Does Australia have like a “mexican” type migrant worker?
Question by mickeymoo26: Does Australia have like a “mexican” type migrant worker?
Well, I live in a small town, with about 50,000 people in it’s region. It’s in Queensland. I think people who live in the city probably can answer this better than most, because when I’m in Sydney, and Brisbane I notice lots of people from other countries. I went to The States in January. And I noticed that “Mexicans” do all of the… to put it bluntly, shit jobs. They work at Maccas (McDonalds) construction, maids, cleaning, housekeeping, service industry type jobs.
IN Australia do we have a certain group of people who do those kind of jobs? Like Vietnamese, Filipino’s, Indians, Pakistanis? you know like any particular nationality that does the kind of lower jobs.
thanks. : )
Best answer:
Answer by TheAnswerMan
When you say migrant worker you mean illegal immigrant? I heard many Asians come over to Australia illegally.
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In the USA, they have a huge illegal immigrant problem – estimates vary between 12m and 40m but nobody has any real idea of the number and there are several reasons for the massive size of the problem. Having a land border with an undeveloped nation combined with an almost total unwillingness on the part of the government to enforce immigration and employment laws are the main causes. Employers can pay illegals very low wages and get away with it so illegals (mainly Mexicans and South Americans) displace Americans who would otherwise work legally, but who would expect and be entitled to higher wages. Because of their lack of skills, you get a very large number working in low level jobs like food service, cleaning, as maids and gardeners and manual farm work. Americans like to brag about how low prices are there compared to Australian prices but much of that is to do with the fact that they have huge numbers of people working for under $ 5 per hour.
In Australia, many of the people you’ll seen in service and lower level jobs are here legally on either student visas or working holiday visas but our own Australian students largely work in those job too. At any one time, we have over 200,000 working holiday makers and over 700,000 international students here and all are allowed to work legally (the students only for 20 hours per week for most of the year). A large percentage of the students are from various parts of Asia but most of the WH people are from places like the UK, Canada, USA and Europe.
Australia has only a comparatively small number of illegal immigrants – the average is around 50,000 at any one time and unlike in the USA, it isn’t tolerated at all by our government. When immigration becomes aware of the location of an illegal, they are detained and deported and employers who employ illegal workers receive heavy fines so the vast majority of workers earn legal wages and Australians are not displaced by workers from other countries.
We only allow skilled immigrants to come here permanently, but the partners of skilled immigrants from third world countries often have no skills and work as cleaners and hotel maids. In those jobs you’ll get a relatively large number of people from those countries but you’ll still find a cross section of nationalities.
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