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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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.