Australian visa backlog keeping engineers out of country amid skills shortage

Altaf applied for a 476 visa in 2019 and his career has been on hold since. He said he understood that Covid-19 had necessarily disrupted visa processing, but said, since the border reopened, the processing times had not improved in any way. Both Kaur and Altaf are in social media groups with a large number of other 476 visa applicants, who keep in constant contact about their progress.

A recent freedom of information request showed the department still had more than 6,000 applications for the 476 visa, which it was yet to process.

The comments come after the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said visa processing delays had been raised during his visit to Indonesia this week.

Jane MacMaster, chief engineer of Engineers Australia, said skilled migration was crucial to fill the gap between what universities and the local market can supply, but once in Australia, only about 40% of higher overseas engineers end up working in an engineering role.

On 476 visas specifically, the industry body says it is working to speed up its migration skills assessments process for migrant engineers.

The home affairs department said engineering graduates were also often eligible for a range of other visas. A spokesperson said since November it had granted more than one million student, visitor, working holiday maker, temporary skilled and other temporary work visas, and that there were currently 1.61m people who held those visa types who remained offshore, despite being able to travel to Australia if fully vaccinated.

The department said it had also extended 3,000 476 visas in April for another two years.