exact same subject here in the US, and I'm sure in other countries too?
When you teach your kids to be Tradies.
Deal with it.
This is just a ploy by a desperate PM way behind in the polls and facing a wipeout in the upcoming federal election. She's trying to gain some mileage by playing on the fears of Australians, who are suspicious of imported temporary workers. It doesn't matter whether there is a skill shortage or not, the public doesn't actually get the real facts...
Whether or not there is a shortage of native IT workers in Australia, companies could potentially switch to off shoring the jobs if the government prevents importing of workers.
"Panic set in when studies showed over 70% of youngsters thought Sheilas were filipina IT chicks."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, this is going to be an extra-large shit for us, where me spending 2 years in Norway at head office was significantly easier than bringing people over here for 6 months at a time for skills exchange. HR tells me that Australia is the hardest country in the world they've tried to give people "bridge the world" temporary transfers to. Insular much?
It's different because the aussie leadership actually recognize it as a problem. In the US it's just business as usual.
You need to actually live here to understand the politics of the situation. The problem is that the government has lost control of illegal immigration (purely their fault, because they're the ones who dismantled a border-control regime that worked), so in order to signal to the electorate that they're very very very concerned about illegal immigration, they're... cracking down on legal immigration.
People on 457 visas have average annual incomes safely over ~$90k, which makes sense - the 457 program is targeted at areas of skills shortage. There is no comparison with the H1B visas in the US.
The problem is not a shortage of engineers. The problem is that software companies don't want to pay competitive salaries. Were salaries higher, that would attract capable workers into the software field such as engineers or physicists. It would also further increase the number and quality of students studying computer science.
There's a reason interest in software development work peaked in the late 1990s. That was also when salary increases peaked.
They get everywhere! Did you hear, even some government jobs are taken by them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Gillard
Oh, the irony.
If you are growing GDP just by importing workers you're often not growing GDP per capita. Which means you're not actually making the country's people richer on average.
It is of course usually harder to grow GDP by increasing productivity per person.
Expect plenty of this type of protectionist nonsense from every government, distorting the markets, raising prices by removing competition because of varios lobbying efforts and just stupid populist sentiment designed to rally up nationalistic feelings. Trade wars follow currency wars and lead to hot wars. In the interim they lead to higher prices (wage is also a price) thus to higher unemployment and more outsourcing. More unemployment fuels the negative popular sentiment, worsens the economy and feeds this self-perpetuating cycle, which gives politicians more ammunition to destroy freedoms (and this legislature is destroying ppls freedoms) and this brings closer the inevitable conflict. All such measures end up hurting the economy but politicians get more power and preferred lobbying companies get to raise prices in and steal from the market by joining the political power.
Be aware of this, don't fall into a trap believing this is good for you or the economy, it's not. It hurts the economy and thus it hurts you.
You can't handle the truth.
I disagree, I think software companies would love to pay a competitive salary, as long as ALL of their competitors are paying it too. Your problem is that your competition is now international, and Australia has a very high cost of living. In the late 1990's the internet hadn't properly taken hold in CEO's brains so your competition for software was still mostly domestic (international companies like Microsoft, IBM, etc were the exception).
Politicians don't seem to get is whilst high tech jobs are the future, they're not subject to the same geographical constraints that low tech jobs like farming are. Why would a company want to pay an Australian developer a high rate of pay when he can pay an Indian developer a lower wage and the Indian guy gets to live in the lap of luxury? Why would a company or consumer want to buy software developed in Australia, when Indian, American or European software can be bought cheaper over the net? (Region locks have plusses and minuses in this case)
The causes of the high cost of living needs to be tackled, but this is probably going to involve low-skilled immigration and they've sealed that exit off.
You do realize that any reasonably non-crap programmer ALREADY basically competes with you no matter what country you live in. I know "out of sight out of mind" but programmers don't just disappear because they live in a different country, and the market is pretty well globalized. So you can either let programmers create jobs in another country or contribute to your own economy.
