Irish vet fails oral English test needed to stay in Australia
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Granted this was well over a hundred years ago however I feel that the Australian attitude to migrants is still quite unfriendly. They're making it more and more difficult to migrate there even if you have roots in the country especially if you are from a non English speaking country.
Source: Am Irish and went through the Australian immigration process years ago.
and the 8th highest immigration of all countries, regardless of population. (also [1]).
Australia has a massive, massive amount of immigration.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...
Australia has a cap on permanent immigration per year of around 200,000. That Wikipedia page is claiming 45 per 1,000 inhabitants, which gets you closer to one million net migration. That conveniently ignores the far more important number: how many people are actually allowed to stay on a permanent basis?
Further, about half those ~200,000 allocated per year go to people already in Australia.
Back in reality, Australia is extremely restrictive when it comes to allowing permanent immigration. It has a lot of temporary work immigration.
https://insidestory.org.au/how-many-migrants-come-to-austral...
So the 1,023,107 listed from 2007-2012 is 204,621 per year.
Sounds spot on to me.
>Further, about half those ~200,000 per year go to people already in Australia
Sure, but they are not permanent in Australia, and immigration means they became permanent. It's not really relevant where they started from.
Australia is allowing ~1 million people each 5 years to becoming permanent, which is a huge number... in fact 8th in the world overall.
It's the same for every other country, so the comparison to other countries is still spot on.
Very forward thinking on the issue of partners though. If one gets the visa the other does too with little or no fuss. Don't even have to be married.
The country is, like any, full of contradictions.
Nevertheless, within the institutions of politics and media and to a lesser extent the civil service there remains a vocal and sizeable minority who fear white people and "anglo-white" culture will become the minority and become oppressed.
Fortunately, most Australians don't feel that way.
There have always been many more people wanting to get into the country than the quotas allowed, and so the immigration department is a gatekeeper. Getting in is a kind of game of beaurocratic chess, and the department is determined to play hard.
The UK was the same when I was living there for a few years. Germany on the other hand is more keen on attracting skilled workers and made things very easy for me. But as people, I found Germans and British to be about equally welcoming of immigrants.
Culturally, are the psychological scars of Australia's previous status as a British penal colony still manifested in public policy?
I don't ask to be incendiary, but because I'm interested in the Second-Order Effects that stick with cultures over time, often in seemingly unrelated ways.
Either way, he failed the test a few times; reason being that this 'integration test' doesn't just cover language skills, but also things like 'knowledge of Dutch society'. For example, you get 3 pictures of a front yard of a house, with varying degrees of clutter on them (like a children's bike and a garbage bin with the lid open). Question being: how are you supposed to maintain your yard, like in picture A, B or C? Most (Dutch) people I've given the test failed it because the questions are so ridiculous. It's quite lulzy actually. Well not for that Belgian guy I presume.
I would have had to to fly ~2500km, pay for the tests etc. (I was living in Northern Canada.. weekend trips to Alaska means driving due South)
I spoke to multiple people on the phone and in person (in English) and not a single one was able in any way to do anything to intervene. There was no possibility of me doing the test over skype video chat to avoid the expensive flight
Rules are rules, don't dare to interpret their intent. This applies doubly when dealing with Immigration.
Canada have now tightened the rules significantly, and it's my understanding if I applied now, I would be forced to take that English test.
It is a ~$300 test too.
Out of curiosity, did you ace the test? I at least was hoping to do that.
People in Dublin itself are widely regarded to have a neutral-sounding, easily understandable English. Indeed, Dubliners are conspicuously prominent in ESL teaching around the world for that reason. It is when one gets out of Dublin that accents begin to be more challenging for people accustomed only to mainstream US or UK pronunciations.
I'm sure she could talk more slowly and clearly and computer would say yes.
Also I leave the Welsh off the least, because I have always found their English easy to understand -- if sometimes amusing.
I'd imagine not a single one could pass.
But I could barely understand the boyfriend, let alone place his accent. When I asked my friendl later, he said the dude was also forom NZ.
I have no idea what was going on in my head that day.
Surely that lack of self-questioning makes them categorically unsuitable to do the job. By refusing to acknowledge that there's room for process improvement, that signals that they don't care about quality.
IELTS raised the fees more than 300% in the last few years. They now cost around $330 per exam and they always invariably fail you the first time around. You are allowed to take as many tests as you need. Conveniently you pass after a few tries.
I know competent English teachers who grew up in Australia failing this test few times. And equally I know very few migrants from third world countries passing the test even if English is their first language.
It's more of a blatant money making scheme than anything else and quite obviously the department of immigration must charge IELTS for allowing it to be one of the English examiner.
Just follow the money and you have all the answers.
> Other test providers have said they use human assessors
No, the article clearly states that the test in question used voice recognition on a computer. Other companies use human evaluations, however this one didn't.
Unless this is something very recent in which case I am not sure how computers can handle accents or ambiguous words. Even google's voice to text has so many errors on untrained voice models
That's not what I understood from the article, which says
"uses voice recognition technology to test speaking ability, with audio recordings then marked by a “scoring engine”"
"Other test providers have said they use human assessors to determine if people are competent speakers of English"
Both of those imply there aren't humans evaluating the results at this test provider.
That's the entire point of the article.
We got very thorough, specialised prep from our teachers. Everyone passed , first try.
The UK citizenship authority accepts most major accredited english language certifications and or a university degree as proof of english language proficiency. The only tests are for lay of the land/law/society, not language proficiency.
Not sure what your sources are, but as part of UK Citizen application, you absolutely have to do English language proficiency tests in some circumstances. The Pearson test is one of the recognised tests.
In addition to my self having gone through the Citizenship process recently. Additionally several native nationalities have an exception: https://www.gov.uk/english-language/exemptions
I was very surprised to hear that this was even permitted a method for the outsourcing provider, but then again Australia has a poor and somehow still worsening relationship with immigration, so perhaps I'm more accurately "re-dissapointed" by this revelation (as an expat Australian).
Not unlike some professors who take an easy pass on dullards while throwing all their wrath at students with signs of self-learning. Those people are actively sabotaging the system they're part of.
I think you're just making things up.
I realize that your actual remark is to the 'why' of some professions being on this list, I'm just pointing the above out for non-Australians like myself who might be amused by these things when seeing them for the first time, like I was.
Comedic bit about voice activated elevators. In Scotland