Refugees are a Valuable but Overlooked Economic Resource, and it is Time to Update Our Approach to Migration
Abstract
The view that welcoming refugees represents a cost to a country's welfare services has become anachronistic; nowadays refugees are increasingly recognised for their high levels of education and skills, and their ability to make an economic contribution to a host country. Yet, most states' approach to migration management prevents displaced people from migrating based on the human capital that they can supply. Australia is trialling a new approach that enables refugees to access skilled migration through employer sponsorship. This article describes the pilot project and suggests ways to encourage employers to view refugees as a valuable solution to workforce shortages.
1 Introduction
Australia has relied on immigrants to fill skill shortages and grow its population and economy for decades (Pope and Withers 1993; Collins 2008; McDonald and Withers 2008). Indeed, the country's approach to migration has been explicitly eyeing the potential economic contribution of newcomers since the late 1980s when the points-based skilled migration system was introduced (Cobb-Clark and Connolly 1997; Antecol, Cobb-Clark and Trejo 2003; Tani 2014). More recent examples include fine-tuning immigration policy towards temporary (Hugo et al. 2003; Campbell and Tham 2013; Hawthorne and To 2014) and employer-sponsored migrants (Cully 2011; Howe 2013; Wright, Groutsis and Van Den Broek 2017).
Refugees, however, are rarely viewed as a potential economic asset or considered a source of skilled labour. On the contrary, studies tend to emphasise aspects unrelated to their potential skill supply or their limited participation in Australia's labour market (Khoo 2001; Hugo 2002; Schweitzer et al. 2018; Sullivan, Vaughan and Wright 2020). This view of refugees is prevailing despite the most recent two years having effectively stopped Australia's access to internationally mobile workers, with costly implications for the country's economy (Gamlen 2020; Van Barneveld et al. 2020; Coates, Sherrell and Mackey 2021), especially in regional areas (Fitts et al. 2020; Guaralda et al. 2020; Jones et al. 2021; Savy and Hodgkin 2021).
As Australian employers are finding it difficult to recruit workers to reopen and restart production in scale, and notwithstanding the slow-paced return of thousands of skilled migrants, international students and temporary workers, we propose that this is an ideal time to revisit the current approach to migration to include refugees in the categories of migrants that can be economically self-sufficient if given the opportunity and contribute to Australia's economic wellbeing. In particular, highly educated refugees—hitherto referred to as ‘skilled’ to emphasise their post-secondary education and professional experience—could offer skills that Australia needs but does not source from them because it classifies them as refugees, and views them, anachronistically, as incapable of being an economic asset.
There is nevertheless hope that the administrative barriers between refugee and skilled migration pathways are starting to change and, importantly, lowered. In July 2021, in response to the advocacy of non-profit organisation Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) and requests from several employers, the Australian Government took a fundamental step by agreeing to pilot an employment scheme that enables employers to recruit skilled refugees living in situations of displacement overseas. The pilot, or Skilled Refugee Labour Agreement Pilot (SRLAP), uses existing temporary and permanent skilled visa classes within Australia's migration program to enable successful job applicants to enter Australia for the purposes of taking up employment and to bring their immediate families with them.
The SRLAP builds on the success of two earlier pilots, launched by the Australian and Canadian Governments in partnership with TBB in 2018. Together these pilots enabled 60 displaced people, including a number of mechanical engineers, butchers, software engineers and health professionals, to secure skilled employment across a range of trades and professions in Australia and Canada. The ‘business case’ for the recruitment of refugees clearly emerges from a survey of 24 employers reporting that the principal reason to take part in the pilot schemes was to fill critical skills shortages that could not be filled locally (TBB 2020). Just as the Australian Government has now embarked on a second pilot scheme through the new the SRLAP, in June 2020 the Canadian Government also moved to extend its Economic Mobility Pathways Project to encompass an additional 500 places for skilled refugees over two years.
This novel approach to people displaced by war and conflict offers refugees an entry point to permanent residence that prioritises their human capital. There are clear potential benefits to utilising select skilled visas to enable refugees with professional and vocational skills to work in Australia under the guidance and responsibility of a sponsoring employer. Only a handful of cases have been admitted to date, and their evaluation is essential to decide whether such an approach to immigration can be scaled up and become part of the national approach to manage new settlers.
2 The Humanitarian Migration Context: Displacement, Recruitment and Skilled Refugees
While displaced people have skills and talents that are needed by employers around the world, most refugees are living in countries of first asylum where they are not allowed to work, which in turn creates significant barriers when trying to access skilled migration pathways. Moreover, being displaced from their homes by conflict or persecution means that individuals may have limited access to savings with which to pay for visa applications or lack sufficient identity documents or evidence of their educational qualifications and relevant work experience that prospective employers in the host country can use to assess individual productivity (Lenette, Baker and Hirsch 2019; TBB 2020). These conditions have attracted considerable attention from advocacy groups in Australia as well as other high-income countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom.
