
Irish vet fails oral English test needed to stay in Australia - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/08/computer-says-no-irish-vet-fails-oral-english-test-needed-to-stay-in-australia
======
beilabs
"One of the first pieces of legislation passed in the new Federal Parliament
was the Immigration Restriction Act. Now known as the infamous White Australia
Policy it made it very difficult for Asians and Pacific Islanders to migrate
to Australia. This Act stated that if a person wanted to migrate to Australia
they had to be given a dictation test. The dictation test could be in any
European language. So a person from China or Japan who wanted to live in
Australia could be tested in one or all of French, Italian or English
languages."

Granted this was well over a hundred years ago however I feel that the
Australian attitude to migrants is still quite unfriendly. They're making it
more and more difficult to migrate there even if you have roots in the country
especially if you are from a non English speaking country.

Source: Am Irish and went through the Australian immigration process years
ago.

~~~
grecy
Don't be mistaken, Australia has the 12th highest immigration rate of all
countries per capita. [1]

and the 8th highest immigration of all countries, regardless of population.
(also [1]).

Australia has a massive, massive amount of immigration.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate#Countries)

~~~
adventured
edit: I was wrong regarding Wikipedia's data.

Australia has a cap on permanent immigration per year of around 200,000. That
Wikipedia page is claiming 45 per 1,000 inhabitants, which gets you closer to
one million net migration. That conveniently ignores the far more important
number: how many people are actually allowed to stay on a permanent basis?

Further, about half those ~200,000 allocated per year go to people already in
Australia.

Back in reality, Australia is extremely restrictive when it comes to allowing
permanent immigration. It has a lot of temporary work immigration.

[https://insidestory.org.au/how-many-migrants-come-to-
austral...](https://insidestory.org.au/how-many-migrants-come-to-australia-
each-year/)

~~~
grecy
That wikipedia page stats are over a 5 year period, for every country

So the 1,023,107 listed from 2007-2012 is 204,621 per year.

Sounds spot on to me.

> _Further, about half those ~200,000 per year go to people already in
> Australia_

Sure, but they are not permanent in Australia, and immigration means they
became permanent. It's not really relevant where they started from.

Australia is allowing ~1 million people each 5 years to becoming permanent,
which is a huge number... in fact 8th in the world overall.

It's the same for every other country, so the comparison to other countries is
still spot on.

~~~
adventured
Correct you are. I thought the wiki reference was annual, having to do with
the far larger temporary work immigration that Australia allows.

------
roel_v
Reminds me of a Belgian guy who was in the papers a few years ago, who had to
pass an 'integration test' before he could get Dutch citizenship. Part of that
test is a language test (people from the north of Belgium, i.e. Flanders,
speak Dutch - it's the same language as the one spoken in the Netherlands. So,
like the woman in the OP, he had to take an exam on his mother tongue, and
with much less of an accent than an Irish accent is as compared to the Queen's
English). If you have a degree (even just a high school degree) from a Dutch
language school, you're exempt, but this guy didn't so he wasn't (this
exemption was put in to basically avoid situations like this, under the
assumption that the vast majority of people would have a high school degree).

Either way, he failed the test a few times; reason being that this
'integration test' doesn't just cover language skills, but also things like
'knowledge of Dutch society'. For example, you get 3 pictures of a front yard
of a house, with varying degrees of clutter on them (like a children's bike
and a garbage bin with the lid open). Question being: how are you supposed to
maintain your yard, like in picture A, B or C? Most (Dutch) people I've given
the test failed it because the questions are so ridiculous. It's quite lulzy
actually. Well not for that Belgian guy I presume.

~~~
cr1895
Hang on now...I thought only non-EU people must do the inburgering nonsense?
Or does it also apply to anyone who wants to get citizenship?

~~~
kleebeesh
EU citizens can travel freely regardless of citizenship, but getting
citizenship in another country is a separate process.

~~~
roel_v
Yeah this. You can live anywhere in the EU but every member state is free to
determine criteria for getting citizenship.

------
grecy
I'm Australian and got very close to needing an English test to get Residency
in Canada. I was getting residency because I was working as an Engineer and my
company was sponsoring me. I have an Engineering degree from an English-
speaking country (Australia), and had been working for the company for ~2
years, of course in English. Both of those things counted for nothing.

I would have had to to fly ~2500km, pay for the tests etc. (I was living in
Northern Canada.. weekend trips to Alaska means driving due South)

I spoke to multiple people on the phone and in person (in English) and not a
single one was able in any way to do anything to intervene. There was no
possibility of me doing the test over skype video chat to avoid the expensive
flight

Rules are rules, don't dare to interpret their intent. This applies doubly
when dealing with Immigration.

Canada have now tightened the rules significantly, and it's my understanding
if I applied now, I would be forced to take that English test.

~~~
morgo
Also Australian in Canada. I sat the mandatory English test, with a number of
others that were native speakers.

It is a ~$300 test too.

~~~
grecy
ugh, sorry to hear that.

Out of curiosity, did you ace the test? I at least was hoping to do that.

