There has been a viral post, gaining traction on WhatsApp, calling for application for Australian Visa sponsorship and job due to a labour shortage
This purported post on WhatsApp, calling for application for Australian Visa sponsorship and job due to a labour shortage (with garanteed success of 99.9 per cent using the platform, has been declared as false.
But, while it is true that Australia has declared that it is having labour shortage, the website is said to be just a phishing platform.
Hence the message which says: “AUSTRALIA VISA SPONSORSHIP and JOBS 2023 (LABOUR SHORTAGE) is very unfounded and aimed at shortchanging unsuspecting people. This means that, the Australian government is not exactly looking for national and international applicants who can fill the shortage of jobs in Australia.
In any case, “The Australian Government had announced a 400% number of Immigrants. Meaning that this is an opportunity to work legally in Australia, all things being equal.
In this regard, Australia had already increased the number of Immigrants from 35000 to 195000 in the current year.”
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A statement in the published fake link stated that, “Benefits” of using the link provided in the message included, “99.9 percent Visa Sponsorship and 99.9 percent Success Rate.”
However, a release by the Financial Review, a newspaper publication in Australia, described as gloomy the state of business environment in the country when it stated that business owners are in limbo over shortage of workers with more than 423,000 job vacancies declared by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Hence, this is as the country is having a 3.9 per cent unemployment rate, a 48-year low, and the proportion of adult population with a job, or looking for a job is at a record high of 66.7 per cent. The review added that the struggle with getting staff to applicants not having the required skills is 59 percent, and a lack of applicants is 79 percent.
Thus, it is that, “The inability to find workers is also not sector-specific, with the shortage affecting every industry. The five sectors that have been hit hardest with staff shortages are trades, hospitality and tourism, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology,” it stated.
It was also gathered that a diplomat had blamed the shortage on Australia’s daunting visa process which involves high fees and long processing time. “People often have to wait years for decisions to be made, limiting their ability to plan their lives effectively, and preventing Australia from being able to take advantage of their skill-sets.”
The diplomat further said that, a visa like the Temporary Skills Shortage visa can often take a year to process, undermining its usage to bring essential labour into the country quickly.
An authoritative report said, this was compounded due to a backlog of over 914,000 applications for permanent and temporary visas as of August 12.
It also said from these, about 370,000 are visas in key temporary categories of visitors, students and skilled visas that are key for the country’s economic recovery after the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also includes applicants already in Australia and looking to change their visa status to a more permanent one.
For peculiar reasons, “It said the delays are largely due to resource shortages at immigration offices and a huge backlog of applications that were left unattended for two years as the pandemic forced the government to seal the borders.”
In the meantime, however, and to tackle the problem, the government announced some measures to allow “older Australians to be able to work more hours without it affecting their government pensions, and relaxing work restrictions for international students, which will allow annual immigration intake from 160,000 people to 195,000.”