My other UID is three digits.
Sky bosom?! I want!
It's different because:
1. Slashdot is reporting on a political topic that isn't US-centric. That's different enough on it's own to be celebrating.
2. And because it means we get to enjoy that crocodile-tooth hat icon. I mean... who wouldn't want to see more of that?
Anyone in the IT industry in Oz who has not seen 457 visa abuse, especially by the large system integrators, is simply not paying attention. Bringing in dirt cheap labor who are on-sold to customers at a very high profit margin is rife. Some of these people are good, some are bad. But all are basically being used to reduce IT wages and increase the profit margins of the SI's.
Here's a question: if there is an IT skills shortage, why have IT wages been flat for five years.
And the opposition trying to play this as racism is beyond offensive, given their demonization and wolf-whistling around refugees. I'd like to think Abbott couldn't go lower, but I am pretty sure there are much further depths of depravity and hypocrisy that man and his supporter are capable of.
Plus their fans in News Ltd (aka. News Corp elsewhere).
As a teenager, we were encouraged to study engineering and computing. IT jobs were sold to us as genuine careers. So we spent our four plus years at uni only to find that outsourcing is the new black, and all our study is for naught. Thanks.
Has been here on a 457 until he got his temp. visa. And honestly, he's amazing at his job. One of the best people I have ever worked with. I wouldn't want anyone else. (I'm an Aussie)
Just like the BS about US corporations whining they desperately need more H1B visas, this is about increasing profits by replacing living wage jobs with the modern IT equivalent of indebtured servants; compliant, desperate folks willing to work way too hard for pennies on the pound / dollar. And if they ask for a raise or complain about 60-hour work weeks? DEPORTED.
But they got to Australia BEFORE the pale people did, and you didn't follow THEIR immigration laws, did ya?
There are plenty of IT workers in Australia. I know because im one of them. The companies just don't like paying the wages. They've already offshored all the jobs they can. Now they want to import low paid workers to do the work that can't be sent OS. Even if the PM is being populist that doesn't mean it's not true.
not that I'm disagreeing with you, but I'd like to see a fact-based discussion.
Okay, I've been on both sides of this as I've been to Australia three different times for work (but not with the visa they talk about). When I was brought in I was brought in because they had fewer than 10 people in the entire country that were certified to do what I was doing at the time (there were only a few hundred total worldwide). There well and truly was a shortage of the skills they were looking for and they could not have possibly met that need in country.
Cases like mine are the exception though, and most visas issued for workers to come in and perform IT work are issued to avoid hiring native workers. Someone who is working on a visa is much more likely to be able to be pressed to work additional free hours, won't have costs like retirement and is really easy to get rid of if you don't want them anymore. In short they are viewed as disposable workers that do more at less cost.
There is a relatively easy and balanced fix for these problems (it's a problem when large quantities of natives can't get work and your importing people to work). If you really want to measure if there is actually a shortage of workers for a given field all you have to do is monitor average pay and benefits for native workers. If there is a genuine shortage you will see pay and benefits rise accordingly (market dynamics). When average pay and benefits rise to a certain level you allow for more visas to be issued. This avoids a hard cap while allowing for genuine shortages to be addressed without decimating native workers careers.
I also think you should allow people who come in like this to stay for a limited number of years with a fast track for citizenship. If they don't obtain their citizenship after X years they return home. /Loved Australia
Yeah and the aborigines arrived second http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/01/01/2813404.htm possible wiping out other inhabitants - but lets all ignore that and the fact that aborigines will not let further DNA testing on the remains even though the oldest fossil remains in Australia DO NOT match current modern day aborigines. http://www.convictcreations.com/aborigines/prehistory.htm
well CS is not IT so you start out with a skills gaps.
also tech schools and learn on the job are liked by real IT pros but not are not liked by HR.
