Home Affairs “conscious of fixing” small business visa delays, as some applications stretch to 16 months

Today’s sponsored employee visa program is complex, costly, and time-consuming for small businesses to use, a Department of Home Affairs official says, as the government champions reforms to the migration system it claims will better serve SMEs.

Speaking at the CommBank SmallBizWeek conference in Melbourne on Wednesday, Chris Montgomery, an industry and regional outreach officer for the department’s skilled visa program, said approximately 25% of the temporary worker visa program is utilised by small businesses.

But smaller businesses face significant challenges when recruiting international talent, he said, particularly while persistent domestic labour shortages are stretching employers thin.

“People are desperate for staff and a lot of businesses are looking to immgration as a solution, possibly for the first time,” he said, noting that migrant worker inflows are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

“Workers seem to have disappeared,” he said. “We don’t know where they’ve gone.”

The department is aware of how long it can take small businesses to sponsor the right worker, he said.

It can take between 11 and 13 months to process a Employment Nomination Scheme visa, subclass 186, the Department of Home Affairs website states.

Regional businesses seeking workers through the Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa, subclass 494, can wait as long as 16 months.

Some 90% of short-term applications for the Temporary Skills Shortage visa, subclass 482, are processed within 70 days, the department says.

The lag time is “something we’re quite conscious of fixing,” Montgomery said.

Complexity is also a confounding factor, Montgomery said, recognising that “visas are not easy” to navigate for small businesses in their current guise.

The acknowledgement of the struggles facing small business when seeking international talent echoes a draft migration strategy by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, which calls for significant reforms to the processing apparatus.

The draft strategy, released in April, states the current system “lacks direction, is complex, inflexible and inefficient, and fails to deliver for Australians and migrants”.

Major proposals for reform include abolishing “outdated, inflexible” visa occupation lists, which the government believes do not reflect current and future workforce needs.

Beyond calls to improve processing times and reduce complexity, the draft also suggests upfront visa processing fees should be sidelined for small businesses.

Visa application charges stretch into the thousands of dollars, and the 2023-2024 federal budget promises to increase some application fees between 6% and 40% from July 1 this year.

Without calling for small businesses to cop smaller upfront charges, the draft strategy suggests “exploring a switch to monthly employer fees”, allowing small business applicants to smooth out those costs over a longer timeframe.

The good news for Australian employers, Montgomery said, is that Australia remains a top destination for international graduates in disciplines like engineering, even if broader labour shortages and migration struggles persist.

“There are so many people who want to live and work in Australia,” he said.