Canada can’t afford new immigration plan

Statistics confirm that Canada’s current net labour market growth is predominantly dependent on immigration. It appears almost certain that by 2030 Canada will be entirely reliant on immigration for population growth. However, the latest policy pronouncements of Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, suggests new obstacles blocking Canada’s future economic successes are in the works. 

Despite some notable improvements in the system under Mr. Kenney, the most recent initiatives are guaranteed to permanently harm our country’s international reputation. Here is why. First, he claims to be repairing the current dysfunctional immigration system, including clearing up the most controversial problem, namely the existing backlog of 300,000 applicants under the Federal Skilled Worker Program.

The Minister’s stated goal is to implement a new system that, by 2018, would feature a “made in Canada” international database of pre-screened, employment credentialled candidates suitable to apply for admission to Canada. Since 2008, the department’s policy objective has been to shift from admitting applicants to Canada without a sponsoring employer and toward an employer-driven immigration program. The direction was right. But now the government is backpedalling on its promises. 

The plan, announced in the recent federal budget, is to vaporize the existing backlog of skilled worker applicants by refusing the majority of applications filed prior to February 2008. Forcing applicants to wait close to 10 years and then implementing retroactive legislation refusing the pending backlog of applicants is the greatest sham in the history of Canadian immigration policy. Close to 300,000 applicants who were all promised that their credentials would be evaluated under previous criteria will now be refused. 

It will occur even though the Federal Court blocked a similar attempt in 2003, when department officials were found to be misleading the standing committee on citizenship and immigration in its attempt to pass legislation that would retroactively wipe out a much smaller inventory. This initiative severely contrasts with the image of an immigration department that vigorously pursues efforts to warn the public against dealing with crooked immigration consultants. 

Canadians should be demanding answers to the following questions: Who is regulating the Harper government? How could the Immigration department claim with credibility that it can build a new skilled worker program with promises to attract the best and brightest to fuel our labour market growth? The government’s history is to blatantly repudiate similar promises. Another issue is the government’s plan for a new system modelled on the programs of Australia and New Zealand, two countries which are not comparable to Canada. New Zealand has a population equal to British Columbia and Australia has a constitutional framework and demographics that are inapplicable to Canada. Australia has immigration levels on par with Canada and a similar points-based immigration system. It also imposes a restrictive English-language requirement and a pre-screening of employment credentials. 

The new skilled-worker program in Canada will likely feature both these elements. But a study by University of Waterloo professor Mikal Skuterud and his Australian co-author, Andrew Clarke, concludes that immigrants to Australia enjoy higher earnings than Canada because there has been a clear shift in source country distribution in Australia toward English-speaking countries. Australia has a national credential recognition program. But in Canada professional credential recognition is an exclusive provincial jurisdiction. 

In New Zealand, the government implemented a national job bank of potential foreign workers where employers can cherry pick the best pre-screened candidates. Embracing an international recruitment model used by a marginal low-population player such as New Zealand makes no sense for Canada‹unless Mr. Kenney intends to become the world’s largest international recruiter of human capital. Since Confederation, immigration in Canada has been a matter of joint responsibility between the federal government and the provinces. Every province and the Yukon Territory has implemented its own immigration programs, in order to promote immigration policies best suited to a province’s particular needs. Mr. Kenney would be well advised to direct department policies toward Canada’s short-term immigration programs and delegate the bulk of its long-term immigration intake and employment credential-related pre-screening programs entirely to the provinces. They, in turn, can implement binding contractual promises and a myriad of financial incentives to ensure settlement. There is ample precedent that such measures succeed in this area. 

As Canada enters a period of economic expansion, Canadian employers are now dependent, more than ever, on the influx of foreign workers in many industries to develop a knowledge-based economy and to maintain their international competitive edge. Immigration is essential in most OECD countries, but especially in Canada, in part to offset demographic developments, including low fertility rates, an aging population, a growing elderly dependency ratio, a shrinking labour force and high out-migration rates. 

Developing nations that were once primarily sources of skilled labour for Canada are now experiencing a boom in their own right that is beginning to increase their attractiveness for highly educated migrants. The current federal immigration system needs fixing. But refusing the current backlog of skilled-worker applicants, the largest in Canada’s history, reneging on the most basic previous contractual promises, and adopting policies largely based on a patchwork of measures from other much less relevant models, is ethically dubious, short sighted and will likely create a program that once again replicates the defects prevalent under previous ministers. Only this time, it will cement our reputation as an unreliable, 

untrustworthy player in the global migration industry, which neither Canadian employers, nor the provinces, can afford. 

Source http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/04/17/canada-cant-afford-new-immigration-plan/

Canada could face lawsuits if it legislates away immigration backlog

"This is the most significant change in immigration policy in more than a decade."

Changes are designed to shift the skilled migrant category "from one that provides for the passive acceptance of residence applications to one that promotes the active recruitment services of the skilled migrants."

No one wants to see "skilled migrants driving taxis, cleaning offices and cooking hamburgers."

Sound familiar? 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper first spoke of "significant reform of our immigration system" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. 

On March 7, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney gave a major policy speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa outlining expected "transformational change" to match migrants with "large and growing labour shortages" across Canada. 

Mr. Kenney said it's necessary to move "from a slow, rigid, and passive immigration system to a fast, flexible, and responsive immigration system." 