The outsourcing firms cheat to make there people look better on paper and when things get messed up they may try to hide it under language barriers or say we foiled your specs to the letter (that works poorly)
Are you attempting to elaborate on the reality of the situation, endorsing the policies that have created it or both?
Jobs don't belong to anyone, but a nation is defined by geographical borders and a population which mostly lives inside those borders. The government of that nation SHOULD be enacting policies which represent the best interests of the population. Allowing the nation's borders to be overrun with immigrants is hardly in the best interests of the majority of the population. Forcing domestic businesses to adhere to specific labor standards and environmental practices and then opening the borders to products made in places which have no such standards is not in the best interests of the population either. How about FAIR trade and a labor market with a real supply/demand dynamic?
It's different inasmuch as Labor is in a hole WRT the slowly approaching election and are trying to win back blue collar voters that they have been sneering at for years by pushing an issue that is completely irrelevant to those same blue collar voters. I just can't figure out if Gillard actually thinks that flushing Labor's moral high ground on immigration is a good idea or if she's just trying to stick the knife into whoever takes over after she is dumped as leader. At least the second option would show some imagination; knifing someone in the back when you don't even know who it is is actually pretty impressive.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
And how is this different from the controversy over this exact same subject here in the US
Well, in Australia the Prime Minister is actually OPPOSING visas that cut native IT workers out of work (and artificially lower wages). In the U.S, by contrast, the President is falling all over himself to say how great they are, and ask for even more.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
There's been several studies that demonstrate that IBM has been ignoring local labor (something that's illegal) in preference to H1B Visa holders.
Then paying the H1B employees at the lowest end of the lowest technical scale they can cite. And yes, this does depress wages for local labor.
I can only assume the same things are happening in Australia. However, except for xenophobia, it's a non-starter. The Corporate Powers That Be are trying to get the standards lowered, not raised. America is having a hard enough time maintaining the (often ignored) rules about our H1B hiring practices.
Damnit. I was hoping to move to Australia one day, and I'm an IT worker. Maybe New Zealand will still have me.
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
And how is this different from the controversy over this exact same subject here in the US, and I'm sure in other countries too?
There were 4500 Australian IT undergraduate student completions in 2011, and 5800 visas.
Perhaps if they'd had 10,300 Australian IT undergraduate completions, they would have had 0 visas.
Just because you have 10,300 Australians out of work and 10,300 IT jobs open doesn't mean that you can employ those out of work people as IT workers if only 4500 of them were qualified to do IT work.
This is just politics as usual.
In each case, businesses want a captive worker - ideally a slave - and contract workers like this are the means for accomplishing that goal.
How about making it so that nobody legally allowed to work can be forced to a particular work arrangement(e.g. can't be forced to be a contractor unless you really want to be one)?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
What's a "bogan"?
Will she be similarly defensive against the wholesale offshoring of IT jobs FROM Australia to China/India?
How do you propose she or any other PM does this? A lot of outsourcing outfits are independent Indian companies which are paid by overseas companies to fulfil a contract. You'd have to stop or make more expensive the Australian companies doing business this way, and aside from the issues this would cause with free trade agreements it would be damn ticklish to define.
it means we get to enjoy that crocodile-tooth hat icon
To each his own mate (that's Australian right? I saw it on a Foster's commercial), but I'd rather see the next Elle MacPherson. Come to think of it, even at 48 the old one is looking pretty good.
Whenever I hear people whining about a "skills shortage" I call bullshit. There's no "skills shortage", there's a "people who will work for low wages" shortage. If companies wanted to hire domestic workers, they could, they just don't want to. They love it when supply-and-demand benefits them, but when the workers try to do the same thing (salaries go up when the demand for the skills goes up), well, we can't have that, can we. Those executives might have to forgo that second vacation home or have to settle for a BMW instead of a Bentley.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
You do realize that any reasonably non-crap programmer ALREADY basically competes with you no matter what country you live in.
