Brand Australia suffering from attacks on Indian students: Minister

Brand Australia has suffered following attacks on Indian students in the past nine months and this will cause long-term damage if not attended to, says a visiting Australian minister.

“The attacks (on Indian students) have hurt us in terms of perception about Australia and that’s why our law enforcement agencies have been so committed to pursuing arrests and prosecution and have been successful in some instances for long-term imprisonment. There have been 67 prosecutions in recent times,” Australian Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson told IANS in an interview here.

Mr. Ferguson said that the Australian government was not taking these attacks lightly and will do everything possible to curb the criminal acts.

“Of course if you don’t attend to these difficulties then they will do us long-term damage. Historically one of the attractions of Australia is that it’s a safe welcoming society...it’s very much such a society,” said the minister who has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Batman, a constituency in Melbourne, which has been the epicentre of recent attacks.

“My constituency is close to central Melbourne and there are people from 150 different countries. It a harmonious local community and there are very few places in the world where you get people from so many different countries living together and working together,” said the 57-year-old Australian Labour Party member.

“My constituency is a prime example of society in Australia. But I also have a significant number of young university students living in my electorate, in universities of Melbourne and Trobe who are very much devoting their energy and applying their minds to educational opportunities,” he said.

The spate of attacks on Indians in Australia has caused an outcry in India. One of the vicious attacks proved fatal.

The minister said steps needed to be taken to ensure quality education to Indian students at affordable cost.

“I think it is fair to say that in terms of vocational education and some English language courses, we have to attend to some issues to make sure that young Indian students get a quality education opportunity and are capable of paying for it without spending too much time working rather than applying their minds to educational requirements,” he said.

According to the minister, one of the major causes of attacks on Indian students is that they live in crime-prone suburbs and work in late shifts to survive in the country.

“There has been a 27 percent increase in the number of students in 2008-09 from the previous year. There has been tension in Victoria (the province of which Melbourne is the capital). More than 50 percent Indian students actually go there. The real problem we had is with respect to some of the students living in some of the suburbs which historically had high instances of criminality,” Mr. Ferguson said.

“They work in service stations, fast food outlets, take shift jobs at all hours of night, which is when criminality occurs. In some ways their lifestyle has put them in the frontline of attacks. We tried some laws in Victoria, we have put more police and we have got them to do random checks on people,” he added.

Overhaul in Australian immigration rules

In a bid to curb ‘back door’ permanent residency through its skilled migration scheme, Australian government has decided to overhaul the immigration rules which is likely to affect over 20,000 visa applicants, including Indians.

The changes would focus on overhauling of the queuing system that identifies occupations in demand and creates a points system.

The Immigration Minister would have the new legal authority to set a maximum number of visas for a single occupation. The state governments would be asked to develop new migration plans.

The Australian immigration department would tighten the rules from today, The Age reported.

Foreign students, who have a qualification for an occupation which is no longer in demand, could apply for a temporary 18-month visa.

This would allow them to gain work experience and give a foreign graduate time to find an employer willing to sponsor their application as a skilled migrant, and if they failed in their attempt they will have to return to their country of origin.

The cancelled applications apply to all offshore general skilled migration claims lodged before September 2007.

For onshore overseas students, government would introduce transitional arrangements to apply until 2012.

The new system would set a new list of occupations in demand and expected to favour skilled workers including nurses, general medical practitioners, mechanical engineers and teachers instead of groups such as cooks and hairdressers.

Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Chris Evans was likely to argue that the skilled migration program had not worked in Australia’s economic or demographic interests.

“The program has been delivering self-nominated migrants from a narrow range of occupations with poor to moderate English language skills who struggle to find employment in their nominated occupation,” Senator Evans said.

He was also likely to acknowledge the impact of changes on the foreign students, but said “they can still gain residency if they gain qualifications in professions that are in demand”, The Age reported.

He said the current tensions and misunderstandings have been made worse by unscrupulous migration agents.

“[These agents] have been misleading many international students into believing that a course in Australia gave them an automatic entitlement to permanent residence,” Senator Evans said. “It does not, and it will not”

Mr. Evans would also argue that the government supports skilled migration and continues to want migrants, “be they from India, the United Kingdom or China — our three largest source countries or elsewhere”.