Xaviera's average day at work is always a busy one.
The 36-year-old chef is on her feet all day, cooking breakfast and lunch at a café in northern NSW.
She arrived from the Netherlands in 2016 as a student and secured a temporary skill shortage visa as a chef in April 2021.
"Sometimes I'm doing 150 meals a day and there's almost no break to go to the toilet, and it's not an easy job," she said.
She is one of the thousands of people in Australia filling critical staff gaps that arose since the COVID-19 pandemic, under the temporary skill shortage visa (subclass 482).
Xaviera said due to her heavy workload, only people with high levels of "work ethic" would persevere to ensure paving a clear pathway to permanent residency.
But a new report by the Grattan Institute has recommended Australia should prevent low-skilled migrants from being granted temporary skilled shortage visas.
The report released this week has recommended Australia should prioritise higher-skilled migrants who can earn $70,000 or more per year, to prevent worker exploitation and to ensure better pathways are created for permanent residency.
"Australia has the worst of both worlds when it comes to temporary skilled migration policy," lead author of the report and Economic Policy Program director Brendan Coates said.
"Targeting higher-wage migrants will better address most genuine skills shortages that emerge," the report read.
"Restricting sponsorship of low-skilled migrants would reduce the risks of exploitation, so the program would become more politically palatable."
But Xaviera said this policy would exclude chefs like her, whose skills are much-needed in Australia and would not be earning $70,000 per year.
"Most chefs or cooks will earn less than $70,000 ... not all cafés would be able to afford that," she said.
"I think you really need to offer [this] type of visa for the hospitality industry, for people [with] lower pay."
The report recommended there should be a transition away from the temporary skilled shortage visa, phased over time, and be replaced with a "temporary skilled worker visa" to encompass broader high-skilled roles in Australia.
These recommendations would ensure fewer migrants would be exploited for their work, with the current salary threshold of the visa being at $53,900 a year, according to the report.
One of the report's authors Will Mackey said about 80 per cent of full-time jobs in Australia earn more than $53,900, "indicating that the [current] threshold is too low to signify high-skilled work" and noting that it hasn't been linked to wage increases since it was frozen in 2013.
But experts have expressed their concern at the report that highlights the "key" to improving temporary skilled migration is to "stop sponsoring low-skill, low-wage temporary skilled migrants".
Laurie Nowell is the public affairs manager at AMES Australia, a refugee and migrant settlement support centre. He said Australia is in urgent need of "critical workers" who may not be regarded as "high-skilled".
"We know that there are some jobs where there are clear shortages where we can't find enough people to fill the vacancies that exist in healthcare, aged care and child care," Mr Nowell told SBS News.
"We've seen, after the COVID pandemic, the need for hospitality and agricultural workers, and how much these workers underpin our broader economy."
A report by the Committee of Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) released in August 2021 warned that Australia currently needs 17,000 more aged care workers to meet basic standards of care.
By 2050, it is estimated Australia will need 400,000 more aged care workers — a critical shortage that must be filled to accommodate the country's ageing population.
According to CEDA, 30 per cent of the aged care workforce are migrants, highlighting the need for more low-skilled staff in Australia.
Abul Rizvi, former deputy secretary of the immigration department, echoed those concerns.
"Over the long-term, the big increasing demand in terms of skilled temporary visas will be aged care workers and aged care nurses," he said.
"It’s not clear to me that the changes proposed adequately cater for that really important group for our future."
But Mr Mackey said: "Australia is facing a crisis of workers in aged care. But it is not a crisis caused by temporary skilled migration, and should not be solved using temporary skilled migration.
"The solution to ensuring the longevity and growth of the aged care workforce is to improve wages and conditions rather than expanding the temporary skilled migration program to cover low-wage jobs."
Mr Nowell agreed with the report's findings that more care should be taken to ensure temporary skilled shortage visa holders are not exploited, but not at the expense of migrants who are lower-skilled.
"If we support [migrants] with things like skills recognition, mentoring, workplace experience and opportunities, I think it could have a real effect and it's a net benefit to the nation to be able to use the skills and experience that migrants bring."
Xaviera also said more needs to be done to ensure people who are working under an employer sponsorship arrangement have appropriate mechanisms in place to report worker misconduct, without risking the opportunity of receiving permanent residency.
"If there would be some sort of organisation where visa holders can go to and talk about this if there's a problem without risking the employer to be able to cancel the visa or just stop working with them ... that would be a really good addition," she said.