Only to a limited extent. There are still plenty of reasons to want employees who are local, or at least national. Otherwise there would be no IT people employed in Australia or the US at anything other than poverty wages. And if we truly lived in a globalized world, the same would be true of everyone from doctors to carpenters. Generally I'm staying out of the 457 visa debate because as an American I don't understand enough about the politics and the situation, but the principle I described is widely applicable.
The reality is that they do belong to citizens - just that you've not seen the damage. That said, the best interests are automatically to serve the citizens, not sell them down the river like what you're advocating. Nationalism is alive and well in the 21st Century, and it does poorly to drop it for transnationalism.
Diplomacy won't help you if you're not willing to back it up with a well-armed and well-protected populace.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Because we have a welfare program that qualified IT workers will use if foreign workers are taking local jobs. This means more taxes will be spent to give these people something to live on. I understand getting unemployment in the US is more difficult.
is this where they hide the dingo and the youngest is sent on a quest to find it?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Labor "flushed" their "high ground" on immigration (and, indeed, pretty much everything else) a decade ago chasing LNP votes.
Since the early 2000s, Labor has been little more than the Liberals with a 5-year time delay.
If you want a soft-left party in Australia (ie: Labor's traditional position), your only option is the Greens.
No, not really, or we wouldn't have borders and the political theater of immigration.
That's not on a 457 visa though ... generally if you bring enough money you can immigrate anywhere.
I suppose whether the Greens are soft left or, as I would call them, hard left, is a matter of where you're standing. However, Bob Brown's commitment to regulation of the media is hardly the sort of stuff I expect out of a center/left party. It's more a hard right/hard left kind of idea.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
He was on TV as a corporate expert on what we could do to deal with the remarkable rate of job losses at the peak of the Recession. His ingenious solution was to increase H1B visas. That's just the mentality of the people in power and the people with access to their ear holes.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Which doctors? To practice in the US you have to do a residency in the US or Canada. The fact that there are so many foreign born/educated doctors is the US is because being a doctor here is so lucrative that some are willing to overcome that ridiculous barrier to entry. I guess it's necessary because in places like Europe and Japan they still bleed people and don't wash their hands after dissecting corpses. Or so the AMA would have you believe. There is no equivalent barrier for IT or most engineering.
It's different because the aussie leadership actually recognize it as a problem. In the US it's just business as usual.
The same situation exists in Canada with the government screaming about the need to allow foreigners into the country to take jobs "because it is good for the economy". Rubbish. The only benefit to employers is wage suppression and to government is more tax revenue and most importantly more favourable voters. I have nothing against truly skilled immigrants - please come immediately - but when I encounter IT workers claiming *nix experience yet they cannot tell me how to list the contents of a subdirectory or sort a list of names (surname, given name) in a file extracting only the unique names that begin with the letters 'Sm' in the surname and allow them 15 minutes while I am off doing something else, I have to question their competence.
Have a look at yourselves in a mirror.
GROW UP.
This whole discussion is an unseemly airing of our collective political "dirty linen".
Oh, sorry, we do that every so often, and make the rest of the world wonder what being "down under" (standing on our heads) does for the collective blood-flow to the brains, and also wonder shy they would bother to visit and get the same malady.
As I said, GROW UP!
Please... ?!?!?!!!!!!
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
In fairness *illegal* immigrants are likely to be near the bottom of the economic spectrum, which makes them statistically far more likely to resort to crime to supplement their income. Legal immigrants on the other hand, *especially* those on work visas, are probably no more likely to commit crimes than anyone else.
You know, I'd love to see dollar-adjusted crime statistics, something like a "per-capita dollars stolen versus income level" graph. Of course at the high end the line between theft and business as usual gets a little murky, but still. I suspect it would be relatively flat or even increase slightly with income as the risk/reward considerations shift. Hmm, or possibly sort of a bathtub curve with the middle class having both more to lose than the poor and less opportunity for a big payoff than the rich.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
the foreign workers are necessary to drive growth in Australia's IT industry, while others have cited examples where large Australian companies have imported workers needlessly, displacing qualified Aussie personnel."
