Australian Legislation on Skilled Immigrants That Prevents Them from Receiving Decent Pay - Case Study Example

Case Study Analysis Background of the Case Australian Immigrant couple of Iraq origin, Kazim and his wife Sahar, 42 and 38 years who are qualified doctors, and their 15 years daughter, Salima migrated to Australia through Indonesia on a boat believing Australia was safe to reside. This followed the Middle East’s crises hence could not work in Iraq. On their arrival at Christmas Island, they were detained for four months and applied for Australian’s asylum and later got permanent residence settling in Melbourne. The doctors aimed at further studies as they believed on non-accreditation. Disappointment came as they failed English test despite their endowment in English and further frustrated to attend English lectures concurrently preparing for medical-board examination. Kazim works as physiology tutor and Sahar anatomist in a local University on part time basis which pays little far from meeting financial needs subject to higher living costs and cannot obtain loans due to lack of collaterals. Salima’s behavior is unbecoming following six months bright-academic performance and challenges her parents including negative attitude towards church. This worsens as her teacher reveals to her parents on her poor performance based on negative attitude. Introduction In this perspective, the paper focuses on the stringent laws in Australian on skilled immigrants that make those qualified workers from the native countries not to find highly paid jobs. The paper will thus seek to relate the impacts of this laws to the current case study involving this couple and to show how such unconventional practices hurt the economy as well as individual standard of living. The couple first were misled on a hear-say that life in Australia was promising as they went to this place without knowledge of how the cost of living was which later revealed to be so expensive (Cobb-Clark, 2007, p. 111). On the hand, their daughter who had shown a brighter academic performance that later changed attitude could be attached to the difficulty she was facing due to inadequacy of finances to meet their needs. We can thus not solely blame their daughter as she had proved beyond any reasonable doubt, that she could perform well as indicated by her promising academic performance for the first six months (Rees, Lindsay & Rice, 2008, p.178). The decision by the parents to seek alternatives in the local University can still be attached to discrimination on the part of the employer role in Australia who always would show discrimination amongst the immigrants despite the immigrants’ role in labor market. Effects of a country’s (Iraq) instability to its citizens In this regard, the paper seeks to attach all the tribulations faced by these immigrants to the crises that erupted in Middle East that makes them uncomfortable to work in their native country for fear of loss of lives and devastating labor market. Qualified doctors should enjoy the fruits for having toiled through schooling but this is short-lived as the country is a war- prone area with massive terrorist activities being felt. To this end, we are exposed to the benefits of a stable and peaceful country as this will minimize migrations amongst its citizen which will eliminate possible psychological and physical torture as faced by this particular family; they are detained for four months and a further lower standards of living resulting from their native land’s crises. Unfavorable Australian immigrant’s policy It is realized that in Australia for any immigrant to qualify for any sound job placement, one is required to pass a medical-board’s exams, age wise, criminally safe and has to pass an English test. A further scrutiny of these policies indicates that most immigrants pass these tests but discrimination is still inevitable as their already gained experiences from their native countries and credentials are questioned and hence will not be employed despite better endowments in terms of performance and skills (Jupp, 2007, p. 123). This has in effect, hurt the living standards of immigrants and the Australian economy at large. To this end, we see highly qualified doctors being unable to find any reasonable employment in Australia which makes their lives plus that of their daughter undesirable as they face massive sufferings. If it were for the reason that they could land into some highly paid jobs, their daughter could not have developed such a bad attitude towards school and could have shown quite promising performance (Lemaître, Liebig, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, & Source OECD, 2007, p. 114). A recommendation is to adjust these policies in order to help immigrants who are qualified to benefit and accreditation to be issued to these immigrants. Failure to adapt the conventional employment framework by Australian employers A daunting challenge attached to the immigrants and particularly, in the Australian nursing sector is the uniqueness in the policy employed by the employers which fails to use the generally accepted job placement framework where employment is based on the internal factors and not on the level of required skills. Immigrants are not given a keen attention when it comes to employment (Schüpbach, 2008, p. 123). Immigrants are thus undertaken through a prolonged scrutiny before acceptance of their credentials which make them suffer more as they await their employment. This is in a nutshell, has made the two couples to suffer a blow including their daughter having changed the attitude and has since developed disrespect to parents as she sees her parents as worthless and can no longer provide for her (Shamika Almeida, Mario Fernando & Alison Sheridan, 2012, p. 156). We are told that the family suffers and