“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary skilled worker visa

Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by cynix on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @03:09AM (#14137003)

A lot of "programmers/web developers" on this visa are scammers looking for a quick way to gain permanent residency (apparently it's a lot easier for a random person to claim they're a programmer than other professions that require actual skill). There's a whole industry of businesses providing "employment" to these people for a fee. I think the idea is to replace this visa with one that has more stringent skill/language requirements to weed out these scammers.

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Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by richev on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @05:06AM (#14137350)

I can't comment on the 457 requirements specifically, but I was granted a Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) last year, as a "Developer Programmer". In lieu of a degree that would be considered at least a major in Computer Science I had to supply detailed references going back ten years. Certainly not easy.

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Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by moomin on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @04:36AM (#14137266)

Okay, how about petroleum engineer? Lot of hair dressing salons advertising for those?

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Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by joshka on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @03:40AM (#14137080)

It's easy to suggest this type of fraud and assume it's true based on merit. Do you have any proof of the above statements or is this speculation?

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Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by empressplay on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @03:45AM (#14137097)

I personally discovered a hair salon that was advertising for a "full time web developer" to manage their website (lol) with the plan to then use that (unfilled, obviously, given the extremely weak salary they were offering) position to bring in a "web developer" hairdresser on a 457. The system is seriously abused.

EDIT: I guess the truth hurts?

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Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by viraptor on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @06:30AM (#14137626)

I'd like to hear how it actually went for them. Here's why I think the story, or a successful (fraudulent) outcome is unlikely:

The visas cost quite a lot - in application costs, time to collect documents, cost of tests, etc. And I mean likely a full month or more of a hairdresser salary kind of cost. On top of that you'd need to provide a documentation of both a degree and relevant work experience for the last 10 years just to check if you qualify. Then you get the history and references checked, so that needs to pass as well.

For the company organising such fraud, it would likely be a lot less hassle to take a local person and teach them 1-to-1, full time for a month. And considering you may end up sponsoring someone without skills to come and work for you essentially illegally - what's the point?

Also for the person seeking that position: if you're found out, you'll likely never get a proper visa. That a big risk to take.

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Re:“Australians First”: Australia abolishing 457 temporary s... by kakarot on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @02:30PM (#14141504)

Whether intentional or not, you imply that programming does not involve an "actual" skillset and that is quite a bold claim to make on Hacker News.

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