But those familiar words written above weren't Mr. Kenney's. They were that of Lianne Dalziel, while she was New Zealand's immigration minister in 2003. 

She was referring to changes in July of that year that saw New Zealand move to an expression-of-interest system in which skilled migrants would be plucked from a pool of prospective applicants. 

It's no wonder Mr. Kenney is echoing her words; he's interested in mirroring her government's actions too. Since his Economic Club speech, Mr. Kenney has talked to national media, setting the table for a year's worth of immigration reforms while constantly citing elements of the immigration systems in New Zealand and Australia as models for Canada. 

Commentators on both sides of the Pacific note the successes those countries have had in tailoring their systems to ensure immigrants get jobs. But some also warn against adopting some parts, such as retroactively changing application criteria to wipe clean a backlog, without learning from the costly lessons these countries have already faced. 

The Pacific model revealed

 

On March 7, Mr. Kenney emphasized what he saw as Canada's burdensome backlog of about one million applications in the skilled migrant and other categories. He pointed out that New Zealand legislated an end to its backlog in 2003 with the start of Ms. Dalziel's policy changes. 

He also noted that Australia started requiring prospective skilled immigrants to get their professional credentials assessed before they arrive onshore, "with very positive results." 

Three weeks later, Mr. Kenney announced he would seek to have foreign skilled workers' education credentials assessed before they arrive in Canada. The next day, the 2012 federal budget proposed wiping away more than 280,000 skilled worker applications filed before February 2008. 

Mr. Kenney has floated other ways Canada could copy from Australia and New Zealand such as by adopting an expression-of-interest system and stricter language requirements, as well as taking their lead in reforming the investor class, and using Australia's balance-of-family test to assess parent and grandparent applications. 

Canada, New Zealand, and Australia share similar immigration trends and already hold similar policies.

Beware of wiping out the backlog

 

In the 1990s, a relatively large number of migrants to New Zealand were without jobs. At the same time, like Canada, New Zealand saw a blooming skilled worker application backlog, rising to 20,000. This led to Ms. Dalziel's 2003 policy changes. 

New Zealand started putting initial applications, known as expressions of interest, meeting a minimum number of points, into a pool; all other applications are scrapped. 

Those in the pool with the most points are invited to apply for residence. The government draws from the pool every couple weeks, using a floating points threshold based on employer needs. The pool is also wiped clean every few months; applicants can re-register. 

The government intends to open the doors to people selected from the pool almost automatically if they have a relevant job offer or have worked or studied before in New Zealand. If not, they are put in a work-to-residence program. 

In moving to this new system, the government estimated that up to 10,000 applicants under the old system would not meet the new criteria so it expected to spend $9 million to refund the fees they paid and stop their applications. 

For this, New Zealand's government felt the wrath of immigration consultants and denied applicants—something Canada could face in doing the same. 

"By creating policies that take effect retroactively, you offer no sense of security to applicants whose basis for deciding whether or not to apply are policies existing at the time of their application," wrote Carolyn Caaway, a resident of the Philippines, in an open letter to Ms. Dalziel posted on the Internet.

In the end, said New Zealand migration expert Richard Bedford, the government phased in the new system while it processed old applications from the backlog. 

"But the backlog wasn't a huge backlog," said Mr. Bedford, a professor at the University of Waikato National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis in New Zealand. Canada's backlog is much larger. 

Ms. Dalziel had also previously run up against similar criticisms when her government upped the number of language points applicants needed. They challenged the retroactive change in court, and the immigration department lost. 

The Canadian immigration department lost a similar lawsuit in 2002 after it raised its points pass mark retroactively. 

Now, with Mr. Kenney leaving the option of legislating away the backlog, and already taking steps to halt all skilled worker applications from before 2008, immigration lawyers are gearing up for a fight.

Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman said earlier this month that more than 100 applicants interested in challenging the skilled worker backlog scrap contacted him. "I'm looking at all the legal issues arising and I expect that we will be taking legal action," he said. 

"I think we're already being sued by people for not processing their applications quickly enough. So, quite frankly, dealing with this [backlog] problem decisively I think will reduce any legal risk that may be posed to the government," said Mr. Kenney, when asked about the potential for lawsuits.

Observers are split on whether Canada should legislate away the backlog. 

"In Australia and New Zealand it's been a very effective mechanism for governments to be able to make changes and not be caught for the 10 years following the policy change in having to continue to select people by the old system," said Lesleyanne Hawthorne, an expert in international skilled migration flows and a professor with the University of Melbourne in Australia. 

Mr. Bedford said he didn't think Canada should legislate away the backlog "because you have huge loss of faith if you do that." 

Expression-of-interest system

 

Mr. Kenney speaking to CBC radio's The Current last month said his government is "looking closely at" the expression-of-interest system New Zealand developed. 

He, however, described the group of initially accepted expressions of interest as "a big resume pool" that candidates would consent for employers—and in Canada's case, provinces—to draw from.

That's not quite how it works in New Zealand, according to Susan Jones, a spokesperson for New Zealand's Department of Labour. While other programs do connect employers with prospective migrants, "employers and third parties do not have access to the Expression of Interest pool," she said. 

In any case, the New Zealand system works well for bureaucrats, said Iain McLeod, a managing partner with a New Zealand immigration consultancy firm. It controls their workflow. But it's essentially a "holding pen," he said. 

