Australian Recruiters call for Government to Reconsider Sponsorship Rules

Recruiters are calling for the government to reconsider the sponsorship rules and review the number of 457 visas granted as they become increasingly concerned about restrictions on the number of skilled overseas technology workers and the delay this could cause to major projects such as the National Broadband network due to start this year.

Since the government changes to immigration regulations early in 2009 very few IT recruiters now have their own on-hire labour agreements meaning there have been fewer 457 temporary business visa sponsorships in order to get skills to where they are urgently required.

One of Australia’s biggest IT & T recruiters Peoplebank has an on-hire labour agreement with the federal government and estimated they would import 150 to 200 overseas workers annually. However they are currently looking to negotiate an increase with the Immigration Department as they experience a 30% uplift in demand and anticipate a skills shortage by the middle of this year in NSW, Victoria and Canberra.

“There is a recognition that certain skill sets just can’t be found in Australia. For example, there are SAP projects that simply the skills are not here. They have never been done before in Australia. So they are coming out of Europe,” Peoplebank acting chief executive Jeff Knowles said.

“Every month there is an increase in opportunities that are available, so therefore there is the same increase in the need for niche people from overseas, “ Mr Knowles said.

Jonathan Wiles, technology Managing director at Michael Page agrees. “Whilst it is a hot topic at the moment, if the government doesn’t take into consideration what is likely to happen in the economic growth then it is going to make it a lot harder for companies to find the skill sets and be competitive both locally and globally.”

Technical specialists like Java developers, .NET developers, and those with a specialism in visualisation storage, voice and data and SAP are currently most in demand along with applications and analyst programmers and Software Designers.

Figures show that just 1,500 computing professionals were granted 457 visas in the year to 28 February which was down from 2810 in the year to February last year.

Recruiters call for the government to reconsider the sponsorship rules and review the number of 457 visas granted.