Migration agents warn against visa category overhaul

Source: SBS, 31/03/2018

The government`s plans to cut down the categories will lead to more
application knock-backs, one agent has told SBS News.
Migration agents have warned against the Turnbull government’s plans
for a major visa overhaul to drastically reduce the number of
categories on offer, saying it would impact the success rate for
applicants.
The Coalition is waiting on advice from the Department of Home
Affairs on how to cut the current 99 visa categories down to 10 in
what would be the single biggest immigration change in more than two
decades.
“It’s going to be very difficult to handle all of the applications,
the type of applications that 99 visa categories handle, and narrow
them down to ten visa subclasses,” Canberra migration agent Jason
Browne told SBS News.
Mr Browne believes that with fewer categories applicants will be more
likely to go it alone with their paperwork and it will undoubtedly
result in more visa rejections.
“Immigration law is not easy. Individuals and businesses doing their
own visa applications … there is going to be an increase in refusals
and appeals,” he said.
Simplifying the system
The Home Affairs Department’s rationale for the move is to curb
rising net overseas migration and reduce the cost of the “ill-suited”
visa system which it has labelled “an artefact of a bygone era”.
On its website, it argues that a more flexible system would help the
government to ‘attract new and better migrants where they arise’.
By comparison, the United States has an even more complication system
with some 185 different types of visas available.
According to department figures, the volume of visa and citizenship
applications is forecast to increase by around 50 per cent within the
next 10 years, to around 13 million applications annually.
Param Jaswal, managing director at the Imperial College of Australia,
has been navigating the visa system for more than 20 years to enable
foreign students to study in Australia.
“It’s still very complicated for an individual to go through the
number of subclasses on the Immigration Department website and just
to identify which subclass will suit their particular requirement …
it becomes very complex,” he told SBS News.
Further changes ahead
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton announced the government’s
intention to shake up the visa categories last year.
The government then accepted public submissions over a seven-week
period, receiving a total of 255.
A summary of the public consultation process suggests there is strong
support for a visa system that is “easy to navigate”.
Even so, the majority of those who put in submissions to the
government-backed “the retention of some kind of pathway from
temporary to permanent residence”.
It follows a number of changes in recent years that have reduced the
opportunities for migrants to gain permanent residency in Australia
including reforms to the popular 457 skilled visa program.
Also under consideration is a new provisional visa system that would
not afford applicants the same access to welfare payments and
services that permanent residents are currently entitled to.
“This is a huge change,” Anna Boucher, senior lecturer in public
policy and political science at the University of Sydney, told SBS
News.
“It could see a wholesale change in what visa categories we have and
secondly a fundamental shift from Australia as a country of permanent
settlement to one where temporary migration is more and more the
status quo.”
While Labor supports the idea of simplifying the visa system in
principle, shadow immigration minister Shayne Neumann said closing
off pathways to permanent residency could create an “underclass” of
migrants in Australia.
“The government looks like it’s got an agenda here,” he told SBS News.
”Who can argue against visa simplification? But if it’s a method by
which the government tries to create an underclass in the country,
that’s not a good thing”.