even their efforts to acquire loans has become futile due to lack of assets that can stand in should they default to pay loan principal amount and the accrued loan interest. Underutilization of immigrants in Australian labor market Based on the mentioned case study, we can strongly assert that the doctors are underutilized as they are attached to a Local University working on part time just to earn for survival. This is seen at the point of entry despite the immigrant’s role in the labor market (Lemaître, Liebig, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, & Source OECD, 2007, p. 124). Premises given by the employers based on the fact that immigrants are prone to further migrations which may hurt the firm to which such a worker is attached to, does not stand the test of the conventional criterion used normally to recruit workers (Weiner & Glaskin, 2007, p. 213). Outsourcing of workers with an aim of making friendship at the expense of the skilled labor adopted by the Australian Human Resource in different sectors has hurt the economy as the kind of labor force is semi-skilled. This derails the labor productivity translating to slow rates of economic development. Flawed recruitment and screening process Flawed recruitment policy is found to be taking a center stage during immigrant’s employment. This is seen to be adopted right from the point of planning through short-listing and the ultimate job placement which is attached to internal factors hence the reason for discrimination against these qualified doctors (McCallum, 2008, p. 145). Unfavorable workers’ screening where the ethnicity of immigrants will be used to award job placement could have been the reason as to why this couple could not find any meaningful employment as they were viewed to be of foreign origin despite their asylum approval which saw them becoming permanent Australian residence. English Language as a Barrier to Immigrants’ Employment in Australia In regard to the aforementioned case involving Kazim and his wife, Sahar we can attach part of their suffering to have resulted from failure to pass the English test which is one of the laws that regulate employment of immigrants. A close investigation of the case study, we find the couple struggling to attend English lectures following their earlier failure in the same test (Lemaître, Liebig, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, & Source OECD, 2007, p. 234) . This has caused them as they cannot be regarded as qualified professionals and thus opting for less job pay which cannot support their needs as well as their daughter’s, Salima. The daughter’s education is affected as she changes attitude based on her tribulation attached to financial instability her parents. Conclusion The challenges faced by this couple are based on the stringent laws and the employer discrimination of the immigrants from the Australian labor market. Solving such a problem would result from realization by the Australian government of the benefit underlying the principle of triangulation which aims at bringing the discriminatory mechanism to the least level (Weiner & Glaskin, 2007, p. 203). Discrimination at workplace and the point of employment is found to be a major challenge facing the Australian labor market and these has to a greater level, negatively impacted its economy particularly, the health sector. There is an urgent call for Australian policies makers to open up the labor market to all qualified professional and to apply generally conventional employment framework that calls for skills as the benchmark for job qualification and not organizational internal factors during recruitments (McCallum, 2008, p. 155). Despite the couple’s massive endowments of skills as qualified doctors, their standards of living is so low, to an extent that their combined earnings fall short their financial needs. This has caused daunting challenges which saw their daughter developing disrespect towards her own parents. This could have resulted from the influence of fellow students as she compared her living standard to other schoolmates. Australian employer- sponsors should develop better policies where a qualified worker from a foreign state who has gathered certain experiences being employed without prolonged and hectic recruiting procedures indirectly aimed at minimizing the number of skilled immigrants employed. Reference Cobb-Clark, D. A. (2007). Public policy and immigrant settlement. Cheltenham [u.a.: Elgar. Jupp, J. (2007). From white Australia to Woomera: The story of Australian immigration. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press. Lemaître, G., Liebig, T., Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development., & SourceOECD (Online service). (2007). Jobs for immigrants. Paris: OECD. McCallum, R. C. (2008). McCallum's top workplace relations cases: Labor law and the employment relationship as defined by case law. Sydney, N.S.W: CCH Australia. Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques. (2007). Jobs for immigrants. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Rees, N., Lindsay, K., & Rice, S. (2008). Australian anti-discrimination law: Text, cases, and materials. Sydney: Federation Press. Shamika Almeida, Mario Fernando & Alison Sheridan (2012) Revealing the screening: Organizational factors influencing the recruitment of immigrant professionals. The International Journal of Human Resource Management. Schüpbach, D. (2008). Shared languages, shared identities, shared stories: A qualitative study of life stories by immigrants from German-speaking Switzerland in Australia. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Weiner, J. F., & Glaskin, K. (2007). Customary land tenure and registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea: Anthropological perspectives. Canberra: ANU E Press. Read More