"In that pool, you have no rights. If you are never selected, tough luck," he said. 

But Mr. Bedford said the expression-of-interest system is "much fairer on the migrant." It allows prospective applicants to get a decision quickly, and it's more transparent in that they won't be subject to massive retroactive changes. 

Mr. McLeod noted a problem with the Canadian government's desire to move toward the Pacific route of putting applicants with pre-arranged job offer at the head of the line and placing a premium on in-country work or study experience. 

Employers want to see their recruits and know that they are able and have the authority to start within a few weeks. Unless Canada's bureaucracy can work along that timeline, the scheme won't work, he said. 

Canadian observers have also raised fraud concerns. The government would have to ensure employers don't make bogus job offers, or pay migrants lower than they would Canadians doing the same job. 

Changing focus

 

Ms. Hawthorne said if Mr. Kenney wants to make economic migration better connect immigrants with jobs in their fields, his proposed changes patterned after Australia are a good step. 

"I think the items that he is proposing are very likely to increase employment outcomes for economic migrants who come into Canada," she said. 

Canada and Australia both started out with the 'human capital' approach to economic migration, she said. The perception was that people with general work experience should be able to adapt to changing labour-market conditions. 

While Canada stuck with that method, Australia in the last decade focused on whether immigrants were finding jobs fast. 

Australia required principal applicants be pre-screened independently for English-language knowledge. It opened up a path to permanent residency for international students who finished courses there, which Canada followed in 2008. Increasingly, regional governments have more selection power, as in Canada, but also employers, she said. 

In the late 1990s, about 60 per cent of principal applicants to both Canada and Australia had found some form of work within six months of arriving. But with Australia's changes, Ms. Hawthorne noted that its employment outcomes shot up to 83 per cent by about 2002 while Canada's stood still, despite near-identical economic trends. 

"-I think what [Mr. Kenney is] clearly identifying is the key measures that have greatly improved our outcomes," said Ms. Hawthorne. 

While Canada is looking to model elements of Australia's system, Toronto immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo noted that when Australia implemented reforms in the 1990s, "they really did look from A to Z." Canada should be wary of cherry-picking some reforms over others, he said. 

kshane@embassymag.ca

Movideo migrates video platform to Microsoft's Cloud

Movideo has inked a four-year agreement, including long-term pricing, technical support and sales and marketing backing, to migrate its online video platform to Microsoft's Windows Azure Cloud for its Asia Pacific clients.

Movideo says the shift will allow the company to focus less on the back-end of the business and concentrate on the management and delivery of services for clients. The company was previously running its infrastructure service out of California.

Movideo CEO Tony McGinn said that with Movideo focussed on the Asia Pacific region, housing data centres in countries closer to their clients made sense.

“On that basis, Microsoft has multiple data centres around the world, including one in Hong Kong and Singapore. So being a little bit closer to our focus geographically, that made sense,” McGinn said.

“Secondly, with a multiple data centre strategy with Azure … there’s a lot more robustness and redundancy in the Windows Azure offering, and given that media and entertainment is such an important part of our ecosystem now, we need to be able to offer that to our customers.”

McGinn told Computerworld Australia that Movideo reviewed a number of companies to partner with, but Microsoft was the only company it formally engaged in discussions with.

“That’s not to say that we didn’t do a pretty thorough review of the others, it’s just that we didn’t sit down and go into complex, long-term alliance discussions with them,” he said.

CTO Cameron Moore said the decision to go with Microsoft came down being able to leverage Redmond's platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, as opposed to infrastructure-as-a-service.

“Right now we exist in a Cloud environment which has provided us as an infrastructure-as-a service," he said. "That means we have to roll out our own – we roll out as many servers as we want but we have to install the operating system, put the virtual machine [on it], set up our own databases and really apply all the platform services that we need to have a scalable Cloud solution,” he said.

The Azure PaaS Cloud gives Movideo access to the SQL Azure Cloud-based database system and AppFabric, and means that the company can leverage the platform to expedite development, freeing up the company to focus on customer service instead of worrying about maintaining infrastructure.

“It’s taken away operational burden from us and allows Microsoft to do what they do best in their Cloud space to manage those servers for us while we can streamline operations and focus on feature development for our customers,” Moore said.

McGinn likens it to having your head down or up: “When you’re running your own infrastructure, even if it is in a Cloud service, you’re heads down, you’re looking at the plumbing a lot, you’re having to make things work [and] you’re doing a lot of the heavy lifting yourself,” he said.

“With platform-as-a-service, particularly in the way Windows Azure is configured and the way it provides a service, it’s more of a heads up [scenario].”

The alliance with Microsoft will also allow Movideo’s customers to access a range of Microsoft’s services, such as its content delivery network. “Now we can offer our customers choice, whereas in the past customers have chosen their own or used one of our other partners. Customers can now use the Microsoft content delivery network, which is part of Windows Azure. This will allow us to give another pricing option for our clients in the marketplace.”

Despite the company having developed its current system in Java, Moore doesn't anticipate having to hire.NET developers to aid with the migration.

“So we haven’t had to change a lot of our code at all, with our focus on development, and the port has been quite smooth,” Moore said.

McGinn expects the migration to occur seamlessly – he said clients, which include the Ten Network and MCM in Australia, should not notice any difference except, potentially, slightly enhanced performance due to the location of data centres.

