Australian Minister excludes highly skilled workers from LMT
Australia’s Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Senator Michaelia Cash, has announced that employers recruiting for ‘highly skilled occupations’ will be exempted from the Labour Market Testing requirement and so will not need to advertise jobs in Australia before offering them to temporary foreign workers.
This appears to be a policy U-turn on a commitment to scrap the Labour Market Testing (LMT) requirement altogether.
In June 2013, Australia’s previous Labor government passed legislation which required Australian employers to advertise jobs in Australia under LMT before employing foreign workers under the Temporary Work (Skilled) visa (subclass 457). The new law requiring LMT is due to come into force on 23rd November 2013.
In June, when the Australian parliament debated the legislation, the opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, opposed the introduction of LMT saying that it would be costly and unnecessary.
Mr Morrison is now the Immigration minister for the new Coalition government. He has faced repeated calls from Australian business organisations to repeal the LMT legislation.
style=”font-size:10px;”> Source: Oz Visa