ABC Rural 
By national regional affairs reporter 
Brett Worthington
​Posted 22 May 2018, 4:22am

Expanding Australia's permanent migration program would help regional communities tackle the plight of plummeting populations, according to a new report from a regional think tank.

The Regional Australia Institute has released a policy paper calling for a new federation approach to meeting the labour needs of communities outside the major cities.

It points to the success of communities across the country that have embraced migration, which has assisted with worker shortages and kept schools and shops open as a result.

"We've seen rural communities go from a place of population decline to 10 or 15 per cent population growth," chief executive of the Regional Australia Institute, Jack Archer said.

"We've seen business be able to expand and we think that's something that can be replicated around the country."

The Regional Australia Institute wants the Federal Government to designate regional communities with worker shortages as 'priority settlement areas'.
​
Mr Archer said these would be in regional towns where there were communities that wanted to support new arrivals.

​"We need communities to get past worries whether migrants are going to change things and really embrace the idea of change and new people coming to those communities," he said.

"For minimal investment [and] some simple policy changes that really won't cost anything, we think you can make a really significant shift.

"You can meet workface needs that are unmet."

The Regional Australia Institute wants the Federal Government to expand so-called priority settlement areas and allow up to an extra 3,000 permanent migrants each year.
​
These would be in regional towns where there are worker shortages and a community that was willing to support new migrant arrivals.

​Migrant worker finds new home in regional Victoria

When Marilyn Fernandez arrived in Australia, she had no idea what was ahead of her.

"When I left the Philippines my youngest was only 11 months old," she said.

"I have five children and I'm just thinking 'I need to go here for a bright future for my children'."
Ms Fernandez had worked in piggeries for years.

But when financial hardship set in in 2008, she seized an opportunity to join an Australian piggery when owner Tom Smith came to her country looking for workers.

"One of the schools would have been closed down if it wasn't for the Filipinos and the local grocery store is still functioning whereas every chance it would have folded, it's seen everywhere," Mr Smith said.

The sixth-generation pig farmer lives in Pyramid Hill, about an hour north of Bendigo in central Victoria.

He went looking for workers in the Philippines because he struggled to find anyone locally.

"With the Aussies, piggeries were the last resort in terms of employment. Whereas with the Filipinos, piggeries are their chosen career," he said.

Mr Smith's family business has proved a driving force in Pyramid Hill attracting migrant workers. Today, almost one in five residents are from the Philippines.

After witnessing years of decline, he said he was thrilled to see his community growing in size again.

"There are a lot of Filipinos working in agriculture now, piggeries especially. In our local areas, dairy farms have kicked in on it as well and even the local hostel and so forth, they're employing Filipinos as staff as well," he said.

"Filipinos have been making a great contribution to our society."

Such was the community support for migrant workers, the Pyramid Hill community raised funds so Ms Fernandez's family could be reunited and settle permanently in Australia.

​Community-led approach needed to attract migrants

The Regional Australian Institute will today host a forum at Parliament House in Canberra to discuss rural worker needs.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and Labor agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon will speak at the event.

It comes as the Federal Government contemplates changes to regional skilled visas, which would bind migrants to rural areas for a set period of time.

But Mr Archer said forcing people to live in regional areas would fail to deliver the outcomes regional communities needed.

"We want people to come to regional areas who have aspirations to work and live in those communities for the long term and so visa conditions that support them to do that is what we need," he said.

"In the end, if you try to force people to do things it probably won't get you the result you're hoping for."

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-22/migrant-workers-needed-to-stop-population-decline/9784458

The 2017 death of Olivier Caramin joins a growing list of problems backpackers can face in rural jobs, including rape, harassment and underpayment

Anne Davies
@annefdavies
​Mon 21 May 2018 01.48 BST

Martin Hand knew something was wrong as he watched a fellow backpacker stagger down the road in the searing heat of a Queensland summer.

Hand, a British traveller, had been picking pumpkins on a farm near Ayr, a small country town 10km (6 miles) from the coast, along with other young backpackers including a 27-year-old Belgian, Olivier “Max” Caramin.

​The day was hot – the temperature had reached 35C – and the field where they were working was in a bowl; very humid with no breeze. Nor was there any shade on the trailer that was used to take the boxes of picked pumpkins to the shed.
​
“It was really hard to cool down,” Hand says. “We told [Max] to get into the shade of the trailer, but then I seen Max run past me. His complexion was completely different to when I last saw him, his eyes were crosseyed and he was running like newborn deer, with his arms and legs all wobbling.