Migration to Windows Azure is expected to be completed in May this year.

Source http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/419442/movideo_migrates_video_platform_microsoft_cloud/

China 'wealth exodus' underestimated

New figures reveal the true cost of the country's 'investor emigration'

The scale of the exodus of wealth from China caused by investor immigration is much larger than previous estimated, according to China Daily's interviews with emigration agents and experts.

Last month, Legal Evening News, a Beijing metropolis daily, said 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) has found its way abroad annually since 2009.

The figure was based on the investor emigration requirement and the number of investor emigrants publicized by the governments of the United States, Canada and Australia. Investor emigrants to those three countries are believed to account for 80 percent of the total number of Chinese emigres.

However, emigration agents said the figure underestimates the real scale. That's because many people will transfer more money to their new 'home' countries once they've obtained permanent residency.

"Usually they will at least buy a house after they get residency," said Cai Hong, a manager with emigration consulting company HHL Overseas Immigration & Education.

"And they usually make a one-off payment,"Ma said, referring to the fact the emigrants have no need to resort to a mortgage.

Considering the average price of a house in the major cities of the United States, Canada and Australia - the countries where Chinese investor emigrants are most likely to settle - and the fact that around 80 percent of them will buy a house, an estimated 10.3 billion yuan finds its way into the property markets of the three countries per annum.

Adding in the money invested to secure permanent residency, which China Daily estimates to be 21.49 billion yuan, and the estimation that the three countries account for 80 percent of the emigrant population, the total wealth exodus could reach at least 39.75 billion yuan a year.

The Canada case

For its safety, relatively short waiting time to obtain permanent residency and good returns on investment, Canada has always been the premier choice for wealthy Chinese looking to obtain permanent residency through investment, emigration agents said.

Prior to 2010, a foreigner simply had to invest C$400,000 ($405,600) and prove net assets of C$800,000 to apply for permanent residency. However, in 2010, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the country's immigration authority, doubled the threshold to limit the explosion in applications. Demand has been so strong that Canada imposed a cap of 700 applications per annum, starting on July 1, 2011. That quota was quickly filled, with 697 of the 700 applications coming from China.

The cap put a brake on the fever. The number of successful applicants from the Chinese mainland dropped from around 2,000 in 2010 to 697 in 2011, according to figures from the Canadian immigration authority.

However, potential immigrant investors quickly found another point of entry through Quebec's investor immigrant program. Since last July when the federal government's door closed, the Quebec program has seen the initiation of 200 applications from Chinese people every month.

"We expect the federal government's program to reopen this year and another 2,000 Chinese investors will get permanent residency," said Ma Yuan, an emigration expert with J & P Star Consulting Co Ltd, a Beijing-based emigration consultancy.

She said the Canadian program is particular favored by Chinese investors for its safety. Unlike the US program, which requires investment before permanent residency is granted, applicants to Canada invest their funds only after permanent residency is approved. The C$800,000 seed capital is returned to the applicants five years after residency is granted.

Applicants can even invest just C$220,000 and obtain a loan of C$580,000 from Canadian banks to bridge the gap. The C$220,000 will be transferred to the bank that issued the loan as interest five years later.

By comparison, the United States' investor immigrant program, the EB-5 program, despite its lower initial threshold (the minimum investment requirement is $500,000), does not guarantee against a loss of investment, which means that applicants might lose their seed capital and still not obtain permanent residency.

Another reason that people favor Canada is the country's welfare system.

"Most of the investor immigrants go to Canada for their kids' education," Cai said. The country offers free pre-college education for permanent residents, and their children can enjoy a college education at less than one-third of the tuition fee paid by international students pay.

Relatively cheaper house prices are another attraction. A detached house usually costs from C$500,000 to CS$600,000 in Vancouver, and C$400,000 to CS$500,000 in Toronto, much cheaper than in Beijing or Shanghai.

Based on the assumption that 80 percent of the 2,000 investor immigrants would buy a house at an average price of C$500,000, Canada's investor immigrant program alone could draw C$2.4 billion from China.

US a top destination

Despite its risks, the US investor immigration program remains a popular choice for wealthy Chinese.

A total of 2,969 Chinese people applied for the EB-5 visa in the fiscal year 2011, accounting for three-fourths of total applicants, according to figures released by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Although many are still awaiting a decision, 934 permanent residencies have been granted.

The US is the top emigration destination, followed by Canada, Singapore and Europe, according to a joint survey by Bank of China Ltd and the Hurun Report last year. The report found that 60 percent of about 960,000 Chinese with assets of more than 10 million yuan were either thinking about emigrating or taking steps to do so.

Australia, another popular destination, requires foreigners to apply for a provisional visa before applying for permanent residency four years later. There are various visa types under the "Business Skills visas" system, which allows overseas investors, senior executives and entrepreneurial talents to settle in Australia by developing businesses in the country.

For example, the 890/892 visa allows provisional visa holders to obtain residency if they have had an ownership interest in a business in Australia for at least two years, with significant personal and business asset turnover.

Applicants for the "Business Skills visas" from China totaled more than 9,000 last year, nine times the number from South Korea, the second-largest group, according to the Australian immigration authority.

Kevin Stanley, executive director of global real estate consultancy CBRE Group Inc, said it has seen very strong interest from Chinese individuals looking to buy apartments, predominantly for family use and particularly in connection with children studying in Australia.

