Australian visas and immigration: Changes from July 1

Longtime in the works, Australia is changing their immigration laws, reducing the overall number of Visas being handed out, but allowing for migration to its rural areas. This will allow the cities to shed some of their growing population, but also encourage economy and development in relatively un-populated areas.

Immigration cap lowered

Following months of posturing on the issue of growing congestion in Sydney and Melbourne, the Federal Government announced in March this year that it will cut back Australia's annual permanent immigration intake to 160,000. The intake has been capped at 190,000 since 2011 but the actual intake fell to just over 162,000 in 2017-18 for the first time in over a decade.

The impact of the overall cut will be absorbed by Skilled Independent visas that allowed people to live and work anywhere in Australia. The annual quota of this subclass has been slashed from over 43,000 to nearly 18,000 – a move that has temporary residents in Australia worried that it might force a prolonged temporary residency period on them.

The government said the cap will be maintained for the next four years.

New regional visas

The government also announced an increase in the number of visa places for regional Australia with 23,000 skilled visas being reserved for those willing to live and work in the regions.

The two new provisional regional visas to be introduced in November this year – Skilled Employer Sponsored Visa and Skilled Work Regional Visa will have 9,000 and 14,000 places respectively within the annual immigration cap of 160,000.

Visa holders of these subclasses will be required to spend at least three years in regional areas in order to become eligible to apply for permanent residency, instead of two years. A new regional permanent visa will be introduced in 2022.

International students will be able to access an additional year of post-study visa if they study in an educational institute in the regions, outside of Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and southeast Queensland.

The changes to the points test are to introduce:

· more points for having a skilled spouse or de facto partner (10 points);

· more points for applicants nominated by a State or Territory government or sponsored by a family member residing in regional Australia (15 points);

· more points for having certain STEM qualifications (10 points);

· points for applicants who do not have a spouse or de facto partner (10 points); and

· points for applicants with a spouse or de facto partner who has competent English (5 points).

Citizenship changes abandoned

According to media reports, the Federal Government has abandoned the legislation that would have made migrants to wait longer and prove they have competent English proficiency before they could apply for Australian citizenship.

New parent visa

The new Temporary Sponsored Parent visa applications are being accepted from 1 July 2019. The visa – first promised ahead of the 2016 federal election – is being made available this year after the legislation it was tied to passed through the federal parliament in October last year. The new visa is linked to a sponsorship framework under which Australian citizen or permanent residents have to first apply to become approved sponsors. Once they are approved as sponsors, their parents will be able to apply for the visa that will allow them to stay in Australia for a continuous period of up to five years with a single opportunity for renewal. The total number of visas issued is capped at 15,000 per year.

What this means

The decrease in total number of Visas is clearly aimed at decongesting Australia's cities, where immigration has been a hot debate topic for years, as that is where most of the skilled migrants end up. The increase of geographically restricted visas outside the capitals  is aimed to moving some of the incoming migrants to the parts of the country most in need of help. The points system for migrants to these rural areas has also ben revamped so that immigrants qualify with enough points inorder to get through the set thresholds. Already the minimum points required to qualify for a 189 skilled migrant visa is 85 , a far cry from the minimum requirement of 60 from just two years ago.

Australia’s consumer protection

Having lived in India all my life, there are things I got used to. Like dodgy customer service. You know, when you buy a product or service from the market, and it does not work as intended. Or when you place an order for something, and it does not get delivered on time. Over the years, I noticed private companies upping the quality of their customer service, public companies never cared. Ever rising competition between private companies, with the need to retain customers, and the risk of receiving ‘negative reviews’ in the era of social media, all led to private sellers trying to resolve their customer’s complaints.   This was unheard of a few decades back, when national television used to air public service announcements about consumer rights, and consumer courts. I just sort of assumed that the problem was India being a ‘developing’ nation, and such problems are not to be found in developed countries.

How wrong I was.

Australia is an eye opener. In terms of customer service and consumer rights, I think they are a few years behind. The people at sales counters are extremely cheerful, of course. IBut once they have made their sale, it falls back to ‘its-somebody-elses-problem’ mode. And this is one of those areas where reality lags expectations.