Oddly, this seems paradoxical as probably both are true. Australia probably needs to import IT workers, just not to displace current workers.
As someone living in Perth who has been trying (and failing) to find a job in software development (or IT more broadly) for quite a while now, I support this idea if it means people like me get hired instead of some foreign guy here on a work visa.
If you only let in workers that produce more than average, then you are increasing your per-person GDP.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, Australia has a relatively easy points-based immigration system that is easy to get in with, if you have enough education and experience in a proper job field. Workers like me who go there to work don't do so on a 457 visa, we get work visas or resident visas.
Learn to love Alaska
Why is it that Slashdot hears "it worker" and thinks "programmer"?
Learn to love Alaska
In fairness *illegal* immigrants are likely to be near the bottom of the economic spectrum,
No, aside from the US, which is a special case because it has a large open border with a large economic disparity, most illegal immigration is from "average" or better SES (at least from their origin) who overstay a visa. Nearly all refugees and such on boats are properly processed and returned or "made legal" so that they aren't illegal immigration, even if they are a grey area of "illegal arrival" until properly processed.
Learn to love Alaska
That's why the US is ruined. They'd spend more money on importing labor than training up internal people. Eventually, the US will be 100% service economy, supporting the rest of the world.
Learn to love Alaska
It's a reasonable position - I don't know the particulars of the tax system in Australia, but in any country where the wealthy carry the majority of the tax burden ( = the bulk of tax income comes from flat or progressive taxes) it's hard to justify them receiving fewer direct benefits than the poor: Basically "We're the ones paying most of the bill, why are we getting the smallest portions?". Of course the reality of income-independent benefits would be that they end up paying even more in taxes to pay for the extra benefits and probably wouldn't do much better than breaking even, but there are actually several benefits to such a scheme:
- Greater perceived fairness. It's largely an irrational emotional reaction, but that doesn't make it any less legitimate.
- Greater incentives for the poor to work harder. One of the big problems with most entitlement plans is that for every extra dollar you earn you lose some portion of a dollar in benefits. In the US you actually risk losing considerably *more* than a dollar in benefits. That means the people who are the greatest economic burden on the country have the *least* direct economic incentive to try to earn more.
- Lower bureaucratic overhead. I don't know about Australia, but in the US there are armies of people employed for no other reason than to determine the level of benefits you qualify for. If instead it was simply a matter of anyone who wanted to could present their ID and receive their standardized benefits you could save an enormous amount of money, possibly enough to pay for a fair portion of the increased overall benefit costs. And all those bureaucrats could instead get jobs doing something actually productive. (Must resist urge to make obvious joke)
- And finally it completely eliminates all the regulatory cracks that people fall through. No bureaucratic delays that leave you starving on the street for weeks or months after losing the job that was just keeping your head above water. No "Sorry, but the third letter of your last name is R, which since you applied on the 12th of the month and entered a value not divisible by 17 on line 946 of your application means you don't qualify"
Of course there's also the risk that you'll get the middle class accustomed to getting handouts (The rich mostly already being accustomed to arranging their own much more lucrative handouts anyway), and I could see how that would worry those who consider socialism to be a dirty word. But frankly you're talking about a group for whom the entitlements will be a minority portion of their income, and who are presumably competent enough to realize that any time they try to increase their benefits they'll actually be losing money since have to pay for a portion of the handouts going to the poor. The exception of course being those situations where the government can legitimately provide non-monetary benefits considerably more cheaply than they can be acquired by private individuals.
My own preferred implementation would be something that made the economics of income redistribution very transparent and straightforward so that politicians have a hard time gaming the system for their own ends, because there are in fact some serious risks to unconstrained income redistribution. Say having a constitutional requirement that all entitlements to be paid for from a separate, dedicated "redistribution tax"to be paid in parallel with income tax, with no option to transfer funds to/from the broader government coffers. Preferably something extremely simple like a flat tax on gross income - no loophole exploitation possible, with all money left over after paying for non-monetary entitlements being distributed equally among citizens. That way everyone has a nice direct feedback on the health of the nation's economy - the poor want the rich to get richer because that means more money directly into their own pockets as well, provided the gains don't all come at the expense of the middle class.
