It’s a Western culture
practice to kick your kid out of the house when they graduate and some even do
it before then. And if they come back,
it’s both a victory and a defeat. It’s a
victory in that “Oh… Your kids needed you
all along.” However, it makes you
question your parenting. Thankfully,
most Asians don’t ever need to question themselves using this method because
our parents keep us home. They think for
the future. If they are in trouble,
their kids have to have a sense of filial piety because the kids weren’t kicked
out from home.
That didn’t stop the mass
amount of young people leaving Malaysia for countries like the US, England and
Australia. And as you guessed it, they
have opted not to come back. The government
at one time bemoaned the students who received scholarships to study overseas
but did not come back to pay their dues.
Well, that may change
soon. Those three countries I mentioned
have recently adopted populist policies that are designed to shun outsiders and
favor their own citizens. I don’t blame
them to be honest. It’s their
country. They can do as they please.
According to an article on
The New Daily titled “Australians First: Turnbull Government to Abolish 457
Visas for Foreign Workers”, the Coalition will replace the 457 visas with a new
system that imposes stricter criteria on businesses looking to hire foreign
workers. This new system is called the
Temporary Skills Shortage Visa. There
are a few more paragraphs that describe the nitty-gritty details of the policy
change that is too technical for me to comprehend or even find interest in. Fortunately for some, subclass 485 is not one
of the 457 visas ripped apart and that’s the one foreign graduates use to stay
in the country.
I know it’s so easy for
foreigners to shout “Discrimination!”
However, like it or not, foreigners are guests in countries they are not
citizens of, even if they have somehow made it their home. From their perspective, they simply cannot
compete with foreigners with tax breaks and lower salary demands. And if they can’t get a job, they have
nowhere else to go.
Australia is not alone
though, Brexit was a huge issue in the United Kingdom for a reason. This doesn’t concern us as much as it does
its fellow soon-to-be ex-mates from the EU but you see their point. Back in 2001, the first Harry Potter movie
came out and Great Britain had roughly 4.9 million foreigners. Fast forward to 2011, when Harry Potter and
the Deathly Hallows Part 2 came out, there were roughly 8 million
foreigners. If they didn’t vote for
Brexit, I’m pretty sure the number would have gone up even more in 2021. And, you don’t need witchcraft to conjure up
a big number.
Not to be outdone, the
U.S. of A saw the meteoric rise of Donald Trump and his pledge to his “America
First” campaign promises. In the BBC
article titled “Trump Order to Target Foreign Worker Visa Program”, the order
is called “Buy America, Hire America”.
It actually goes into detail about how Americans got screwed over. Disney made American technology employees
train their foreign replacements, only for them to be ultimately let go. And you thought working at Disney was all fun
and games…
With such a hostile
environment for Malaysians aspiring to go overseas, there is no choice but to
come back home. My home still wants me,
right? Um, the next part of this
paragraph will be a horror story for you graduates out there hoping to come
back. If you read the article from The
Sun titled “Youth unemployment comes under spotlight”, you will know that 23%
of the unemployed in the labor market are graduate youths. The government has implemented policies that
may have produced too many smart people.
Who knew having a brain was a curse?
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