Corruption and widespread rorting ‘undermining Australia’s immigration programs’, by Nick McKenzie.

[A] former immigration official claims that a focus on boat arrivals has allowed migration crime involving people arriving by plane to flourish unchecked.

He said the department was ignoring tens of thousands of cases of visa rorting, including thousands of successful visa applicants his investigators uncovered in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia. …

“Some investigations revealed thousands of skilled migrant applicants had lodged bogus qualifications from private colleges, funded by the Australian taxpayer, and in some cases excellent counterfeit degrees from our most prestigious Victorian universities.

“One investigation identified up to 4,000 applicants who used such documents to apply for skilled migration.” …

“The issue is that Australians are missing out on jobs and there are people jumping the queue to gain residency into the country off the back of a mythical labour shortage,” he said. …

“It was clearly, in this instance, just a means of getting people into the country to gain permanent residency.” Asked if he thought it was a form of people smuggling, he replied: “Exactly”.