Australia to keep strict immigration rules

Australia to keep strict immigration rules

CANBERRA (AP): The Australian government rejected suggestions yesterday it should relax immigration laws and allow low-skilled Indonesian workers temporary entry as shelter from Indonesia's economic crisis.

Indonesian Ambassador to Australia Wiryono Sastrohandoyo Thursday said Australia should consider allowing Indonesian laborers to enter as guest workers as a way to ease the current economic and social unrest there.

"Indonesia in the past... has accepted more than 60,000 expatriates and I think a lot of them were Australians," the ambassador said on Australian Broadcasting Corp. television.

"Under the World Trade Organization, movement of laborers are to be more and more liberal and we would like to expect that Australia would also be opening up to our laborers."

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock yesterday rejected the suggestion, saying it was against government policy to accept low-skilled migrants, although there were arrangements for better skilled temporary migrants.

"We have not been a country which has used guest workers. We have been a country that has seen migration for permanent residents," Ruddock told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio yesterday.

Ruddock said there was a big difference between low-skilled guest workers and Australian expatriates working in Indonesia.

"We send very highly skilled Australians (and) in the same context, Australia does have temporary arrangements for (Indonesian) people who fit the same sort of profile," he said.

The worst economic crisis in 30 years has triggered rioting in several regions of Indonesia, as a collapsing currency sends prices for food and other goods skyrocketing.