News

US visa crackdown hits Australians Australians possessing H-1 B and L1 visas in the US are vulnerable to Trump’s new US visa restrictions. News reports suggest that the change has caused a sudden increase of Australian tourists being stopped and turned away at US borders up and down the country.  There are fears that a large number of Australian citizens may be barred from working in the States. This is because the J1 visa program is also under review, with foreigners set to be banned from accessing US visas as tourist workers, live-in childcare workers, summer camp counsellors, interns and trainees. According to a report published by The Wall Street Journal, Australians most likely to be hit by US visa restrictions are those completing ‘on-the-job professional training, such as healthcare workers.’

Grants for women in STEM extended to VET sector This week brought good news for women and girls in STEM, planning to enrol in VET sector as the federal government grants program for women and girls in STEM, which initially excluded TAFE, has been revised and extended to TAFE. The ‘Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship’ program provides funding of between $5,000 and $250,000, for projects up to two years. Applications are open now.

Migration to Queensland highest in eight years While South Australia struggles with population growth and impact of interstate migration on the State, the number of interstate migrants to Queensland has been the highest it’s been for eight years. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told state parliament on Wednesday that 15,716 people moved to Queensland in the year to March 2017, with most of those coming from NSW. She said factors such as promoting Queensland as an attractive destination to move to, lower taxes and house prices were driving this migration growth.

AFEs and universities split over Business Council plan for tertiary reform TAFEs and universities are at odds over a radical plan for reform of education unveiled last week by the Business Council of Australia (BCA). The BCA report titled ‘Future Proof, Protecting Australians through Education and Skills’, proposed a tertiary system, where VET and higher education operate coherently, rather than as silos, supported by a single funding model and a lifelong entitlement to tertiary education. While TAFEs have strongly supported the report’s increased focus on TAFEs as a key economic lever, Universities Australia has warned that the plan risked eroding the quality of tertiary education, and opened the possibility of private providers abusing the system, as with the former VET FEE-HELP scheme.

Where’s SA heading with its decreasing population growth? As South Australia’s residents continue to make interstate migration, migration experts have warned that the State’s population growth may undergo a free-fall enroute to zero. This means a crunch of economic problems that may worsen if changes to federal visa rules lead to a drop in the number of temporary and permanent migrants moving to SA. The State is continuously losing more people than that it is receiving. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, 6,400 more people moved interstate after their arrival in SA in 2015-16. You know the crisis is real when you hear the government’s announcement to strip SA of one of its House of Representatives seats at the next federal election due to low population growth.

New English language standards for international students International students will now be tested on their fluency of the English language under a new scheme that the Federal government is all set to introduce in 2018. The announcement was formally made by Education Minister Simon Birmingham last week. English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) will now have to formally assess students where they provide direct entry to a tertiary course, he said. What will change? At the moment, students can pass a course without proof and then start university studies. However, after the new standards are applied, the requirement will be extended for the first time beyond universities to vocational education and training courses. All ELICOS courses will have a minimum of 20 face-to-face contact hours per week and a maximum teacher-to-student ratio of 1:18.

Immigration no doubt is the major contributor to the population growth in Australia. Since 1970, the average number of children an Australian woman has is below two, and yet the country’s population has spurred by 70%. The number of newcomers continues to grow too, making Australia the country that admits more migrants than any big Western country. An article that appeared in The Economist recently talks about the pros and cons of this increasing immigration. While it mentions skills shortage, unemployment, increasing property prices, commuting and traffic issues, xenophobia and Pauline Hanson; it also quotes Australia’s Productivity Commission findings saying that there has been no evidence that migrants suppress wages or displace locals from jobs. Despite all these concerns, Australia continues to welcome the largest number of migrants, consistently holding on to the status of one of the most diverse societies in the world.

The process of reform of training packages will begin in earnest when a report is delivered to the federal government by the end of the year, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills Karen Andrews has said. A Training Product Reform Joint Working Party is currently examining the structure of training packages. “It will determine whether there are alternative approaches to qualification design more suited to the changing nature of work into the future,” Ms. Andrews said. She said the working party will deliver a report by the end of the year on the case for change to the design of qualifications. “This is likely to be followed by a consultation process to seek feedback on any proposed changes,” Ms. Andrews said.

An 80-year-old woman and her autistic daughter, 50, now have until November 28 to continue their visa fight, after their calls for permanent residency on compassionate grounds were denied by the Department. The mother, Florence, and daughter, Sheryil, had applied for a PR but the application was cancelled due to Sheryil’s disability. Earlier, they had to leave the country on October 3, which was changed at the last minute and the two women were granted an extension on their visa. An online petition calling for both ladies to be granted permanent residency on compassionate grounds now has over 65,000 signatories.

After a drastic revision of the Australian Bureau of Statistics data on international education, the new figures suggest that education, Australia’s third largest export, is worth far more than what the previous numbers suggested. The annual education exports in 2016-17 have now been pushed up to $28 billion from $23.6 billion – a number that was already a record. This is a 19 per cent increase in value. Recent Immigration Department figures suggest that the number of international students in Australia is also booming with a record number of 685,000 students enrolled in courses in the first half of 2017. This is 15 per cent more than the previous year.