Migration Dialogue provides timely, factual and nonpartisan information and analysis of international migration issues through five major activities: the newsletters Migration News and Rural Migration News, Changing Face and other Research & Seminars, and the Sloan West Coast Program on Science and Engineering Workers.
Contact us at migrant@primal.ucdavis.edu.
Australia's economy is booming, as the "rocks" or resources portion of the "crops and rocks" economy expands by over 10 percent a year to provide coal, iron ore, and other resources to China and other countries. The mining industry employs two percent of Australian workers and eight percent of the 80,000 skilled foreign workers in Australia with 457-work visas.
The government is streamlining the process for new mining projects to receive permission to recruit 457-migrants under Enterprise Migration Agreements. The first, being negotiated in spring 2012 to operate the Roy Hill Iron Ore project, would admit up to 1,500 foreign workers. Unions say that employers of 457-visa holders are supposed to pay prevailing wages, but many do not and the migrants do not complain because they hope to stay in Australia as permanent residents.
An estimated two-thirds of foreign students who graduate from Australian universities stay in Australia, and three-fourths of migrant workers from Asian countries who complete 457-contracts stay in Australia. The government made it harder for foreign student graduates of Australian universities to obtain immigrant visas after concluding that some foreigners and Australian institutions were using study in Australia as a path to immigration.
Migration News is produced with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and UCB Institute of European Studies. A paper edition is available by mail for $30 domestic and $50 foreign for one year and $55 and $95 for two years. Make checks payable to Migration Dialogue and send to
Philip Martin, Department of Ag and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, California 95616 USA.
Rural Migration News is produced with the support of the Colcom, Farm, and Giannini Foundations. A paper edition is available by mail for $30 domestic and $50 foreign for one year and $55 and $95 for two-years. Make checks payable to Migration Dialogue and send to
Philip Martin, Department of Ag and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, California 95616 USA.
This network of researchers hosts seminars on labor and immigration issues affecting science and engineering workers, compiles and distributes information on these issues, and cooperates closely with the NBER's SEWP.
The Changing Face project assesses the effects of immigrant farm workers on agriculture and agricultural communities.
Include Opinion Leader Seminars, the Comparative Immigration and Integration Program, and Transatlantic Migration Policy Issue seminars.