​“I said what the fuck’s going on? I knew it was serious.”

Caramin got 50 to 80 metres up the road before he collapsed. His breathing was laboured. His colleagues did everything they could think of to cool him down while they waited for the ambulance.
​
“It was clear,” says Hand, “that Max was in a very bad way.”

​Hand recalls that Caramin had already said he could not go on picking, despite earning the ire of the farmer earlier in the day for not working fast enough. The crew had also told the farmer they wanted to stop picking at seven trailers but, according to Hand, the farmer insisted they pick an eighth – their normal quota.

​Caramin died in Townsville hospital hours after collapsing on that day last November. The coroner is awaiting a final report from Workplace Health and Safety Queensland before deciding whether the matter should proceed to inquest.
​
The Belgian had been on the farm for just three days, undertaking farm work required by the Australian government if young foreigners wish to extend their working holiday visa by a year.

Because the backpackers’ top priority is to get their paperwork signed, they are likely to put up with illegal wages
Shane Roulstone, Australian Workers' Union

​Designed to provide seasonal workers for farmers, the 88-day rule requires that backpackers spend their time in regional areas in specific jobs such as fruit picking and packing, trimming vines, working in tree farming, or working in mining or construction.

​While most backpackers say that they love visiting Australia and that working on a farm added to their experience, Caramin’s death adds to a growing list of troubles experienced by young backpackers in rural Australia: rapes, sexual harassment, substandard living conditions, breaches of workplace safety laws and financial exploitation.
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In rural towns, poor treatment of backpackers and exploitation are an open secret, as the Guardian discovered during a trip along the Murray river with a British student, Katherine Stoner. After her own experiences as an 18-year-old she returned to make a documentary about the 88 days policy.

​Most Australians are unaware that cheap and plentiful fruit and vegetables are in part the result of a state-sanctioned arrangement that forces young backpackers into often exploitative conditions to undertake rural work in the harsh Australian climate.

​Routine underpayment, crowding backpackers into rundown houses and pubs with an inadequate number of bathrooms and sexual harassment are common. The Australian Workers’ Union, which covers fruit pickers and farm labourers, says the incentives inherent in the scheme make backpackers extremely vulnerable.

​The fact that they are on remote farms as fill-in workers means there is little reason for farmers to train them, says the union’s national organiser, Shane Roulstone.
“And, because the backpackers’ top priority is to get their paperwork signed, they are likely to put up with illegal wages and poor conditions,” he says. That pressure increases if the backpacker has left it to the end of their first-year visa to venture into the country.
Stoner and the Guardian travelled to Mildura, a town of 30,000 people on the Murray in western Victoria, just shy of the South Australian border. A green oasis of fruit-growing in the dry Australian outback thanks to the river, it’s a magnet for backpackers trying to complete their 88 days of farm work. It’s also one of the hottest regions in Australia, with maximum temperatures reaching into the 40s.

The former mayor of the city council, now a councillor, Glenn Milne says he’s aware of breaches of workplace safety, wage exploitation and unscrupulous hostel owners who are often doubling as the labour hire contractor.

​This dual role as provider of accommodation and work for backpackers is convenient at one level but makes the backpackers very vulnerable, as they are dependent on one person for a roof over their head and a job.

“There are contractors and owners of properties that have a very bad reputation,” Milne says. “Our own council has been involved trying to take every action they possibly can, and we continue to do that.”

The Guardian has tracked one operator, who is named repeatedly on websites, to a small town outside Mildura. He has been operating another hostel in an old hotel that has seen better days. Residents say it is run down but there is plenty of work. Inside we can see several sets of bunk beds to a room.
​
Milne says part of the problem is that the business of hiring and accommodating backpackers involves multiple jurisdictions and laws.

​“You can look at a situation and know it’s wrong. But which law, who enforces it? And the time taken by the system, that’s what really makes it difficult.

“You have to notify an inspection and they just move people out and it’s the right amount of beds and it’s tidy. But you know they are up the road ready to move back in again.

​“But there are people jamming 20 people into a house, and milking the money out of the kids and doing the wrong thing. There is a bit of work to be done.”

