Opposition Party In Australia Keen To Cut Australian Immigration

27 Jul 2010

Australian immigration has become a key election issue. Tony Abbot, opposition party leader said that if he won the next election, his government would lower Australian immigration numbers to 170,000. As of now, the annual immigration limit stands at 300,000 and his plans would be to see the number reduced to 130,000 by each year.

But, critics of Abbott’s plans claim that Australian immigration numbers are already far lower than 300,000. Tony Burke, the Sustainable Population Minister, said that Abbott’s announcement was just a political trick. He states that immigration for this year has already fallen and was on track to reduce further by June 2011.

He added that the plans would also involve thousands of jobs being lost as they involve cutting the number of student visas, which would result in the loss of teaching jobs and jobs within educational institutions that rely on foreign cash. The Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute claims that much of the employment growth over the coming years is expected to be created through Australian immigration, and that this will suffer if drastic cuts should go ahead.

The general elections in Australia are due on 21st August 2010 following which the second drop of amendments in Australian visa rules could not be done. The expected amendment to immigration rules are generic visa portal allowing simpler, easier and faster processing of Australian visa of 140 categories. The new date for transformational changes has to be announced. It is expected that the second round of transformational changes in Australian immigration rules will reduce the number of Australian visas to 70 from the current 140 while making online application and processing of 95 percent of such visas. Presently, 25 percent of such visas are processed online.

As per a report, applications of around 25 million inbound travelers and migrants are processed by Australian immigration department. In the year 2009, Australian immigration department issued Australian temporary visas to 4.6 million immigrants.