Chris Bevan, a real estate agent in Melbourne, said that his recent sales to buyers from Shanghai ranged from two bedroom apartments priced at A$300,000 ($314,000) to a luxury beachfront home for A$18 million.

Strong demand from Chinese buyers has already pushed up real estate price worldwide. Investors from the Chinese mainland account for between 20 and 40 percent of foreign property investors in Vancouver, Toronto, London and Singapore, according to a report from the real-estate consultancy Colliers International on Feb 28. In Vancouver, the property price has been pushed 9 percent higher in the last year, because of Chinese investors.

Reaction

People in industries related to the boom, such as the property market and emigration advisory services, have welcomed the trend. Bevan said that Chinese and other foreign investors have helped Australia continue to grow in a market that has seen an international downturn in the last 12 months.

Local residents interviewed by China Daily approved of the development.

John Harper, a town planner in Melbourne, said the total number of Chinese immigrants contributing to population growth in the city was somewhere between 3 to 4 percent.

"I doubt that figure would create a significant impact on house prices," he said.

"You never hear about New Zealand or British immigrants pushing up housing prices. These two groups make up about 30 percent of people moving to Australia, or three times the number of Chinese, I guess," he said.

"I don't really mind the 'influx' of Chinese going for permanent residency. I think there are guidelines and controls overseen by the Australian government," said Jeremy Lam, a financial analyst in Australia. "And these rules and regulations are gradually becoming more and more stringent over time."

But back in China, the news of the wealth exodus has sparked mixed sentiment.

"Nobody in the world can ever stop China's property speculators," according to a sarcastic post from one netizen on the micro blog Sina Weibo.

Some netizens have blamed the domestic cap on property sales imposed by the Chinese government for the overseas purchasing spree.

Chinese experts warn that talent is flowing out with wealth, which is a more worrying trend.

"If this trend continues it will not only hurt the Chinese economy in the long run, but also prevent it from building an 'olive-shaped' society with a large middle class, because a great proportion of the emigrants are middle-class professionals," said Zhang Monan, an economic researcher with the State Information Center.

Tania Lee contributed to this story.

zhengyangpeng@chinadaily.com.cn

China 'wealth exodus' underestimated

Source http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-03/16/content_14845619.htm

Fixing the ICT skills shortage in Australia and New Zealand

The received wisdom is that Australia is suffering from an ICT skills shortage. Last month we established that the problem wasn’t a lack of skills in general, rather that specific technical skills are in short supply from time to time, and that there’s also a shortage of people that combine technical skills with people and organisational skills and business knowledge. So, what can we do about it?

Two aspects need to be addressed: attracting the right people into the industry, and ensuring existing workers are re-equipped to meet contemporary skills requirements.

New blood

Demand for places for tertiary IT courses at Australian universities fell after the dot-com bubble burst over a decade ago. “The ACS maintains there are not enough students choosing ICT as a career in Australia and domestic supply is not keeping up with demand,” said Australian Computer Society CEO Alan Patterson. “More focus is needed on attracting students to ICT as a rewarding and exciting career.”

Professor Chris Pilgrim, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communications Technology at Swinburne University of Technology, said the number of students entering ICT courses in Victoria is still declining - it fell a further 6% this year - but preferences for Swinburne courses were up in what he described as “a very complex situation”.

Until the tech wreck, university IT courses attracted high-quality candidates. While Swinburne saw some applicants with ATARs (Australian tertiary admission ranks) over 90, the proportion was still well down compared with the situation 10 years ago. Yet employers want high-quality recruits.

Pilgrim suggested the image of ICT careers needs improvement. It’s not just for geeks, as interpersonal skills are needed, he said. Part of the problem is that ICT has become pervasive and taken for granted by school students, who are by and large interested in the products but not the technology itself: “It’s a consumer-oriented world.”

Bruce Craig, Country Manager at Micro Focus, goes even further: “[The widespread use of] PCs in schools was a disaster for the industry” as it resulted in a generation that equates working in IT with being a front-line break/fix technician, with no exposure to the satisfaction that comes from creating software.

SAP tries to foster interest in ICT careers through a school IT competition run in conjunction with the University of Queensland. “It’s a great way for the children to gain an understanding of the possibilities of IT,” said Karsten Shulz, SAP Vice President Research, as well as providing an opportunity to meet IT professionals.

And a spokesperson for Andrew Stoner, the Deputy Premier of New South Wales, said the state government “strongly encourages skills development and has supported NSW university programs to attract school children into technology careers. One such example is our current support for the National Computer Science School run by the University of Sydney.”

At the other end of the pipeline, demand for Swinburne ICT graduates exceeds the supply. One of the reasons for this, Pilgrim suggested, is the university’s emphasis on industry-based learning, with around 50% of ICT students taking up the option of an industry placement after their first two years of coursework. Last year, 110 students went on placements, with another 70 involved in internships. “We’re very selective [about the partner organisations],” he said, explaining that they must respect students and treat the exercise as a learning experience.

Students benefit from this real-world experience, and employers use it as a way of finding new talent on a “try before you buy” basis. Around half of the students are subsequently hired by the organisation they worked with.

SAP runs an internship program with Australian universities, Shulz said, providing students with opportunities to spend between six weeks and a year at the company’s Brisbane or Sydney centres. There’s also an industry PhD program that allows researchers to spend 5% of their time with the company.