Both the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) have noted an ‘overly strict separation between refugees and labour migrants’ in states' migration management, one that fails to reflect the complexities of displacement or meet the needs of refugees (UNHCR and ILO 2012). Unlike ordinary skilled migrants, for example, refugees face the need for a legal status that protects them from refoulement (return) to a country where their life or freedom may be at risk, and they have a right to family reunion (UNHCR and ILO 2012).
These hurdles contribute to a very poor international transfer of refugees' human capital and experiences of long-lasting poor labour market outcomes and socio-economic integration (Tani 2017; UNHCR 2019a; Cheng, Wang and Taksa 2021). Prospective employers in Australia may also hold unconscious biases toward refugee candidates or be discouraged by a belief that hiring refugees is too complicated (Szkudlarek 2019), indicating a need for an innovative education program to highlight the myriad benefits of employing skilled refugees.
3 What is the Skilled Refugee Labour Agreement Pilot (SRLAP)?
The SRLAP was launched by the Australian Government in July 2021 (Australian Department of Home Affairs 2021a). The program removes the barriers that refugees face when seeking to migrate to Australia for work, enabling more than 100 primary applicants and their families to relocate to Australia over 2022 and 2023.
The SRLAP uses the mechanism of a ‘labour agreement’ pre-negotiated between TBB and the Australian Government (represented by the Department of Home Affairs) to provide flexible arrangements for businesses and refugees accessing the program. Labour or work agreements are a common vehicle provided under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) for industry groups and employers to negotiate special concessions when recruiting and sponsoring workers under skilled visas to Australia. Generally labour agreements are developed to assist employers struggling to attract workers in a specific sector (such as meat workers for the meat industry) or to attract skilled workers to a specific regional location (such as the Designated Area Migration Agreements – Australian Department of Home Affairs 2021b). The SRLAP provides concessions to employers to recruit ‘displaced talent’, who without such concessions would be unable to access Australia's skilled migration program on account of their circumstances.
3.1 How the SRLAP Works
As the displaced talent mobility intermediary, TBB facilitates job matches between employers in Australia and refugees and other displaced people living overseas by assessing and checking the eligibility of candidates and by carrying out a due diligence on prospective employers. Once an employer issues a job offer, TBB confirms that the candidate and employer are endorsed to access the program. The employer can then use this endorsement to formally request access to the labour agreement pre-negotiated by TBB. The employer then directly enters into the labour agreement with the Australian Government.
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Subclass 186 (Employer Nomination Scheme—ENS): a permanent residence visa on a direct entry basis.
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Subclass 494 (Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional – SESR): a provisional visa with a pathway to permanent residence after 3 years.
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Subclass 482 (Temporary Skills Shortage—TSS) up to 4-year visa with pathway to permanent residence.
Most employers sponsoring refugees under the program have opted to use the 186 visa, given it provides permanent residence and much needed certainty to refugees on arrival in Australia, as well as access to the social safety net (Medicare, access to free schooling, etc.).
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An extensive and diverse list of occupations and access to permanent residency: there are 103 occupations that employers can sponsor under the labour agreement, including many roles that are not normally available to sponsor, particularly for permanent skilled visa subclasses. For example, under the program, employers can sponsor aged care workers, general clerks, therapy aids, childcare workers and other roles that are generally only accessible to workers sponsored on temporary visas.
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Waiver of work experience and skills assessment requirements: normally under the subclass 186 ENS and subclass 494 SESR visas, applicants must go through a formal skills assessment with an accredited body such as the Australian Computer Society or Engineers Australia, before they can be eligible for the visa. These skills assessments normally rely on documentary evidence of skills and are also costly to obtain. Refugees often face difficulties in accessing documentation of their skills, which put them at a unique disadvantage when trying to access recognition from industry or migration skills assessment bodies. To address this, the SRLAP places the onus on employers to conduct their own skills assessments during the recruitment process, and if the employer is satisfied the candidate has the skills to do the job, they can proceed without a third-party skills assessment.
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Reduced English test scores: under the program applicants must have ‘functional English’ at a minimum, which equates to an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 4.5. By contrast, skilled migrants under the subclass 186 ENS program normally require an IELTS 6, which is much more difficult to obtain. Refugees face significant difficulties in honing their English abilities while living in situations of displacement. This reduced English threshold is therefore welcome and enables refugees to hone their language skills once they arrive in Australia and start to work.
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Higher age cut off: applicants under the program can be up to 50 years of age and still be eligible for permanent residence in Australia. Normally the age cut off is 45 years of age. This ensures that refugees who have been displaced for many years still have access to the program.
