Two New Visa Agreements Announced by Australia to Sponsor Foreign Workers

Under the new agreements, aged care facilities are allowed to sponsor carers from overseas with relevant skills while widening the opportunity of work by religious sponsored workers and presenting a new occupation that religious institutes will be able to sponsor in order to work in Australia

The government of Australia has announced 2 new labour agreements and claims that it will support the multicultural communities of the country.

On Thursday, David Coleman-the immigration, multicultural affairs and citizenship minister disclosed the labour agreements for the religious institutions and aged care sector.

The aged care providers are allowed to sponsor carers with relevant skills under the new agreement to care for the elderly people despite the occupation of the aged care workers is not in the eligible occupations list.

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“Aged care facilities have recognized the requirement of bilingual carers as those with dementia or elderly people may be unable to speak a second language or reply in their native language”, said Mr Coleman in a statement.

“The new agreement will help them greatly in finding the appropriate staff to provide crucial aged care services.”

The new agreement allows the aged care facilities to sponsor the workers from outside of Australia for an Employer Nomination Scheme Visa or Temporary Skills Shortage visa. However, the employers will have to demonstrate that they were unable to find carers with relevant skills in Australia.

For religious institutions, a new occupation of Religious Assistant is made available, widening the opportunity for sponsoring overseas workers while increasing the scope of work for the existing occupation of religion minister.

The Minister of Religion was needed under a specific location at the senior-most position; according to the existing arrangement while the new arrangement is flexible to the visa nominee to work in any senior position.

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Mr David Coleman said currently there are 23000 ministers of religion in Australia & he expects solid growth in the numbers of both the religious assistants and ministers of religion in the next 5 years.

He said the procedures were being set up after numerous multicultural faith-based religious networks raised concerns about troubles in sourcing right workers for religious institutions.

He further said that the new action plan will help in addressing skill-shortage of religious workers in Australia.

The sponsoring organization must be a religious institution under the Migration law and present the proof of charitable status.

The existing requisites of salary concessions and age do not change in the new arrangements and it will come in effect from March 11, 2019 and will continue to offer a pathway to PR (Permanent Residency).