Chronically ill foreign workers allowed to move to Australia

January 28 2010 by Liam Clifford

The Australian immigration department has decided to allow chronically ill immigrants to work in Australia in order to fill skills shortages.

The department has decided to widen a loophole that allows some ill relatives of Australian citizens to join their families living in Australia. The measures could see more people with conditions as serious as HIV or cancer being allowed to move to Australia.

The changes to the health screening rules are intended to encourage potential work visa holders to move to Australia, despite the fact they would previously have been turned away on the grounds of ill health or having ill dependants.

Each state and territory must sign up to the changes after considering the impact on their healthcare systems. New South Wales for example has refused to sign up to the measures over concerns about the region’s hospital resources.

The government’s migration committee started looking into the treatment of sick people looking to gain Australian visas in 2008. It was promoted by the Australian immigration minister’s intervention into a case that initially rejected a German doctor’s citizenship application due to his son’s Down’s Syndrome.

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