" For example, the employment rate of humanitarian migrants from Afghanistan was recorded at only 9 per cent ... five years after settlement and nearly 94 per cent of households from Afghanistan received Centrelink payments…
Those from Iraq did little better, with 12 per cent employed and 93 per cent of households in receipt of Centrelink payments. Interestingly, those who did best in the humanitarian group were from Central and West African countries such as Sierra Leone.
Note that these refugees are the least likely to have arrived by boat…
Whereas the overall proportion of humanitarian migrant households in receipt of Centrelink payment was 85 per cent, the figure for the family group was 38 per cent and 28 per cent for the skilled group.
In other words, humanitarian migrant households were three times more likely to receive Centrelink payments than skilled migrant households, five years after settlement. (Note that skilled migrants are not entitled to receive Centrelink payments for the first two years of their residence.) Moreover, skilled migrants were more than five times likely to be in employment than refugees. "
