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ZULEIKA ARASHIRO is an intelligent young woman with a bright future – but it probably won’t be a future lived in Australia. Having applied for permanent residency at the beginning of this year, a process she was told would take up to nine months, she now finds herself in a bureaucratic limbo. The immigration department can’t tell her exactly when her case will be decided, but it’s clear that she’s in a queue that’s more than two years long and still growing. Under current arrangements, Dr Arashiro could wait indefinitely in Melbourne, where she has completed a PhD at La Trobe University, and yet see her goal of permanent residence in Australia recede ever further into the distance as more recent applicants are given priority processing and, in effect, allowed to jump the queue.
Dr Arashiro’s case is not an isolated one: tens of thousands of other would-be migrants living in Australia and overseas are in similar circumstances. Having lodged valid applications for permanent residence and shelled out thousands of dollars in application fees and associated costs, they now find that their lives are on hold. The issue is not one of qualifications: Australia hasn’t altered its criteria for selecting skilled migrants. What has been adjusted is the order in which applications are considered...