Stoner’s spokesperson pointed out NICTA, Australia’s largest dedicated ICT R&D institute, has supported over 130 NSW PhD students to graduate with both high technical skills and commercial orientation. “NICTA has also partnered with the Australian Computer Society (ACS) to create the Young Aus-Innovators National ICT Prize, launched in 2009 to encourage high school students to consider careers in ICT.”

Duncan Brown, Director of Services at Dimension Data, believes organisations should provide students - not just those studying IT - with career counselling and more opportunities for part-time and vacation work to give them a realistic view of the industry.

More university IT courses should include business and management content, said UXC Consulting CEO Nick Mescher, because understanding how business actually works is important as the days of an IT career spent sitting in a back office are over, at least in the commercial sector.

BT Australasia recently began hiring new graduates and is “pleasantly surprised by the quality of people coming out of Australian universities”, said Managing Director Paul Migliorini, describing them as the best the BT group has seen in Asia, largely because they have been taught how to think.

The Infosys spokesperson was less positive. The company has been generally pleased with the results of an experiment with graduate recruitment, but a relatively high proportion of local hires failed to successfully complete their training at the company’s Mysore (India) campus.

The TAFE sector came in for some criticism. Filip Banovac, Country Service Manager, Pacific at APC by Schneider Electric, suggested the colleges aren’t doing as much as they could and called for a national approach.

The changing nature of the issues facing IT can also contribute to the attractiveness of careers in the sector. For example, Andrew Kirker, Sales Director, Pacific at APC by Schneider Electric, noted that the increased awareness of the need for energy management (‘green IT’) has helped APC attract and retain good staff.

Lifelong training and development

Brown suggested enough people enter the industry, but excessive churn occurs as they struggle for opportunities to maintain their certifications and gain increasingly diverse experience. Some organisations are too small to provide that diversity, so outsourcing may work to employees’ advantage, providing they can transfer to the outsourcer on reasonable terms or find a job with a comparable organisation.

Employers must invest in their staff in terms of achieving and maintaining certifications, he said, describing it as “a critical part of our [Dimension Data’s] intellectual property”. To that end, the company works with certain vendors to ensure that courses are available within Australia so people don’t need to travel to Singapore or further afield to keep up to date.

IT workers aren’t just relying on formal training and certifications to prove their worth, noted David Jackman, Managing Director, Pronto Software. Participation in open source projects demonstrates technical skills and good attitudes to potential employers.

Ian Hodge, Managing Director ANZ at Quest Software, observed that jobs involving lower-level skills are the easiest to offshore, while organisations prefer to keep the higher-level work in the country. Migliorini said “that’s not necessarily a bad thing” for workers as it means more interesting local jobs. Furthermore, he said there is the need for commercial thinking, knowledge of organisational culture, process reengineering and so on in order to deliver a mature outcome, and (unlike most of the people we talked to) he believes there are plenty of people in Australia with those skills. He also observed that Australia is a leader in IT as a management discipline, pointing to the high proportion of Australians among regional IT executives.

Despite the general fear of losing people to other employers after training them, Hodge says retention issues can be addressed by providing the right environment and culture. Banovac agrees: “A happy employee will never leave”, making the investment in training worthwhile. Schneider Electric has no turnover problems, he claimed, but the company does provide career paths - “That’s one of the differences with Schneider.”

Lisa Christy, SAP’s Human Resources Director for ANZ, questioned whether smaller companies have either the resources or mindset of multinationals when it comes to training, development and career progression. On-the-job coaching and working in client-facing roles is important, she suggested, but smaller organisations tend to have a less mature attitude that focuses on formal training. “I’m not sure employers realise the opportunities.” Banovac argued that a lack of size needn’t be a barrier to providing staff with opportunities for development and progression. “It’s about strategy rather than size,” he said.

Local systems integrators experience high attrition rates if employees discover they can earn more as contractors, said Hodge, and some organisations prefer to arrange their own team of contractors instead of engaging an SI or other provider. Hence concerns that money spent on training could be wasted.

Dimension Data isn’t the only company to take seriously the need to maintain their workers’ skills. Shulz said SAP offers thousands of online, on-demand training courses to its staff as well as classroom training.

Banovac said “there is an ICT skills shortage” that started a couple of years ago, and Schneider Electric has been running a training program called Encompass that takes new hires with trade qualifications through its business to give them “a clear and defined career [skill] set” that the company needs.

Mescher believes organisations have in general been investing less in education and training since the GFC, and this has “unintentionally deskilled the workforce”, opening the door to further offshoring.

Local skills are needed for successful project delivery unless entire functions are moved overseas; but with the disappearance of many lower-level jobs, how will the future generation of managers gain the background experience they will need to do a good job? Mescher says we have to accept that the paradigm has changed and equip people for these roles through management training, coaching and mentoring. Individuals will be increasingly drawn from a wide range of IT-literate disciplines to fill roles in project management, vendor management and so on.

Migliorini is of a similar opinion, suggesting people with backgrounds in healthcare, finance, etc will be given IT training to allow them to fill the higher-level jobs left by outsourcing. Rachel Lehmann, Human Resources Manager at MYOB, said her company (which keeps the majority of roles in-house and onshore) uses a similar strategy, including the use of pair programming to advance the skills of its development staff.

