Australia is creating an underclass of exploited farm workers, unable to speak up

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 05:42:04 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/australia-is-creating-an-underclass-of-exploited-farm-workers-unable-to-speak-up-177063>

"As a senior official in Australia’s Immigration Department in the late 1990s,
I frequently met counterparts in Europe and North America who were exasperated
by their inability to make headway against the exploitation and abuse of
hundreds of thousands of migrant farm workers.

They also worried about the infiltration of criminal gangs who controlled how
the migrant workers were allocated to farmers, profiting from that control.

I walked away from those conversations smug in the view Australia would never
introduce a dedicated farm worker visa like the United States Agriculture Visa.

Fast forward two decades, and not only are we about to have an Agriculture
Visa, we also have unsuccessful asylum seekers trafficked to work on Australian
farms."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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