Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re someone who chose your work or study because you wanted to help others.

Maybe you grew up seeing problems in your neighbourhoods that you wanted to fix. Or maybe you knew someone special, that inspired you to pursue a dream.

At Spectrum, we hear this every day. Not just from our staff, but also from our migrant and refugee clients.

Many of them arrived in Australia highly qualified, with years of professional experience in essential fields like health, education, and engineering.They don’t just speak of coming to Australia for opportunity or safety – but of wanting to make a difference to others.

Yet, despite this – and despite the urgent need in Australia for qualified, skilled workers in these important areas – skilled migrants are often stopped from doing just that.

That’s why Spectrum has joined the Activate Australia’s Skills campaign. It sheds light on Australia’s hidden workforce: Talented, qualified, and experienced skilled migrants, who face impossible hurdles and endless difficulty to do the work they are needed for in Australia.

As a result, Australian communities and families are suffering from a lack of services.

The need to activate Australia’s skills

Have you ever heard that coming to Australia as a skilled migrant is a quick and easy process? You may be surprised to hear that the opposite is true.

It can take years to even be allowed to apply to to be a candidate to fill a specific skills shortage. The shortage list is heavily vetted, and it must be first proven that the roles have not been filled by local workers.

From degree recognition to English language testing, skilled migrants must prove their qualifications and abilities through a rigorous and expensive system. To be invited to live in Australia as a skilled migrant is a rare opportunity – not just for the individual, but for our local communities, who have shown to desperately need their individual skills.

Yet, once they arrive, skilled migrants are faced with new barriers that often make little sense.

Many describe being given little or no support, guidance or instruction once they arrive in Australia, to connect them to the jobs they are here to do.

In rural or regional areas of Australia, skills shortages are extreme. However, for the newly-arrived skilled migrant, there is no housing or residency help, and little assistance to understand Australian work safety laws and their rights – leaving them vulnerable and sometimes unable to live or work where they need to. These barriers often make it impossible to stay.

Many skilled migrants describe this experience as difficult, disheartening, and even traumatic, leaving them isolated and financially suffering.

To add to this, once skilled migrants arrive in Australia, many Australian institutions fail to recognise their qualifications if obtained from overseas universities.

Even though, to enter Australia, the individual’s qualifications had already been recognised and approved by the government.

Having their qualifications recognised doesn’t just take a long time, it is also very expensive and requires payment upfront.

Often this added expense proves too costly for migrants, who need to immediately find housing and work, while they search for the very roles they were invited here to fill.

For many, this means that they must give up their hope of making a positive difference through their professional career – instead focusing on just surviving.

It is clear that the impact is twofold. Skilled migrants are left isolated and unable to thrive, while Australian communities continue to go without the services that they need.

The Activate Australia’s Skills campaign points out that this costs the Australian economy 70 billion dollars in lost economic activity, and that the skilled migrants are already here in Australia, some for many years. To support them would not add an economic burden to Australia – it would lessen it.

It would reduce waiting times for important services, enable regional and rural Australians to access the help they need, and increase our capacity to build homes and public infrastructure.

What needs to happen?

Here’s what the Activate Australia’s Skills campaign says are four key changes that need to take place:

• Establish one national governance system including an Ombudsman
• Create a seamless process with reduced red tape
• Remove cost and information barriers through financial support and an online portal
• Set up migrant employment pathways hubs with skills recognition navigators to get qualified people working in their professions again.

How you can help

Around you each day, are doctors, nurses, engineers, therapists and other professionals who have come here to make a positive difference. Not only are they qualified, experienced and ready to hit the ground running, they’ve already proved their commitment. Their courage. Their willingness to work.

You can help by signing an open letter here, on behalf of yourself or your business.

Spectrum is proud to support the Activate Australia’s Skills campaign, and we encourage you to join us.

Remember: skilled migrants aren’t waiting to be helped. They’re ready to help.