Engineers Australia pussyfooting around 50% unemployment in immigrant engineers

[GregLocock]

Not actually unemployed, but working as taxi drivers and the like.

https://www.engineersaustralia.org....led-migrant-engineers-missing-out-engineering

[ul]
[li]Over 60 per cent of qualified engineers in Australia were born overseas[/li]
[li]However, these engineers are more likely than their Australian-born counterparts to be under or unemployed[/li]
[li]There are 135,759 engineers working in engineering in Australia that were born overseas[/li]
[li]There are 268,595 engineers in the labour force born overseas[/li]
[li]Only 50 per cent of qualified engineers born overseas (in the labour force) work in engineering[/li]
[li]Research conducted by Engineers Australia shows companies have both conscious and unconscious biases towards hiring migrant engineers[/li]
[/ul]

This is a bit rich, having interviewed a couple of these guys. Basically EA are signing off on engineers with dodgy degrees, dodgy work histories, poor English and no non-collaborative (you know what I mean) technical skills. There are of course paid services who will write your CDR to comply with EA's requirements

https://cdraustralia.org/australia-cdr-pathway/

, and there are courses you can do to get your English test results up to the required grade

https://englishlanguageexperts.com.au

(I have no idea about either of these companies, they were just the first hits). To be honest I don't even see why we need migrant engineers (which I am) - it's just a lazy way for industry to get experienced engineers without training them for the first 4 years.


Cheers

Greg Locock


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[dik]

About 50 years back, one of my classmates was working for Arup in the UK... he left the job to work in a brewery and his wage increase by over 50%.

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[IRstuff]

To be honest I don't even see why we need migrant engineers (which I am) - it's just a lazy way for industry to get experienced engineers without training them for the first 4 years.

Meh, nothing new here; the US has its H1B visa program, which seems to have comparable goals of finding engineers, even though home grown engineers aren't even fully employed. The industrial cabal has never liked paying full price for engineers.

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[SnTMan]

Not just engineers, either.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[Sparweb]

Just chiming in: Same goes for Canada. It's a world phenomenon.

 

[geotechguy1]

Would be very interesting to know how many of the 'under-employed' got through Engineers Australia using British C.ENg despite never working in the UK before they closed that loophole. A migrant friend of mine said that apprently ICE in the UK had a bit of a money-making business going giving out CEng like candy to African / Middle Eastern / Indian engineers using overseas assessment that were primarily being used as backdoors to get through immigration standards in Australia.

 

[ManifestDestiny]

You know as well as I do Greg that the whole thing is a complete farce.

The "Engineering shortage" myth is pushed heavily by three stakeholders. Employers, Universities and professional associations. It should be obvious why the first two scream shortage as loud as possible, but in the case of professional associations (like EA) a lot of their funding comes from certifying immigrants' credentials. Indeed a large proportion of Engineers Australia's funding comes from that scheme, hence why they were desperate to steer the discussion for the Australia-India Free trade agreement in terms of skilled labour and human capital.

The entire aim is to get as many white collar professionals into Australia as possible to drive down wages. No surprise that Australian wages have not grown at all adjusted for inflation in over 10 years. For home prices and big business however, good news abounds! We're well on our way to reaching Hong Kong levels of property price stupidity (avg home now 11-13 times income) and corporate Australia has never seen so much profit.

Meh, nothing new here; the US has its H1B visa program, which seems to have comparable goals of finding engineers, even though home grown engineers aren't even fully employed. The industrial cabal has never liked paying full price for engineers.

Australia's immigration visa for "skilled" migrants is significantly less punitive than the H1-B Visa. The H1-B puts a pretty heavy burden on the employer both administratively and cost wise. For sure it's abused in places, but there has to be a compelling reason to NOT hire a local which makes any company abusing it pretty damn desperate to pay low labour costs. In any case, US immigration wants to see a job offer in the field in which you are trained for, as do most countries in Europe.

Australia is different in that for some (not all) Visa's you don't even need a job offer in your industry. It works off a "points based" system where having the degree, experience, good english langauge skills, willing to live rural etc all add up to score that will get you a Visa. This sounds good in theory but the reality is that firstly, a lot of these people are coming from developing countries where theres no way of truly verifying their history and experience (and indeed theres a massive problem with fake qualifications). But the worst part is that many of them are coming for job's that don't actually exist. This is why we're seeing Uber drivers with a postgrad in Aero or cleaners who were once electrical Engineers. Not to mention that student visa's here are also different in that after graduation they get full working rights which has lead to a graduate and early career STEM market being absolutely awash with unemployed who are desperate for anything. See reply to Greg for why this madness continues unabated.

 

[geotechguy1]

R.e. professional associations - an alternate / secondary explanation is that the people who control the professional associations tend to be late-career engineering managers or owners of small consulting firms, i.e. people whose financial incentives are tied to lowering wages.

 

[GregLocock]

I've just had a reply from a CDR writer who reckons that by 'rewriting' the CDR (hmm) he can get 15 extra points, quite a big change given a target score of 85.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[btrueblood]

Over the last 30+ years I've worked with quite a few reverse transplants (Aus and NZ engineers coming to the US for work) and was told that it would be hard for a US engineer, even with PE certs, to receive an immigration visa to those countries without a job offer. Even commonwealth applicants apparently have had difficulty? Maybe not so much anymore due to the shenanigans of EA?

We did discuss the NZ immigration situation when visiting there 6 months ago, and were told that immigration has been made more difficult by requiring applicants to invest significant sums (~NZ$ 7-10 million?) into local economy to be granted visas. Frankly, I thought that was a good idea for them, the country just isn't big enough to hold every Yankee dot-com millionaire/prepper that wants a bolthole to run to.

 

[GregLocock]

There are different classes of visa. There is a business/investor visa where you basically buy your way in. The two of most interest to engineers are the 189 points based visa, where you get points for qualifications, experience, age, etc, which gives you a visa but not a job, or the job based one which is when an Australian employer offers you a job and then arranges the visa for you. There are still criteria similar to the 189. That's how I got in, but is obviously a bit of a magic carpet ride compared with a 189.

A US engineer would experience no particular difficulty getting a 189, but might be in danger of hitting the age cutoff, 45.

There is and will be an ongoing reduction in migrant numbers because we have failed to build any houses or other services they (and we) need.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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