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/21/death-in-the-sun-australias-88-day-law-leaves-backpackers-exploited-and-exposed

Eleven athletes from three African nations who disappeared during last month's Commonwealth Games have until midnight tonight to apply for protection visas or risk mandatory detention and deportation for overstaying their visa.

The missing visitors include eight athletes from Cameroon, two from Uganda and one from Rwanda.

Immigration lawyer Simon Jeans said he believed they will almost certainly have already applied for protection visas online.

"That application might take between one to one and a half years based on current processing trends," he said.

In the meantime, they would automatically be granted bridging visas until their protection claims could be assessed.

Mr Jeans said the interim visa would enable group members to work, access a temporary Medicare card and remain lawfully in Australia until a decision was made by the Department of Home Affairs.
​
The Cameroon athletes left in three waves during the Games — the first three departing from the village on the night of April 8, the following day. Two more were declared missing and a few days later, three others left their rooms and didn't return.

Two Ugandans and a Rwandan power-lifting coach are also unaccounted for.

"I think they're still here. If they've disappeared from the Games, it means they're going to stay [in Australia]," Mr Jeans said.

"They've either gone to the African communities in Sydney or Melbourne.

"Many of the African people who have come to Australia have either been through offshore refugee cases or onshore refugee cases and they're very well aware of their rights and immigration possibilities."

Regular occurrence at large sporting eventsA department spokesperson would not confirm exactly how many athletes were still missing.

In a statement, the spokesperson said visiting accredited athletes and officials were able to remain lawfully in Australia until May 15 when their visas expired.
​
It is not uncommon for athletes and officials from poorer countries to go missing during major sporting events.

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEPpdzROxH2-jUEJU2UezU1kqFggEKg4IACoGCAow3vI9MPeaCDDtiw4

The Immigration Department has refused the citizenship application of an Indian national after he waited for four and a half years for its outcome.

Sagar Shah applied for Australian citizenship in December 2012. The department refused his application in June 2017 on the grounds that he did not intend to stay in Australia or maintain a close or continuing association with Australia, despite the fact that his wife and both children are Australian citizens.

Last week, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal upheld the Department’s 2017 decision to refuse Mr Shah’s citizenship application due to his prolonged absence from Australia after he submitted his application.

In the twelve years since he first arrived in Australia in 2006, Mr Shah travelled overseas nine times and has spent approximately five years outside Australia.
​
The most significant period spent overseas was three and a half years from March 2014 to October 2017 in which he spent in India after applying for citizenship, which weighed strongly against his application.  

Mr Shah said that he had to take care of his ailing father who had become paralysed due to a stroke as well as their family business in India while his father was sick.

But the Tribunal did not find his reason reliable.

“It is, to my mind, not credible for the Applicant to suggest it took something like four years to diagnose and stabilize the father’s condition,” said Senior Member of the AAT, Theodore Tavoularis.
​
Mr Shah has a number businesses in Australia and India and the Tribunal said a that more likely explanation of his absence was to "pursue his own business interest”, besides involvement in his family’s business for which Mr Shah claimed he was required to travel to India.

​Mr Tavoularis said Mr Shah’s wife and children’s Australian citizenship was not sufficient to establish his close and continuing association with Australia.

The Tribunal noted that Mr Shah did not produce evidence of “significant ties with extended family in Australia” even though his brother-in-law and his family live in Coomera in Queensland.

“Such evidence could have existed if [Mr Shah] and his family had settled in the Coomera area to be near the family of his brother in law and sister in law. Such evidence was effectively dispelled as a result of [him] causing his family to leave the Coomera area and to re-settle in Sydney,” said Mr Tavoularis, adding that he had not provided any evidence of reducing his involvement in his family’s businesses in India.

The DIBP told the Tribunal that for this reason, Mr Shah will continue to remain absent from Australia.

Mr Tavoularis said Mr Shah’s evidence was “self-serving in nature” for having travelled to India in January 2018 despite telling the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in April last year that he would not travel outside Australia after October 2017.  
​
“The overall impression given by the evidence before the Tribunal is that the Applicant is itinerant and will move himself and his family wherever is convenient for him and his business interests at a given time,” he said, adding this caused “grave doubts” that Mr Shah would maintain a close and continuing association with Australia.

