457 Visas

457 visas have been in the news lately. Here are a couple of articles on the topic:

Peter Mares, adjunct fellow at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, in Temporary migration is a permanent thing discusses the benefits of the 457 visa and the implications for the permanent migration cap and processing queue as temporary visa holders seek permanent residence.

Tim Colebatch in The books are being cooked on 457 visas discusses how the visas are being abused just as happened with student visas.

Brett Winterford in Why we use 457s in Australian IT projects quotes an executive as explaining whey they use 457 visa workers:

1. There are generally insufficient skilled Australian IT workers available to ramp up large scale IT projects.
2. The cost of employing Australian resources, even if you can find them, is very high in relation to the rates available via third party companies.

Sylvia Pennington in Employers want a 'cheapie, just arrived off the boat', Aussie IT workers told quotes IT workers as saying that employers are using 456 and 457 visas to cut staffing costs and undercut local businesses when tendering on outsourcing contracts.