Australia must speed up skilled worker visa process

Australia, 18th January: Australia needs to expedite the process of skilled visa applications in order to clear the current backlog of applications for Australian visas, warned several business groups in Australia.
According to official figures, applications exceeding 140,000 skilled workers are still waiting to be cleared by the Australia immigration officials for the last two years.

This is despite the fact that Chris Bowen, the Australian immigration minister was briefed about the existing backlog of Australian visa applications last year the details of which have been released only now.

Several Australian businesses feel that if the nation wants to come out of the current economic crisis, then it must work out to allow increased number of skilled immigrant workers in Australia in order to meet a high demand of workforce in the country. Long delays in the processing of Australian visa applications have severely affected the
economic recovery of the country, Australian businessmen maintain.

Presently, the Australian economy is witnessing shortage of required workers in various sectors including construction, engineering and health care. And there is a constant risk of inflated wages in the country.

Shortage of skilled workforce is posing to be a major problem in the country, and the nation must be ready to face pressure on wages if steps are not taken for increasing the number of skilled immigrants in the country, warns director of Reserve Bank of Australia, Graham Kraehe.

The nation needs to focus on two things, one is steps for improving productivity in the nation and second thing is to increase the level of skilled immigration in order to meet the required number of immigrant workers in the country, Kraehe suggested.

He maintained that these two steps are needed in order to bring down the pressure on costs of the projects.

Although, the Australian immigration minister Mr. Bowen has stated to bring down the waiting times, the current backlog of Australian skilled visa applications has been justified by an official spokesperson of the Australian immigration department- DIAC (Department of Immigration and Citizenship).

The spokesperson maintained that the priority of the immigration department is to allow those immigrants whose skills will be beneficial for Australia and not the applicants who had applied first. Hence, the applications are facing waiting times from a few months to a few years.