A nationwide survey of temporary visa holders shows the devastating impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on temporary migrants.
Highlights:
- Unions NSW conducted a study of temporary migrants which included almost 6,000 respondents.
- The study found a large number of respondents lost their jobs and feared eviction.
- The report recommends removal of the 40 hours per fortnight work restriction for international students.
Unions NSW conducted the survey in association with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
The study of more than 5,000 temporary visa holders found that 65 per cent of respondents lost their jobs, and 39 per cent struggled to cover necessary living expenses.
Source: AAP
Thirty-four per cent were evicted of faced eviction because they couldn't pay rent. Twenty-three per cent were sharing a bedroom to reduce costs.
Forty-three per cent of the respondents said they had to skip meals regularly.
Sixty-seven per cent of the respondents were international students.
Laurie Berg, an Associate Professor at the UTS, is one of the authors of the report.
She says the situation will be much worse within six months.
"The survey was conducted in March and April and shows that really large numbers were experiencing difficulties, lost their jobs, many have skipped meals or fearing eviction from their housing.
Temporary migrants in Victoria will now be able to access a one-off $800 emergency payment if they are in severe financial hardship. Source: Supplied
"So our analysis shows that well over half of the participants, which was close to 6000 people on a temporary visa anticipated that their financial situation would be much worse or somewhat worse within six months and that doesn't even take into account the impact of the second lockdown In Victoria," said Ms Berg.
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Authors of the survey conclude that thousands of temporary migrants cannot afford three meals a day and are living in fear of becoming homeless, if not already homeless, as their savings near exhaustion.
"The government must extend its support packages, including JobKeeper and JobSeeker, to include temporary migrants for the duration of the crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic also reemphasises the need to permanently remove visa conditions that have traditionally encouraged exploitative employer practices and that have proven to be inadequate during the crisis," reads the report.
The study has made the following recommendations:
- Immediately extend the coverage of the JobKeeper program to include temporary migrant workers and include a provision for retrospective application, allowing employers to reinstate an eligible worker whose role was made redundant due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Immediately extend the coverage of the JobSeeker program to temporary migrants in Australia.
- Abolish the 88-day farm work requirement for working holidaymakers applying for a second-year visa.
- Remove the 40 hours per fortnight work restriction for international students.
- Permanently remove the condition on working holiday visas prohibiting holders from working for one employer for more than six months.
Secretary of the Unions NSW Mark Morey says Australia should follow other countries in similar situations like New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom who have extended financial support to temporary visa holders.
"Students and people working here, the federal government has asked them to come here. I mean, tertiary education is one of our top five exporters. So we're happy to take their money for tuition; we're happy to take these workers money out in our tax system and then when the pandemics came around, we said you're on your own.
"We should be actually ensuring that these workers have access to job keeper and job seeker," said Mr Morey.