~~~
morgo
Highest mark: 12/12

------
ainiriand
I live in Dublin and I can barely understand native Irish people either. I
side with the computer.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
"I live in Dublin and I can barely understand native Irish people either."

People in Dublin itself are widely regarded to have a neutral-sounding, easily
understandable English. Indeed, Dubliners are conspicuously prominent in ESL
teaching around the world for that reason. It is when one gets out of Dublin
that accents begin to be more challenging for people accustomed only to
mainstream US or UK pronunciations.

~~~
s_kilk
Very much depends. Some of the middle-class neighbourhoods produce a fairly
neutral accent, but most dubliners speak in a very heavy accent, arguably one
of the heaviest in the country.

~~~
linker3000
You've clearly not been to Cork [edit..] or Kerry!

~~~
s_kilk
Yeah, both are pretty bad (I was born and raised in Ireland), but the north
Dublin accent holds a special place in my heart for sheer badness.

------
afandian
"Pearson has categorically denied there is anything wrong with its computer-
based test or the scoring engine trained to analyse candidates’ responses."

Surely that lack of self-questioning makes them categorically unsuitable to do
the job. By refusing to acknowledge that there's room for process improvement,
that signals that they don't care about quality.

------
lawless123
Seems a bit mad to make a private company the gatekeeper.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
I have no idea why this news is titled "Computer says no". For the speaking
part it's humans evaluating the results. That said you are right on point
about private company being the gatekeeper.

IELTS raised the fees more than 300% in the last few years. They now cost
around $330 per exam and they always invariably fail you the first time
around. You are allowed to take as many tests as you need. Conveniently you
pass after a few tries.

I know competent English teachers who grew up in Australia failing this test
few times. And equally I know very few migrants from third world countries
passing the test even if English is their first language.

It's more of a blatant money making scheme than anything else and quite
obviously the department of immigration must charge IELTS for allowing it to
be one of the English examiner.

Just follow the money and you have all the answers.

~~~
SmallDeadGuy
> it is the only one that uses voice recognition technology to test speaking
> ability

> Other test providers have said they use human assessors

No, the article clearly states that the test in question used voice
recognition on a computer. Other companies use human evaluations, however this
one didn't.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
This is what I disagreed with. Afaik, everything else is marked by computers
but voice was always handled by humans.

Unless this is something very recent in which case I am not sure how computers
can handle accents or ambiguous words. Even google's voice to text has so many
errors on untrained voice models

------
zapt02
The issue here is that whoever drafted the rules did not think to offer an
easy way to appeal the results. If the person in the article could have just
said "can I have a human do this next time" there wouldn't have been a
problem. This is what happens when non-technical people that have too much
faith in technology draft policies.

------
verytrivial
This is a story about how voice recognition has failed and should not have
been used in this situation.

I was very surprised to hear that this was even permitted a method for the
outsourcing provider, but then again Australia has a poor and somehow still
worsening relationship with immigration, so perhaps I'm more accurately "re-
dissapointed" by this revelation (as an expat Australian).

~~~
imglorp
If this was the US, an unsatisfactory vendor would almost certainly be there
because of some political crony situation. Sometimes merit has no bearing on
goverment procurement.

------
thriftwy
For me it seems like a conspiracy of immigration (in different countries)
where whatever rules are passed down to them, they'll going to bend them to
let as much ineligible people as possible while taking pride in rejecting
obvious good fits. And then you would wonder why citizens distrust immigration
to provide healthy addition to their society.

Not unlike some professors who take an easy pass on dullards while throwing
all their wrath at students with signs of self-learning. Those people are
actively sabotaging the system they're part of.

~~~
lawless123
>For me it seems like a conspiracy of immigration (in different countries)
where whatever rules are passed down to them, they'll going to bend them to
let as much ineligible people as possible while taking pride in rejecting
obvious good fits

I think you're just making things up.

------
danieltillett
What I don't understand is why vets are considered in short supply in
Australia. Graduates vets out of uni struggle to get jobs here.

~~~
roel_v
'Hairdresser' is also considered to be in short supply. Here's a list of all
occupations (in case you didn't know): [https://www.nwivisas.com/nwi-
blog/australia/australian-skill...](https://www.nwivisas.com/nwi-
blog/australia/australian-skilled-occupation-list-2017-2018/) . This list had
a bunch of occupations removed earlier this year; bad news for everybody
looking to emigrate to Oz to take up a lucrative career in picture framing,
because "Picture Framer" is no longer eligible for a 457 visa.

I realize that your actual remark is to the 'why' of some professions being on
this list, I'm just pointing the above out for non-Australians like myself who
might be amused by these things when seeing them for the first time, like I
was.

~~~
magicbuzz
Chicken Farmers are in short supply apparently.

~~~
danieltillett
Chicken farmers are not in short supply. What is in short supply are people
willing to work as chicken farmers for chicken feed (sorry for the pun).

------
unwttng
[https://youtu.be/5FFRoYhTJQQ](https://youtu.be/5FFRoYhTJQQ)

~~~
slindz
For the curious:

Comedic bit about voice activated elevators. In Scotland