In India, larger companies run 7 day call centers. Some even 24/7, specially telecom , banks and travel companies. Surprisingly , most Australian businessess run only a 5 working day service on the weeks. And strictly 8am to 5pm. For after hours services, they have a voice mail system , where you could leave messages for them to service later. So if your rental car breaks down, you are on your own. Of if you want to know when your phone will be disconnected, you have to wait for them to respond to your email.

But the problem I think most consumers here are going to be unhappy about , is online orders.

I recently placed an order for a water filter, to be used on the tap on a kitchen sink. Such things are still expensive in this country, and the best deals are online.  The company is called truwater, and I think they are just resellers of products, and have no inventory of their own. I made the online payment, and the amount was promptly deducted from my account. The product was to shipped to my address in 1 week. But I failed to get it delivered even after 2 weeks. Finally, I made the call to their (non-existant) customer service line.

It went to voice mail.

I even emailed them. No response.

After 1 month of initial order placement, they finally reponded that they were facing issues with their supplier. And that the order will be delayed. Further.

I called them up, and this time somebody picked up.

I politely told them to cancel my order.  I was promplty told it cannot be done.

I then rudley asked for order cancellation. Out of the question. The lady  told me I would get an order update within a week.

So now is 5 weeks after order placement.

I decided to slow down. It was a water filter, after all.

But after 7 weeks, I was still told that the order would be further delayed.

I tried to contact someone via social media, or linked in. Tried various channels. And none worked.

Frustrated, I finally decided to google the one place that could help me. I googled:

“Australia consumer protection”

Turns out, Australia has a different consumer rights authority in each of its states. Since I was dealing with an NSW company, I ended up at the website if NSW Fairtrading.

After reading all their site documentation, I finally decided I qualified to raise an complaint with them.

I uploaded all my emails, and proof of payment. And stated my problem in detail. I guess they gave the company a call. Because my order was shipped the same week. And I received it the next monday !

I later had to call NSW Fairtrading to update them, and to close my complaint.

Thats all it took. A little nudge. And the bad boys had to oblige.  In the course of my investigation, I had found that lots of customers had faced a similiar issues with truwater.

Check Australia’s consumer rights site here. This page shows the small claims tribunal of all states.

So there you go. Before placing any online order with any unheard of company down under, look up their service review. And if they refuse to deliver, or to reverse payment, promply call up the fair trading onbudsman, or consumer protection group of that state.

Don’t wait. Customer service here is still in its nascent stages. But you do have rights.

Njaan Prakashan

 

Watched my first movie of the year. Thank good ness I was watching it for free, cause I would only have paid for a third of it. Directed by one of those remaining veterans of the malayalam film industry, and written by another , I guess the movie came out with high hopes. And with a skilled young actor playing the lead, hopes where heightened.

And I don't know what others felt, but I definitely felt let down. That is what happens when everyone just stays within their comfort zones, they won't take risks.

This movie is definitely one of those you can watch with your family (big or small), falling into a rapidly depleting genre of clean, family movies. But even then, its something which could have been told in a 30 minute short movie by an amateur team. As always, Sreenivan does not miss any opportunity to poke fun at today's average Malayalee. Right from being jobless due to jobs not being prestigious enough, to people joining politics with a fastrack-get-rich plan, to the fact that every manual job in Kerala is now done by unskilled Bengali immigrants, he is right in pointing out these realities. One feels sorry looking at the..well, sorry state of the state.  But the twist in the end, is not really a twist. I could see it from a mile away.

The movie addressess the problems faced by nurses, not only in Kerala , but all over the country. Nursing as a profession does not command the same respect and pay as doctor’s, though both of them cannot survive without the other. Long ago, they were paid the same, I hear, but over the decades, the pay gap between these jobs have widened. So much that nurses barely make minimum wage, if there was ever such a concept in India, even though they put in twice as many hours on the job.  This is compunded by the fact that they have to work in shifts, and even on holidays, as hospitals are essential services. So far the nurses depicted in movies are always females (22FK, Takeoff), and Dir Anthikad breaks that stereotype by casting a male as the nurse.

But that is the only refreshing thing about Njaan Prakaashan. Everything else is twice distilled, refined Anthikkad fare.