Obviously there's lots of details to be considered, things lik
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Perhaps you're right. I was assuming that illegal immigrants were effectively invisible to worker protection laws since they have to work "off the books" and risk deportation if they make any complaints, and can thus be heavily exploited by the labor market. Perhaps that's not the case in Australia. Certainly if deportation won't significantly worsen their situation they are unlikely to tolerate nearly as much abuse. But why then the illegal immigration? Is Australia just so incredible that folks can't bear to leave when their visa expires?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If that were true, the employers wouldn't agitate so hard for the immigration reforms. In some areas of some companies it's true, but a lot of companies - even tech companies - are still pretty tied to physical presence in physical offices in specific locations.
It does line up with my personal beliefs, but all with the political compass. 2010. 2007.
I haven't seen a lot to be concerned about with Brown's intended regulations.
I hope you feel the same way when it's Tony Abbott's appointees harassing the Sydney Morning Herald instead of Julia Gillards appointees harassing the Daily Telegraph.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Skills shortage, hey?
Head over to Seek (seek.com.au), which a local can confirm is arguably one of the most popular job search engines in Australia.
Pick Adelaide as a region, "C++" as a skill. Yes, I know Adelaide is a small capital city, don't get me started.
Six hits. A few weeks ago, it was four.
Four of those hits *require* an additional mandatory skill or language beyond C++, or security clearance.
Of the remaining two, I can confirm that last year, one of them wasn't interested in a First-Class Comp Sci Honours graduate C++ software developer with well over ten years of experience. They didn't even reply. Think about that for a moment.
That leaves one opening. For how many existing developers and new graduates?
Let's try Hobart now.
No jobs at all.
Same for Darwin. No jobs.
What skills shortage?
And yes, I do know that cities such as Melbourne and Sydney have many more opportunities.
Certainly if deportation won't significantly worsen their situation they are unlikely to tolerate nearly as much abuse. But why then the illegal immigration? Is Australia just so incredible that folks can't bear to leave when their visa expires?
There are a number of rich Europeans that that like the beach life, and decide to try to stay. If they are deported, they'll live "better" than Australia, but without some factors they like. It's not that it's that great, but a lot of non-Americans travel for a good bit of time between high school and college, and if they find a place they like, they might stay.
Many of the Australian visa overstayers are illegal immigrants who entered illegally (lied on visa application) and are working for family or in semi-slavery for a former countryman. They are the ones Australia is most concerned about, and most of them are Asian.
Learn to love Alaska
Who is 'they' and who is 'you'? This language reeks of racism right there. There's no them and us, we we're all born under the current system so it's hard to feel sympathetic for any injustice that was learned.
No. There are many companies developing software only in Australia, such as defence contractors. That work is not available to overseas programmers.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
From the banter in the House of Representatives about this topic, the focus is wholly on companies that wrought the system by applying to bring labour in from overseas under the guises of skilled labour shortage, and then assigning them tasks better suited to janitors or clerics. I.E. Companies have been purposefully advertising for doctors and psychiatrists, they hire whoever they like, if they don't have proper qualifications they get paid less, they are stringed up because on the whim of the company they get deported, so some aren't making minimum wage, and then are required to clean toilets and the like. The work of a janitor is hard skilled labour, and therefore there is no shortage. Companies are abusing this in multiple sectors to bring in cheap labour of which Australia has no labour shortage in. Take IT workers for example, maybe they get here and are then assigned telemarketing jobs or help desk jobs, when the advertisements say Network Administrator or Software Engineer. Geeze for a site touted as "News for Nerds" some of you guys really don't try to educate yourselves before jumping into the conversation and being less than helpful.