Applying technology

Craig sees technology as an important part of addressing the COBOL skills shortage. “The demand of skills remains very high but you have a diminishing workforce.” In general, COBOL programmers are ageing, so employers are trying to tempt specialists out of retirement with attractive contracts and sponsoring university COBOL courses. Even where banks are downsizing their IT operations, COBOL teams remain untouched. “I don’t know the last time I heard of a COBOL guy being made redundant,” he said.

Tools like those from Micro Focus make existing COBOL developers more productive and make it easier to cross-skill others with experience using Visual Studio or Eclipse-style tools to work on COBOL projects. Most COBOL applications are mission critical, so experience counts.

Where operational skills are in short supply, Hodge suggests automation can be brought to bear in some situations and is a viable alternative to offshoring. But shortages of softer skills cannot be met this way and so he expects continued hiring from overseas.

Imported talent

Hodge pointed to the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme for skilled migration that provides permanent residence for people moving to certain areas (including Perth) to take up jobs that cannot be filled locally, but Hodge observed that large organisations are proving slow to take advantage of these arrangements.

Dimension Data has made an effort to get into a position where it can obtain, relatively quickly, the sometimes-controversial 457 visas for overseas workers, and its multinational nature makes it easier to recruit from Europe and North America. This is “quite an effective scheme”, said Brown.

Infosys is another company that uses a large number of 457 visas to make up for local skills shortages and in some cases the absence of niche skills, “but that isn’t easy” as Australia is in competition with countries where marginal income tax rates are lower, the spokesperson said, adding that the possible removal of the living away from home tax allowance “is a great concern to our clients” and could result in more offshoring.

Diversity

One relatively longstanding approach to enlarging the ICT workforce has been to encourage the entry of women. Shulz noted that girls make up 46% of participants in the schools IT competition but just 15% of IT graduates.

Jackson noted that women working part-time at Pronto are generally previous full-timers that want or need to reduce their hours for a time. Like Brown, he believes some of the company’s IP lives in employees’ heads, so works to maximise the chance of retaining staff during and after parental leave. A bigger issue, he believes, is getting women in IT to move into management roles - “It’s not always on their roadmaps,” he observed.

An IT career can provide the flexibility that Generations X and Y seem to expect, through practices such as BYOD and considerable freedom regarding working hours and location as long as the required results are achieved, said Brown. This also benefits people who want or need to spend more time at home, or who wish to live in rural or semirural areas.

Real workplace flexibility appeals to workers of all ages. Christy suggested the industry needs to attract and retain older workers, and part-time positions and remote working can help achieve that goal.

Would it help if mature-aged workers in declining sectors were encouraged to make a career switch to IT? The Infosys spokesperson said their stability makes them attractive to employers that invest in training, but candidates would need to be prepared to start on lower salaries and to put in the effort needed to establish a new career. Testing is a possible entry point for older newcomers, especially if they have domain experience (eg, banking) that was relevant to the employer.

Some older IT people (employed or unemployed) report age discrimination is a problem, but the ACS’s employment surveys suggest it is becoming less common. In 2010, 13.1% of respondents said they had encountered age discrimination, down from 20% in 2009. Yet “it is still a very real issue”, said Patterson: the surveys show the majority of unemployed IT professionals are 45 and over.

The ACS acknowledges there are many reasons for age discrimination, but the perception that older workers lack current skills is confounded by the fact that training rates are highest among the 45-54 cohort. Employer-sponsored training of workers aged 55-64 drops off significantly, even though most of them won’t be retiring for several years or more.

Source http://www.voiceanddata.com.au/articles/51791-Fixing-the-ICT-skills-shortage-in-Australia-and-New-Zealand-

Concern over illegal immigrants, asylum seekers

Illegal immigration and the influx of asylum seekers has been a major cause of concern for Australia for a number of years. The size of the illegal immigrant population has reached the figure of nearly 60,000 including visa over-stayers. It has been suggested that the implication of this illegal population could constitute a criminal wave or even evidence of public policy failure.

However, with the “exception of a minute population of dangerous criminals these individuals (illegal immigrants) live tucked away in the shadows,” said Migration Institute of Australia (MIA) CEO, Maurene Horder.

“And that’s the problem. They risk exploitation by disreputable employers, endure psychological turmoil by spending their lives looking over their shoulders and simply do not participate fully in society.”

She added: “I would encourage any person currently in Australia illegally to protect yourself and your family by seeking migration and legal advice. You can approach any member of the MIA and be assured your situation will be treated completely in confidence.”

The institute is a peak body for migration advice professionals, representing about 2,000 Registered Migration Agents across Australia and overseas. In a statement the MIA has said that “in select instances, visa over-stayers may be able to remain in the country legally.”

More importantly, those who overstay and come forward voluntarily are able to depart on their own terms and may be less disadvantaged if they wish to return than those who are caught by Australian authorities.

“No one has the right to stay in this country without a visa, and I note the Department of Immigration and Citizenship has been vigilant in working inter-departmentally to identify illegal workers,” said Horder.

With the increase in the number of asylum seekers, a programme to ease the strain on overcrowded detention centre, a policy of placing ‘boatpeople’ in the community has not been implemented with a great deal of urgency. Barely 100 bridging visas have been issued despite more than 2,000 asylum seekers have arrived by boat since the policy shift was announced. Despite chronic disorder within the detention centres, as well as an increase in boat arrivals, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen’s office said 107 bridging visas had been issued in the three months since the scheme was implemented in October, last year.