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No labour market testing: there is no requirement for businesses to prove that they have exhausted options to recruit in the local labour market before recruiting a candidate through the SRLAP. Labour market testing (LMT) can be a time consuming and onerous process, so waiving this requirement helps to incentivise employer participation in the program. Given the purpose of the program is to provide additional pathways for displaced people, and given the program requires significant employer buy-in and investment (such that employers are only likely to participate where they have a genuine labour shortage), the LMT requirements were deemed unnecessary.
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Flexible arrangements for passports and police checks: the Government accepts that many refugees no longer have access to passports, or only have expired passports, and are unable to safely go back to their country of origin or embassy to obtain passports. Refugees are often also not able to obtain police checks from their country of origin given the context, as well as persecution they have faced. Under the SRLAP candidates are able to access Immi Cards as an alternative travel document to passports and waivers on police checks where this is required.
The SRLAP is designed to function in addition to Australia's annual commitments to refugee resettlement under its humanitarian program. Applying for or obtaining a job through this pilot does not make people ineligible for humanitarian resettlement in the future. The additionality of the pilot is essential and is in keeping with major international initiatives in refugee protection.
In 2018, Australia and 180 other states signed a landmark agreement known as the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), which holds as a core objective the expansion of visa pathways such as labour mobility, community-sponsored resettlement and student visas. States, the UNHCR and civil society stakeholders have formulated a Three-Year Strategy on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways, which calls on countries such as Australia to ease the many administrative, logistical and financial barriers that prevent refugees from applying for skilled visas (UNHCR 2019b, p. 9).
3.2 Early Progress of the SRLAP
The SRLAP removes many of the barriers that refugees and other forcibly displaced people face when trying to access employer-sponsored skilled migration pathways, making it easier for employers in Australia to hire them.
So far 80 of the visas have been allocated to businesses hiring under the program, and 32 primary applicants have so far either secured their visas or are in the visa application process. Successful candidates have included IT professionals, finance professionals and engineers with university education, as well as tradespeople such as butchers and slaughterers.
3.3 Progress Internationally
Since 2016, TBB have built a global database containing demographic, educational and pre-settlement labour market information of 40,000 refugees from nearly 50 countries. These candidates represent more than 150 occupations (TBB 2020). Over one third have a university-level education up to and including doctoral degrees, and the vast majority have intermediate English-language skills, indicating the depth of talent within this cohort of jobseekers and the potential for refugee recruitment to act as a workforce solution for employers abroad.
In the United Kingdom, where 51 per cent of large-firm employers (more than 250 employees) have reported difficulties in filling skills shortages (TBB 2020), the success of the first Australian and Canadian pilots has encouraged similar initiatives via the Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot—a 2-year pilot, in which employers hiring through a competitive, remote recruitment can sponsor TBB candidates via the Skilled Worker Route (United Kingdom Government 2022).
4 Implications for Policy Discussion
The barriers to international labour mobility caused by the pandemic have had significant impacts on economies that rely on migration to generate economic activity and wellbeing in Australia as well as other countries that rely on immigration to fill critical skill shortages. Global immobility has also shed light on the vulnerability and imperfection of a global system of migration flows that is entirely regulated by increasingly obsolete administrative taxonomies that prevent otherwise suitable economic agents from using their skills and expertise to access the host country's labour market.
The anachronism of the current separation between economic migrants and refugees has been highlighted by the long-running conflict in Syria, the recent collapse of Afghanistan (2021) and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, each of which has caused large volumes of middle-class professionals to seek safety in other countries. These and other current crises mean it is increasingly important to think beyond the confines of the conventional pathway of humanitarian resettlement as a cost to government, and to recognise that refugees, especially when highly educated, are capable of integrating and contributing to the host country's economy and society.
In the case of Australia, it is now the time to revisit its current approach to migration and the classification through which individuals with suitable human capital can supply their skills to willing employers without overly relying on historical and dated taxonomies. In particular, the time seems ripe to evaluate the pool of skills potentially supplied by displaced individuals, and offer them opportunities to connect with employers facing skills shortages under clear administrative guidelines. The SRLAP is an important and valuable example of a ‘market-based’ solution to a problem where employers in need of skills take up the responsibility of turning refugees' human capital into an economic asset and skill supply.
Notwithstanding the success of the program and its potential for scaling up, it is unlikely that this approach can be ‘the’ solution for the large numbers of skilled refugees displaced around the globe. However, host country governments could take a more proactive approach to engage in novel approaches to tap into their human capital than simply sit on the fence or address relatively minor issues, such as cutting the costs of visa applications. For example, Australia could offer recruitment incentives, develop better systems for recognising foreign qualifications (particularly when formal documentation has been lost) and utilise the lessons from the new Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP; Australian Department for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs 2021) to help sponsoring employers to create structures for community integration. While these examples require investment of public resources, their cost could be easily outweighed by the long-term social and economic benefits of refugees' better integration and skill usage.
5 Acknowledgement
Open access publishing facilitated by University of New South Wales, as part of the Wiley – University of New South Wales agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