India’s middle class has no spare money to spend

I love reading the economist, when I get the time, that is. Too bad they don’t cover India very often. But when they do publish something, they offer a new perspective to look at things. An outsider’s prespective. So I was a little surprised when they published not one, but two different articles about the Indian economy in January this year. Revealing and thought provoking, the articles where like migthy sucker punches. What was even more hilarious was the war-of-dumb-words going on in the comments section of both those articles. Patriotic Indians debating both sides by offering proof citing other media articles. I resisted the temptation to join the cockfight. Pretty hard to do when the articles were spot on.Before we proceed, please read these articles on how the magazine works internationally, and why their writers are anonymous.The two new articles about India basically say that the Indian middle class has no spare money to spend on world-class luxuries, as they are getting poorer and poorer. And the whole idea that India is the fastest growing economy and the next place for international brands to set shop is a sham. Something I had long suspected. Most international brands like Apple , Amazon and Google have already learnt this truth, and others are catching on. The articles then go to explain as to how this happened and why the trend still continues.
Why is the middle class of the economy important ? These would be the people whose income is increasing and are more likely to purchase more products and services, specially from new gen companies , probably international markets. The upper class can be considered saturated, they might have already purchased luxuries. And the lower class, well, they can’t be sold.Go over to wikipedia’s article and sort the list of countries according to income classes. India has the lowest percentage of middle and upper class.Other points which stood out.
Ouch !The truth can be distilled out easily, even after becoming the world’s fastest growing economy, Indians do not have the purchasing power that their counterparts in other developing or developed countries have. Indians are spending, but they only buy the cheapest options in every category. Not because they are saving the rest, but because that is all that they can afford. Indian customers buy the cheapest chines manufactured phones and tvs, instead of those fancy western brands. They buy made in India apparel and eat at low cost restuarants, instead of shopping from international brands and eating at international fast food chains. If a middle class family’s bread earner gets a promotion or comes to any extra wealth, they would rather invest that money in better healthcare or save it in a long term account , instead of purchasing non-essentials for the family. They see every expenditure as a liability, and every opportunity to save as a chance to grow. This is not the kind of market which would upgrade their smartphones every few months, or would eat at a five star restuarant to celebrate occasions.But we have known this for years. This is the very defnition of the Indian middle class. Spend only on needs, not on greeds.Some other eye openers: Apple made 0.7% of its global revenues in India in the year to March 2017.Facebook, though it has 241m users in India, probably the most in the world in one country, registered revenues of just $51m in the same period.Google is growing more slowly in India than in the rest of the world.Despite two decades of investment McDonald’s has hardly any more joints in India than in Poland or Taiwan.Starbucks says it has big plans for India but has opened about one new coffee shop a month over the past two years, bringing its total to around 100—on a par with Utah or the United Arab Emirates. A new Starbucks opens in China every 15 hours, adding to 3,000 already operating.Inditex, Zara’s parent firm, has 46 clothes shops in India, fewer than in Ireland, Lithuania or Kazakhstan.Hindustan Unilever, which purveys sachets of shampoo for just a few rupees, has seen virtually no sales growth in dollar terms since 2012.Even after years of enticing customers with heavily discounted wares, perhaps 50m online shoppers are active in India—roughly, the richest 5-10% of the population.India is now the fourth largest auto market, having overtaken Germany, but 80% of those sales was to Indian company Maruthi, which makes the cheapest, or most affordable vehicles in the country. So in terms of money, this is still among the cheapest markets.  International brands have not succeeded in India.Even for someone in the top 10% of Indian earners, an annual Netflix subscription can cost over a week’s income.Apple ads may plaster Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, but for only one in ten Indians would the latest iPhone represent less than half a year’s salary.On and on..The reason for this downward spiral are many. First is the bureacracy. Or should I say bureacrazy.Another is the informal industry. 93% of Indians work in the informal sector, earning less than 10 dollars a day.Then there is the education, or lack of.
So, whats the takeaway. The illusion is wearing off. Soon international brands will realize that the only way they can cater to this dissiappearing market is to offer localized, cheaper and affordable options. They may get the market in term of units sold.But not for value earned.x
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