The Australian embassy in Pretoria is conscious of the impact on a developingcountry like South Africa of the loss of skilled people to the economy.
It says, however that Australia "does not discriminate on the grounds of country,colour or creed... People from all countries have the same right and opportunity tolive in Australia".
The embassy says it tries not to exacerbate the loss of skills from South Africa byadvertising for skilled workers in many countries, such as the UK, Germany, theNetherlands and India but not in SA because of the issue of skills leakage.
The embassy says South Africans represent only a small fraction of Australia'soverall migration numbers.
Of new migrants under the skilled migration programme, South Africa makes up lessthan 5% of the total. By contrast, 25% come from the UK, 16% from India and 15% fromChina.
"Further, the South African community in Australia is not close to the largestmigrant group in Australia.
"The South African born population of Australia is around 100 000 people - less than0,5% of the total population. This small proportion becomes even more modestconsidering that 25% of Australia's population was born outside Australia.
"Of this overseas-born population, 25% comes from the UK, 9% from New Zealand, thenItaly (5%), Vietnam (3,8%), China (3,5%), Greece (2,9%), Germany (2,6%), thePhilippines (2,5%), and India (2,3%)."
According to Elizabeth Campbell of the Australian High Commission some 90% of SouthAfricans applying for visas are successful.
She said applications for immigration to Australia fall into two streams: one forfamilies and the other based on skills.
The family stream is based on close family reunion. Most of those granted residenceunder this stream are spouses and children of Australian citizens and permanentresidents. Their applications are generally sponsored by close family members.
The skill stream "selects people on characteristics that will enable them tointegrate readily into the skilled labour force or to invest or establish businessesin Australia".
Applicants must be under 45 years old when they apply, speak good English and fitinto a skill shortages list. They have to be found suitable for work in thatoccupation by an Australian assessing authority and have recent work experience in askilled occupation.
Australia is currently revising its immigration criteria to increase emphasis onEnglish proficiency and prior work experience.
One cannot simply buy oneself into Australia. Says the embassy: "A person's assetsare an important consideration for business skills migration but a number of otherfactors are involved in the assessment."
Application is not cheap - A$2,060 if you have good English and A$2,860 for thosewith dependents over 18 years who do not have functional English. It takes onaverage from six-12 months to process an application.
As proof of a brain drain, the greatest number of successful South Africans in theskills stream fall into what the embassy classes as "science, engineering andrelated associate professionals" - 174 last year and more than 1 500 in a decade.
No fewer than 169 "educational professionals" left for Oz last year. The nextbiggest category was "business and information professionals" - accountants,auditors and computing professionals, whose numbers topped 200. We lost 47 medicalpractitioners, 33 health professionals and 97 nursing sisters down under last year.
Australia's policy is to consider applicants regardless of race, ethnicity,nationality, gender or religion.
But mindful that it should not be cherry picking the best educated and qualifiedpeople from developing countries, the Australian government does not encouragemigration with advertising in SA, as it does in other countries.
The statistics confirm that highly qualified people are globally mobile, whileunder-classes everywhere are stuck right where they are in the ghetto.
---The Australians
Visa for Australia and Australia Visa Application made easy! Australian Working Visamade possible to easily have one! Visit Australia Immigration athttp://www.nationalvisas.co m.au
---http://www.nationalv isas.com.auhttp://australiaim migration.blogspot.com
You are welcome to include these headlines in your own pages. If you want to find out how to parse this RSS file please read our tutorial How to parse RSS feeds with PHP.