In that same period, 2,163 boatpeople have been intercepted in Australian waters and subsequently placed in detention centres. These 107 bridging visas issued were below the aspirational target of at least 100 a month set by Bowen, although the minister did allow for a lag time as the immigration department stood the complex scheme up.

However, despite the slow start, those close to the programme, such as the Red Cross, said early indications were that the rollout was progressing well and certainly it appeared so from reports last month.

Head of Australian Services Noel Clement said most asylum seekers appeared to be settling comfortably into the community. “I’m not hearing any significant concerns about additional urgent assistance for people who have been released, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some individuals out there who may be struggling, but as a general sort of feel I would say it’s progressing very well.”

Under the arrangements, asylum seekers are to be released into the community while their refugee claims are finalised. The system is a sharp break from Australia’s system of mandatory detention that saw asylum seekers held until the claims were dealt with and their permanent visas issued. They will be given work rights and will be eligible for some income support. The pressure on the detention system, which according to the immigration department is holding 4,433 asylum seekers (as at January), meant the government had little choice but to soften mandatory detention.

Source http://main.omanobserver.om/node/85671

Australia's Gillard Wins Party Challenge

Australia—Prime Minister Julia Gillard held off a leadership challenge from rival Kevin Rudd on Monday, setting the stage for a bid to reunite her divided party and win back disenchanted voters.

"I can assure you that this political drama is over," said Ms. Gillard in a news conference following the poll, in which she garnered 71 of 102 votes. "I absolutely believe that united we can win the next election."

Ms. Gillard has come under attack from Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal party and Liberal-National coalition, who has picked up on Mr. Rudd's campaign pitch that Ms. Gillard isn't capable of defeating him in a general election.

Mr. Rudd, a 54-year-old former diplomat, triggered the political crisis when he resigned as foreign minister last week and openly challenged Ms. Gillard's leadership. He fought his campaign on the view that he is the best person to reverse the commanding lead Mr. Abbott's party enjoys in opinion polls.

Mr. Rudd's continued presence in Canberra will be a further destabilizing force within the Labor party, although he stressed following his defeat that he will back Ms. Gillard in a future election.

In a campaign that will began in earnest on Monday, Mr. Abbott, 54, targeted independent lawmakers who support Ms. Gillard's administration in an effort to force a no-confidence vote in Parliament and an early general election ahead of the next scheduled ballot in late 2013.

Ms. Gillard's government is held hostage by its necessary but volatile alliance with a few independent lawmakers and the increasingly influential Greens party, which has given its support in exchange for policies like a tax on carbon emissions and profit of mining companies.

"I have no confidence in this prime minister" said Mr. Abbott after the results of the Labor vote. "I formally request the independents to state their position on whether they have confidence in this prime minister, given the devastating critique of this prime minister that we've seen from her own colleagues."

A government led by Mr. Abbott would attempt to reverse much of Ms. Gillard's legislation, such as the emissions and mining taxes, along with a plan to build a high-speed broadband network at a cost of about US$36 billion.

"The markets already have a very dim view of this government," said Tim Hannon, chief investment officer at Sydney-based hedge fund Evergreen Capital. "This just adds to the view of sovereign risk in Australia."

Mr. Hannon said Labor's legislation on taxing carbon emissions and mining profits are among the most onerous for business. Australia's economy has done better than most under Ms. Gillard, with growth last year of about 3% and near full employment, but her government has failed to capitalize.

Mr. Rudd has said he will withdraw from front-line politics and not challenge Ms. Gillard again, but he could reignite his bitter feud with the prime minister if she fails to reverse a steep decline in the ruling Labor party's popularity. Monday's vote is unlikely to quell the tension within the party or sate Mr. Rudd's ambition to regain the leadership he lost in June 2010.

"There is a possibility he could have another shot," said Michael Wesley, executive director of the Lowy Institute, an independent political think tank based in Sydney. "Rudd has claimed the moral high ground out of this and you can't rule him out because he is popular with the public."

Ms. Gillard, a 50-year-old former industrial-relations attorney, and her senior supporters fought an acrimonious campaign to discredit their rival. A leading ally, Treasurer Wayne Swan, criticized Mr. Rudd for "dysfunctional decision making."

Mr. Rudd pitched his leadership challenge on his popularity with voters, spending the weekend campaigning at shopping malls in his native Queensland state and calling on voters to pressure their members of Parliament to support him.

Ms. Gillard gained power in mid-2010 following Labor's ouster of Mr. Rudd. Her supporters have used his challenge to criticize his leadership and management style. But political experts warn that the nature of Mr. Rudd's campaign, which gained the support of five senior ministers, including Labor tactician Anthony Albanese, means Ms. Gillard will struggle to heal the wounds within her office.

Attention will now turn to the shape of Ms. Gillard's new cabinet and whether Mr. Rudd will keep his commitment to not challenge her leadership again.

"She will want the right ministers in the right portfolio and people who can get out and sell the government," said John Wanna, a professor of political science at Australian National University in Canberra.

John McTernan, Ms. Gillard's communications director and former strategist for Tony Blair, didn't return messages seeking comment.

Mr. Wanna warned that she could face another leadership challenge within six months unless she significantly improves Labor's popularity in the polls.

Source http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833004577246703805960004.html?mod=googlenews_wsj