Maria Zia is a vocational education trainer for international students in Brisbane and says her business, like many across the country, has been crippled by the halt to immigration during the pandemic.
"In March [2020], when we went into lockdown, we stopped receiving students from overseas … we had to lay off some staff," she said.
"I had a class of 60 that dropped down to six students.
"Because of a lack of international students, a lot of further industries got affected, mainly hospitality and tourism."
While borders have reopened and international students and workers can apply for visas to Australia, a backlog of applications has put further delays on what can already be a lengthy years-long approval process.
Ms Zia wants to see the government's visa approval process sped up because "we need skilled workers right now".
"It's not going to happen overnight, the labour shortage will take two to three years to overcome unless we expedite the migration process," she said.
"The visa rejection rates are very high. So the government need to assess that as well."
Migrants 'the backbone' of small business economy
The single biggest problem currently faced by small businesses is worker shortages, Alexi Boyd, CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA), said.
"It's an extreme situation for small businesses," Ms Boyd told the ABC.
While COSBOA has commended many of the structural reforms announced in last week's federal budget, Ms Boyd said it lacked immediate measures to address labour shortages.
"Migrants are the backbone of the small business economy," Ms Boyd said.
"There's a number of industries and a number of our members who have been calling for years now to have the skilled migration list increased for their particular industry."
The government has decided to keep the permanent migration cap at 160,000 places for 2022-23 but will increase the proportion of visas dedicated to skilled migrants to about 70 per cent.
"The Morrison government's migration program will focus on skilled migration, with a return to a pre-pandemic composition of roughly two-thirds/one-third across the skill and family streams," Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said.
Ms Boyd said there needed to be more investment in resources for speeding up visa processing and simplifying the process for hiring a skilled worker from overseas.
A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said the 2022-23 migration program would focus on addressing critical skill shortages and the increase in places would help reduce the number of pending applications.
Visa backlog blamed for unchanged intake
There had been calls from industry groups for the ceiling on the migrant intake to be lifted to 190,000, where it was in 2018-19.
Australian Industry Group CEO Innes Willox said a restored focus on skilled migration was welcome, but it would not be enough to fill the labour and skill shortages.
"Business in particular will be hoping that this number can be raised as quickly as possible," Mr Willox said in a statement.
The government has acknowledged the importance of migration to address workforce shortages and jump-start the economy after pandemic border closures.
However, a backlog in visa processing has been blamed for figures remaining at 2020-21 levels.
Gabriela D'Souza, senior economist at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, said the government had a lot of catching up to do.
"About 54 per cent of their staff that were usually approving visas were redirected into approving travel exemptions, or reviewing travel exemptions, so that clearly has left a bit of a capability issue," she said.
"I think a lot of people kind of assume that we flick the switch on migration and everything can go back to normal, but in reality people still need visas to enter, and those visas would need to be approved by the department and it's just not happening that quickly."
International students used as a stopgap
The government has turned to international students and backpackers to help fill the gaps.
It has offered to refund the visa application costs of international students who arrived between January 19 and March 19 this year, and for working holiday-makers who arrive by April 19.
Earlier in the year, the 40-hour-a-fortnight work cap for student visa holders was also lifted in a bid to fill skills shortages.
But some international students say they feel unappreciated and more should be done to support their long-term prospects — especially given the contribution they are now making to the workforce.
Ms Boyd said it was to the benefit of small businesses to have more pathways to citizenship in place.
"Migrants are the ones who are ready and willing to step up to start up their own businesses ... they bring with them a certain set of skills," she said.
"Wouldn't it be great if we could increase their pathway to citizenship to enable that to happen more easily?
"It gives surety, it allows people to come here with a certain set of skills that small businesses really need or can't manage in the Australian context."
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Kristina Keneally said she was concerned that Australia was becoming a country where would-be immigrants were "locked in temporariness".
"It used to be the case in Australia, that people who came here on a temporary basis had pathways to permanency," she said.
"Those pathways have narrowed, it has become harder and harder for people to become permanent residents and citizens of Australia.
"It's creating a class of people who are permanently temporary, and keeping them in a limbo is a profoundly un-Australian approach to migration."
