This article in today's Australian Financial Review: http://www.afr.com/home/viewer.aspx?.../news/feed.xml may contain welcome news for some people waiting on permanent visas, including possible the statutory deposit cohort. The review of the 457 scheme can only lead to improvement.

Anyone who knows how to download the full text of the article please let me know :-)

Cheers,

George Lombard

Thanks for the info, George.

Regards Lin

A good positive read. Thanks George.

Sorry, can't help with the download.

Very, very cute. The article content is actually made up of two pieces, with one overlaid on the other to give the illusion of normal text. In fact each layer has only half the characters that make up the article. This is why they use a mono-spaced font to display the text.

Getting the content is possible, but not trivial. As soon as I have it I'll send it on to you.

Looks like we will see another raft of July 1 changes, does skilled migration ever reach the cap anyway?

Pm'd you a copy of the Article... Intresting copy protection, but not really challenging

Lateral thinking is the key!

Hi Everyone,

Further to the original post the Minister has today announced an increase in General Skilled Migration program numbers by 6000. There is no announced indication of how that increase is to be sourced. When the Minister's statement is available online I'll post it here.

cheers,

George Lombard

George, is the article below the same as what u r looking for?

Australia to allow more migrants to ease skills shortage
Sat Feb 16, 2008 10:31pm EST Email | Print | Share| Reprints | Single Page| Recommend (-) [-] Text [+]

1 of 1Full Size


powered by SphereSYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia said on Sunday it was relaxing its migration program to allow more skilled workers into the country where the jobless rate is at a three-decade low and most companies face a labor shortage.

The new centre-left Labor government said it was expanding the skilled migration program by 6,000 in 2007-08, bringing the total number of visas to 108,500.

"Employer-sponsored visas are the highest priority because they put a migrant worker directly into a skilled job," Chris Evans, Immigration and Citizenship minister, said in a statement.

The government will also expand the working holiday visa program for young people, a move which is expected to benefit the tourism and construction industries.

Australia is a nation of migrants, with nearly one-in-four of the country's 21 million people born overseas. The booming economy, which has been growing at more than 4 percent annually, is facing a huge shortage of skilled labor, pushing up wages and stoking inflationary pressures.

The unemployment rate has been under 5 percent since 2006 and figures out last week showed it falling to a fresh 33-year low of 4.1 percent in January.

Core inflation in Australia was running at a 16-year high of 3.6 percent last quarter, forcing the central bank to hike interest rates to an 11-year high of 7 percent earlier this month. Markets are expecting one more rate hike in March as it steps up its fight to curb inflation.

Evans said the latest package had the potential to provide thousands of additional workers in the short term and would help address inflationary pressures.

(Reporting by Anirban Nag; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)