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/punjabi/en/article/2018/05/10/indian-man-refused-australian-citizenship-after-four-year-wait

A SINGLE mother has made a desperate plea to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton as she faces being torn away from her young son and deported to the Philippines.

Bernadette Romulo from Brisbane made a video asking Mr Dutton to intervene in her case as she has her immigration meeting this afternoon that will decide her fate.

“I’m requesting our honourable Minister Peter Dutton to please have compassion and not deport me and my daughters and be separated from my son, who’s an Australian citizen,” she said in the emotional footage.
​
“I’ve raised him for eight years. I am begging you, please don’t take my son away from me.”

​The 40-year-old mum has lived in Australia for the past 11 years working as an assistant nurse in an aged care facility.

She first arrived here with her daughters and then-husband on his skilled visa. When that marriage ended she began a relationship with the father of her eight-year-old son Giro, who is an Australian citizen.

Their relationship ended in 2010 and, though Giro’s father still has partial custody, Ms Romulo was made his primary carer by the Family Court of Australia.
​
Ms Romulo has been pursuing permanent residency for years but recently had her application denied by the department after three years of waiting.

“My boy cries himself to sleep every night and having nightmares, knowing we will soon be leaving him behind,” she wrote in a Change.org petition to Mr Dutton.

The petition has nearly 22,000 signatures from people backing Ms Romulo’s plea to keep her family together.

Ms Romulo shared an emotional card that she received from her son as an early Mother’s Day gift, where he wrote that she has a heart “better than a universe” and is “smarter than Einstein”.

“You are more important to me than anything else. I hope your memory will live on forever,” the card read.

“Some people don’t like you while others would do anything to make you happy. I’m one of those people.”
​
Because Giro was born in Australia and his father still as partial custody he will not be able to move to the Philippines with his mum and sisters if they are deported.

Mr Dutton was reluctant to comment on the case when asked about it in Canberra on Monday.

He acknowledged there were some cases involving children where he did intervene. But he said there were others, including some subjected to lengthy court battles, where protection was not found to be owed and he had decided not to act.

“People have been given ample notice over a long period of time to prepare themselves to depart, they refuse to depart, then try and string it out through a pointless exercise through court,” he told reporters.
​
“But nonetheless it delays their departure, and then they try and make it look more acute at the end stages.”
– With AAP

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/mums-heartbreaking-plea-to-stay-with-son-ahead-of-deportation/news-story/c2a884a5d2db35f7c6b2932a074d0364

EXCLUSIVE: The Greens are working to overturn a new regulation that effectively doubles the income requirement for people trying to bring their parents to Australia.

UpdatedUpdated 2 days ago
By James Elton-Pym

The Australian Greens will launch a disallowance motion in the Senate in an attempt to torpedo the government’s recent changes to visa sponsorship rules, SBS News can reveal.

Greens senator Nick McKim said he was confident the bill would find enough support among the minor parties on the crossbench if Labor signed on.
​
Labor has already described the changes – which mean residents will need much higher salaries to bring their parents to Australia on a visa – as a “stealth attack” on migrant families, but has not committed to a disallowance motion.

​Last week, SBS News revealed the changes would impact thousands of would-be migrants already waiting in Australia’s visa queue, sometimes for many years.

“This change goes far too far,” Senator McKim told SBS News.

“There are already significant assurances that need to be given. This is simply a punitive move designed to put a roadblock in place to make it more difficult for people to reunite with their family members in Australia.

​“We will move to disallow it in the Senate and we would urge Labor and the crossbench to join with us."

The changes were introduced as a legislative instrument, meaning they did not require a bill to pass parliament to become law.
​
But such instruments can be “disallowed” in the senate with a majority vote. The Greens plan to introduce their motion when Parliament sits again next week for the federal budget.

​

​Greens Senator Nick McKim.
Soirce: AAP

A retrospective change?

The changes to visa sponsorship rules mostly affect parent visas and the standards that apply to their child sponsors in Australia.

An individual trying to sponsor their two parents now needs to prove they earn an annual income of $86,607, up from $35,793 under the previous rules. A couple sponsoring two parents now needs a combined income of $115,476.
​
The wait for a parent visa to come to Australia is around three years for the most common parent visa, up to around 30 years for some types.

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
www.sbs.com.au/news/greens-vow-to-torpedo-government-s-punitive-parent-visa-hike