Australia tightens migration

CANBERRA—Australia tightened its migration rules Monday in favor of English speakers and professionals, saying the country had been attracting too many hairdressers and cooks and too few doctors and engineers.

In London, the government said Sunday it is tightening its rules on student visas to prevent people from flouting the rules and working illegally.

The changes—which are effective immediately—won’t stop genuine students from traveling to Britain to study but will close an avenue that has been exploited, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said Sunday.

“There’s an awful lot more of adults, not young people, not coming to study degrees at universities but coming on short courses into this country,” Johnson told the BBC.

Asked if many of those students were “bogus,” Johnson said, “Yes, yes.”

Under the new rules, those from outside the European Union who come to Britain for short courses—less than six months—can no longer bring their dependents.

Johnson said the number of hours foreign students will be able to work will also be cut from 20 hours a week to 10, and that a higher standard of English will be required.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans blamed the over-representation of lower skilled immigrants on a system put in place by Prime Minister John Howard, whose government lost power in the 2007 elections.

“Under the Howard government, we had a lot of cooks, a lot of hairdressers coming through,” Evans told reporters.

“We were taking hairdressers from overseas in front of doctors and nurses—it didn’t make any sense.”

The new rules will favor applicants who already have job offers over those who merely have qualifications or who are studying. The measures are expected to dampen enrollment in Australian colleges by foreign students hoping to settle in the country.

The number of foreign students enrolled in Australian colleges exploded in 2001, when the government changed migration rules to allow them to apply for permanent residency while studying. Until then, skilled workers had to apply offshore for visas to fill jobs from a list of more than 100 trades and professions that were suffering shortages in Australia.

Australia continued to have a shortage of accountants, partly because many of the 40,000 accountants who immigrated in the past five years did not have the professional or language skills to find work, Evans said.

“You’ve got to say if they don’t have the English-language skills, don’t have the trade skills and can’t get a job, then really they should not be eligible for permanent residency,” Evans said.

The new policy will favor applicants who score highly in an English language test. Moreover, immigrant numbers in certain jobs could be capped for the first time. The government has not identified which jobs. AP