Migrante Australia has commenced a nationwide campaign for justice for disadvantaged 457 visa workers.<\/p>\n
Spokesperson for Migrante in WA, Ms Carmelita Baltazar, said that over 450 petition signatures from community members and supporters all across WA have been emailed to Hon. Min. Brendan O\u2019Connor to draw his attention to the predicament of many migrant workers on 457 visas and to seek a meeting to explore ways to address the difficulties they face.<\/p>\n
Migrante has documented cases of 457 workers that were found to have been burdened by high Visa Application Charges of $8,500 and $4,250 <\/strong>for Primary and Secondary applicants respectively. Research by Migrante on the English language exemption points show that the skilled workers from the Philippines are being discriminated because their \u201chigh school education system which is currently based on four-year, full-time study is deemed to be not <\/strong>comparable to a five-year, full-time study <\/strong>of secondary schooling in Australia and this process is building social unrest, said Ms Baltazar\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor a skilled worker to bridge the one year education disparity, the skilled workers needs to show additional evidence of a year of study straight from high school to satisfy the DIAC\u2019s \u201cfive-year, full-time continuous study\u201d<\/strong>. \u201cUnless this requirement is met these s457 workers will not be granted English language exemption. As they are in transition to Permanent Residency, they are forced to borrow money to pay high VAC if they fail to meet the minimum band score of 5 on all IELTS test components\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n Ms Baltazar looks forward to Min. O\u2019Connor\u2019s sense of \u201cfair go\u201d for overseas workers who appear to be extracted of high fees by agencies in the Philippines and the Australian Immigration.<\/p>\n Mr Marinas, Chairperson of Migrante Melbourne and Deputy Sec Gen of Migrante Australia, has confirmed similar issues being raised by the s457 workers in Victoria and looks forward to a dialogue with Min. O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n For further enquires: <\/strong>Carmelita Baltazar, 0414 247 154; Rene Alviar, 0452 518 189; Reyvi Marinas – 0421 119 776<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Migrante Australia has commenced a nationwide campaign for justice for disadvantaged 457 visa workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}