Australia slashes immigration: Government plans to cut new arrivals by half in two years!

• Australia plans to reduce its annual migrant intake to 250,000 by June 2025.
• Focus on attracting skilled workers with “specialist” or “essential” skills.
• The opposition criticized the government for its slow response to the migration crisis.

To address the “broken” immigration system in the nation, the Australian government has announced that it will cut the number of new immigrants by half in the next two years.

By June 2025, it hopes to reduce the yearly intake to 250,000, or about what it was before the pandemic.

The new strategy will also tighten visa requirements for low-skilled workers and international students.

Australia’s unprecedented levels of migration are exacerbating the country’s problems with housing and infrastructure.

However, there is still a dearth of skilled labor, and the nation has difficulty luring them in.

During a Monday media event, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil unveiled a new 10-year immigration policy and declared that the previous government had left the immigration system “in tatters”.

A evaluation conducted earlier this year concluded that “major reform” was required for the system, which was seen to be “badly broken”—unduly complex, slow, and inefficient.

In June 2023, a record 510,000 individuals entered Australia; nevertheless, the minister stated that her government will “bring numbers back under control” and cut the yearly intake of migrants by almost half.

The new regulations include stricter minimum English language proficiency standards for foreign students and more scrutiny of those requesting a second visa; these individuals must demonstrate that any additional coursework would benefit their professional or academic goals. Official statistics indicates that there are approximately 650,000 international students studying in Australia, many of whom are here on a second visa.

In order to increase the chances of permanent residency, the visa procedures for immigrants possessing “specialist” or “essential” skills—such as highly trained computer workers or care workers—have also been strengthened.

According to Ms. O’Neil, the new regulations will draw in more of the laborers that Australia needs and lessen the possibility of exploitation for individuals who reside, work, and study there.

According to opposition spokesman on migration Dan Tehan, the government changed its immigration policies too slowly, hindering Australia’s efforts to recover from the pandemic.

“The horse has bolted when it comes to migration and the government not only cannot catch it but cannot find it,” he stated over the weekend.

Since its election last year, the Labor administration has been less and less popular, and in recent weeks, it has come under pressure to temporarily curb migration in order to alleviate Australia’s housing crisis.

Others, like the Business Council of Australia, on the other hand, claim that immigrants are being singled out for blame due to decades of subpar housing policy and a lack of investment in affordable housing.

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