Around 140,000 skilled workers came into Australia in 2006 on various visas, many of them destined for the mining and resources industry.
Many migrants unsurprisingly find the move to a new country to be incredibly difficult, especially if partners do not find employment or are generally unhappy after the move. Of the approximately 25,000 people who leave Australia each year, as many as half may go back to their former homes.
Dr Gilberto Alexandre was an engineer for Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras before making the major decision to immigrate to Australia with his wife. Four months later, he and his wife decided to move back to South America.
"I always wanted to live abroad – Brazil is facing very huge problems, regarding economics, politics and social problems, many people are unemployed. I was disillusioned with the country and I was looking for a better country to live in," Alexandre said. "A friend of mine came here one year before me and he said great things about Australia. We arrived at the start of October 2006."
On arriving in Australia he contacted Perth-based recruitment company Scotford & Fennessy, which quickly organised accommodation for him, and lined up an initial interview. The process was a success and within three weeks of his arrival in Australia Alexandre began working with geotechnical consultants WorleyParsons.
Scotford & Fennessy director Nick Fennessy said in general his company seeks to give immigrants as much information as possible about their new home before their arrival to ensure they have realistic impressions, and to assist them on a case-by-case basis in settling into their new work and lives.
In his experience, going the "extra mile" for recent migrants can make all the difference between someone loving the country and settling or turning down a job and leaving, or worse, leaving as Alexandre has done after a short time.
"For example, with our company, someone came over from PNG and his accommodation fell through, so he and his whole family moved in with our consultant for a whole month. I'm not saying everyone will do this, and these things happen on a case-by-case basis. Of course we do have a vested interest in there being a good outcome," Fennessy said.
His advice for companies which hire immigrants, as well as recruitment agencies involved in the process, is to have as much contact as possible with the new person to ensure that the situation is working for them.
"Just touch base, see how they're going, how the kids fit into school, that sort of thing," he said. "That can often be much more important than work. And don't scrimp on the time factor – don't assume that after two or three months everything is fine, because things can get harder after the honeymoon period, where the daily grind sets in.
"You've given someone a house and a car and introduced them to their co-workers – those things are important, but social contact can go just as far or much further."
Alexandre said the most invaluable support he received from his new company was primarily psychological. "People at the company were always concerned about my situation and were always asking how things were going. This sort of psychological support was very important."
Despite his positive experiences, Alexandre's wife had difficulty finding work, despite being a qualified geotechnical engineer.
In the end, not being able to find the right job, combined with homesickness and some language difficulties, meant she did not want to stay in Australia.
"She came from a very poor background and worked very hard to go to university," Alexandre said. "She accomplished a lot in Brazil, and she didn't want to have to start all over again. So she decided to go back to Brazil to her old job."
Fennessy also acknowledged that sometimes relocation doesn't work for skilled workers or their families. Sometimes "even if the employee turns up every day and loves the job it doesn't always mean things will go well", he said. "It's not just an employee's decision about whether or not things are working out, there's the family side as well."
In his experience, Fennessy said a decent proportion of new migrants to Australia will have problems, and that does not just include people from different cultures. "People can come here from the US or the UK and South Africa and find it very difficult," he said. "And some people just cope a lot better than others."
Despite deciding to return to South America for personal reasons, Alexandre's experiences as a skilled migrant to Australia were overwhelmingly positive. "I don't have complaints about WorleyParsons or the Australian people. They helped me a lot. For me it was really good, but not for my wife."
