DIMIA Annual Report 2001-02

OVERVIEW OF OUTCOME ONE DEPARTMENTAL OUTPUTS

OUTPUT 1.1 NON-HUMANITARIAN ENTRY AND STAY

1.1.1 Economic entry (permanent)

Objective

The overall goals of this output component are to:

• maximise the economic and budgetary benefits from granting permanent residence visas to skilled and business migrants

• address key and emerging skill shortages, particularly in regional Australia

• expand business establishment and investment.

Description

DIMIA seeks to meet these goals through five broad visa category groupings:

• employer sponsored categories which provided 9,560 visas in 2001-02, up 27.3 per cent on 2000-01

• business skills categories which provided 7,590 visas in 2001-02, up 3.1 per cent on 2000-01

• Australian skill-linked categories which provide for the entry of skilled migrants who are sponsored by their families in Australia. These categories provided 6,250 visas in 2001-02, down 13.2 per cent on 2000-01

• skilled independent categories which provided 29,880 visas in 2001-02, an increase of 33.5 per cent on 2000-01

• distinguished talent categories which provided 208 visas in 2001-02, down 8.7 per cent on 2000-01.

The government has also sought to meet these goals through changes to immigration policy intended to ensure that immigration has an unequivocally positive impact on the economy, Commonwealth and State and Territory Budgets and on employment levels.

The changes have been in five broad areas:

• the balance of the program has been shifted significantly in favour of the Skill Stream

• visa criteria have been significantly upgraded, particularly in terms of age, English-language skills and recognisable vocational skills

• the Skill Stream is now much better targeted in terms of matching occupations in demand as well as in meeting the needs of different areas of Australia

• access to government services and benefits has been tightened

• much greater emphasis is being placed on testing bona fides, fraud detection and putting in place arrangements that reduce the scope for abuse, including through increased use of temporary residence arrangements.
  
  Six key activities have been identified from an integrity perspective: developing DIMIA's capacity to target and detect fraud, checking the authenticity of documents, undertaking interviews, site visits, background checks with third parties and undertaking post visa issue monitoring.
  
  Another key element to this was the development of major processing centres such as the Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre (ASPC).

DIMIA has also sought to improve the efficiency, timeliness and quality associated with processing economic category visas.

In the economic categories, such improvement is essential to ensure that Australia remains competitive as more nations seek to attract skilled migrants and to ensure that employers are accessing the skilled workers they need.

In the economic categories of the Migration Program the number of offshore applications (persons) finalised in 2001-02 was 48,477 while the number of onshore applications (persons) finalised was 23,807.

The number of visas granted was 53,520 in 2001-02, up 19.7 per cent on 2000-01.

This represented the largest number of visas issued in the economic categories on record.

The planning level for these categories in 2002-03 and the following three years is larger still at around 60,000 per annum.

Key results

Economic and budgetary benefits

Research commissioned by DIMIA shows the economic, fiscal and employment benefits gained by increasing the intake of skilled migrants at the current standards:

• the 2001-02 Skill Stream is estimated to contribute about $1.9b. to the Commonwealth Budget over the next four years, a real increase of around $375m. over the estimated contribution over four years from the 2000-01 program.

Skilled Stream Migrant Characteristics

• the qualifications held by skilled migrants are increasingly well matched to Australia's skill needs.
  
  Some 44 per cent of general skilled migrants (principal applicants) held an occupation on the Migration Occupation in Demand List (MODL)

• the success of general skilled migrants has been underlined by data for the last three years showing:

  • around 63 per cent of principal applicants granted visas were aged between 18 and 30. This compares with around 51 per cent in the same age group in 1994-95

  • around 92 per cent scoring maximum points for English language skills. This compares with 1994-95 data showing around 83 per cent of skilled independent migrants achieved maximum points for English language

  • a marked increase in skill levels, with more than 90 per cent of Skilled Independent migrants scoring maximum points for skill

• the success we are having with addressing key and emerging skill shortages is showing up in improved labour market outcomes.
  
  The unemployment rate for Skilled Independent migrants six months after arrival, for example, went from 24 per cent in the mid-1990s to seven per cent today.
  
  These improved labour market outcomes in turn are contributing to the economic growth that Australia is continuing to experience

• the Employer Nomination Scheme and Labour Agreements are increasingly enabling employers to meet immediate skill shortages in key positions that cannot be met from the local labour market.
  
  In 2001-02, 8,215 visas were granted under these categories which is an increase of 28 per cent over 2000-01.

Regional migration and skill shortages

• skills that are in short supply are increasingly being met by a better dispersal of the intake through a range of state-specific and regional migration mechanisms.
  
  Nearly 17,000 visas under these mechanisms have been issued since 1996-97, growing from around 1,000 visas in that year to some 4,136 visas in 2001-02.
  
  A package of further enhancements to these mechanisms has been developed with some having been implemented on 1 July 2002. Others will come on stream as consultations on these are completed

• there is an increasing willingness by regional employers to utilise the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (RSMS), partly as a result of greater promotion of the RSMS by the department. In 2001-02, there were 1,092 visas granted under this scheme - an increase of seven per cent over 2000-01.

Business establishment and investment

• the Business Skills category provided economic benefits to Australia in terms of job creation, capital transfers and exports. Some concerns about the overall performance of the category, however, emerged.
  
  The business engagement rate continued to decline and the number of business migrants whose visas are cancelled for failing to make a genuine effort to engage in business increased significantly.
  
  This was identified through increased emphasis on targeted site visits of business skills visa holders. Changes were foreshadowed and consultations are proceeding.

Integrity and client service

• major processing centres were established to achieve improvements in integrity of decision-making and in cost, time and quality associated with processing of visas in the economic migration categories.
  
  The Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre (ASPC) focused on general skilled migration while Perth handled offshore business skills applications

• these centres allowed a number of major improvements in terms of:

  • integrity through increased consistency and quality of decision making and the freeing up of overseas offices from caseload management to focus on cases requiring further investigation that have been referred from the centres

  • client service - for example, inquiries e-mailed to the offices are usually responded to within a day

  • efficiency - cost-effective quality control and major increases in the size of the caseload have been delivered without more than marginal-cost funding

  • improved staff training

• the two skilled processing centres have focused on fraud-related issues, through:

  • a specialist Document Examination and Investigation Unit (DEIU)

  • teams of officers specialising in country specific caseloads based on DIMIA's overseas regional structure, including officers with recent overseas experience

  • officers who have developed a high degree of expertise in overseas academic and employer documentation

  • identification and monitoring of cases on an ongoing basis, to ensure consistency of decision making and the retention of expertise at overseas offices in skilled applications

• a key to the success of the processing centres has been the level of cooperation with overseas offices and skills assessing authorities, particularly those in high-risk environments where it is necessary to refer cases for either partial or full investigation.
  
  Centralised processing taps into the knowledge and expertise of the Principal Migration Officer (Compliance) network

• the integrity of the Regional Skilled Migration Scheme has been strengthened and provided regional employers with greater certainty by legislative amendments introduced on 1 July 2001 providing for visas to be cancelled, where successful applicants do not fulfil contractual obligations to their regional employer.

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