‘No end to this’: six visas, six migration agents, four jobs in regional Australia and still no permanent residency

After approximately $70,000, six visas, six migration agents and four different jobs in regional areas, the Sri Lankan national Mohamed Farshan Mohamed Fairoos is no closer to reaching his goal to have the right to settle in Australia permanently.

Since arriving in the country as a student in 2010, Fairoos has spent eight years working in hospitality, from Kangaroo Island to Thursday Island, from the wine belt of Victoria to the southern highlands of New South Wales where he is now based, trying to qualify for permanent residency.

During his time on temporary work visas, Fairoos says he has witnessed racism from sponsor employers, wage theft, unfair dismissals of other migrants and an employer requesting sexual favours from a migrant worker in exchange for help to receive residency.

One agent told him if he paid $20,000 he could secure a job that would lead to permanent residency.

"Everyone gets a piece of that pie - the migration agent, and the sponsor employer, but it's all cash," Fairoos says.

"People don't know what's happening behind closed doors."

Complaints about registered migration agents have tripled over the past five years, from 252 in 2017-18 to 761 in 2021-22, but sanctions against agents have halved in that time to just 13 last year.

In addition, there have been about 3,000 complaints about employers or sponsors since 2019.

A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs says 226 sponsors, out of an active total of 20,219, have been sanctioned so far this financial year to 31 January, representing a 13% increase on the previous financial year.

Matt Kunkel, the CEO of the Migrant Workers Centre, says Fairoos's situation is not uncommon in a system that "overpromises and desperately underdelivers".

"The actual formal complaints that are going to the regulatory body are only the very tip of the iceberg," Kunkel says.

"People who have both their passport and their paycheque controlled by their employer are likely to have real difficulty in taking concrete steps to improve their situation."

Years of uncertainty has taken its toll on Fairoos, and he has questioned why time spent working in regional areas cannot be examined in totality rather than having to restart his time with each new visa.

At his previous job in regional Victoria, Fairoos was close to fulfilling three years working regionally when the business changed hands, and the new owner was not willing to sponsor him.

A previous employer sacked him, Fairoos says, for encouraging other migrants to speak up about wage theft. He had completed his then required two years but his employer refused to complete the paperwork that would allow him to apply for permanent residency.

He made complaints, unsuccessfully, to Fair Work Australia, his union and the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority, and having failed to secure a visa via another employer returned home for two years before coming back to Australia in 2018. He says many others fear speaking out.

"They are scared, they stay quiet, so they put up with working unpaid hours, being ripped off and lied to."

Kunkel says under the current system it is very difficult for migrant workers to prosecute their case.

"In many cases, they're bound to their employer and if their work is terminated, they have 60 days to find a new sponsor or they need to leave the country," he says.

"So even when they have the most egregious cases, and the most cut-and-dry cases of wage theft, or other abuses, many of these migrants are forced to leave the country before they can achieve justice and that's not right."

The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, and his ministerial advisory council on skilled migration met in Canberra for a third time on 28 February with representatives from industry, civil society and trade unions to discuss the government's migration reform agenda, including tackling migrant worker exploitation and the visa backlog.

Giles said in a statement: "We will progress reform in a tripartite manner, working alongside industry and unions, to ensure Australia's migration system is once again an asset for our country."

Kunkel says: "The challenge is now to really nail down that root-and-branch reform that's required.

"We have this system that doesn't allow people to have the stability to plan for the future."

Fairoos, his wife, a qualified accountant, and their newborn son have been on his wife's 485 temporary graduate bridging visa since January 2022, while he awaits approval of a 491 skilled work regional visa.

If this gets approved, while he will have to work another three years regionally, he will no longer be tied to a sponsor employer, be able to change careers if he wishes and his path to permanent residency will be much easier.

He says he is now happy to be working for an "honest boss that is doing the right thing by me" but also feels that "there seems to be no end to this".

"If I am not suitable to be a citizen of Australia, why does the government keep giving me these work visas? Why can't my previous experience working in regional areas be considered?

"How many more visas and how many more years?"