Visa numbers up

Short term and WHM visa numbers creep back up towards pre-pandemic levels

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the volume of shortterm visitors reported in Australia by July was still well below prepandemic levels, with 325,680 arrivals compared with 790,380 for the same period in 2019.

However, overseas visitors staying a year or more appears to be bouncing back, with 60,550 longterm arrivals in June compared with 76,870 in 2019.

Funding had previously been cut by $875 million, leading to a massive backlog of unprocessed visas approaching the 1 million mark. The Labor Government has since earmarket $36 million to hire 500 staff to tackle the crisis.

More recently however, travel firm Welcome to Travel, who specialise in gap-year tourism, reported 200% more travellers on their itineraries compared to pre-pandemic, fueling applications for working holiday 417 visas.

“Australia is... experiencing a rapid rebound in visa applications,” Andrew Giles, Minister for Immigration said recently. “We have received nearly 2.22 million new applications since 1 June 2022, compared with nearly 495,000 for the same period in 2021.”

“This is welcome news for sectors who rely on casual labour from overseas, such as our events industry. But we aren’t feeling this on the ground,” said Brett O’Hara from Harry the hirer. “Members in the events division have been working under the strain of a huge shortage of unskilled and skilled workers, who we would normally have relied on prior to the pandemic. Anything the government does to speed up visa processing for the casual overseas workforce or incentivise workers back to the industry would be very welcome”.