Julia* thought long and hard before speaking out about the exploitation she experienced during her skilled sponsorship.
"I'm afraid that something could happen to me," she told The Business.
"But I'm so tired of seeing and hearing so many people in the same situation."
Julia is a skilled migrant worker from South America. She was offered a sponsorship in early 2020, working as an industrial designer.
She said was "excited" about the job offer, which provided a potential pathway to permanent residency in Australia.
The cashback request
As a sponsor, her employer was legally required to pay Julia $65,000 per annum for her position as well as sponsorship and visa nomination costs.
Instead, Julia said she was asked to "pay back" more than $20,000 for visa costs and to "refurbish" around $400 from each fortnightly pay packet.
She said was "afraid" of losing her job, and potentially her visa, so she paid the money.
A year later, she quit the job as a heavy workload and related stress took a toll on her mental health.
"I had to do many people's jobs because they were having a [staff] shortage in the company," she said.
"Many times, I said to them that I shouldn't work overtime hours, but they just said because I have the sponsorship visa, I have to fulfil that [need], because they were paying for it.
"All day, I was crying. It was really hard."
But Julia said she decided not to pursue legal action against her former employer, because she was scared that she would get deported.
While requiring a cashback for work sponsorship is unlawful, when an employee agrees to pay an employer's sponsorship fees they are also potentially breaching migration laws and regulations, and could face a penalty or visa cancellation.
'Employees on the hook'
Sharmilla Bargon, coordinator at Employment Rights Legal Service, said Julia's case is not unique and exposes some of the pitfalls of the skilled sponsorship scheme.
"The biggest issue with the sponsorship scheme is that employers have a lot of power, essentially employees are on the hook," the employment lawyer, who has seen thousands of similar cases, told the ABC.
"It is not just market pressures at play, you cannot just quit. For these workers, they have got so many more factors to consider, such as finding another role within 60 days and finding a role where someone will sponsor them.
"The power imbalance is critical and gives fertile ground for exploitation."
Laurie Berg is an associate professor in immigration and labour law at the University of Technology Sydney and is the co-executive director of the Migrant Justice Institute.
"It is monumentally unfair that when the employer of a skilled migrant does the wrong thing, and that even reporting that illegal conduct can lead the skilled migrant to lose their visa," she told the ABC.
"And the consequences for reporting exploitation are so much worse for the worker than the employer."
Migrant worker exploitation can take different forms, from wage theft to workplace injury and sexual harassment.
A recent Senate inquiry found migrant workers were particularly vulnerable to underpayment and exploitation.
Ms Berg said there have been many studies in recent years that demonstrate that wage theft, for instance, is "extremely prevalent" among migrant workers, but the extent of skilled migrant exploitation is still unknown.
"We truthfully don't know the numbers, because most migrant workers, including skilled migrant workers, don't come forward for fear of losing their visa or other repercussions, so that exploitation stays hidden," she said.
"We know that when these reports come to the media's attention. It's really the tip of a huge iceberg."
Complex legal process to navigate
For those who are willing to take legal action against their employers, experts say the process is "complicated, hard and long" and often cases are unresolved.
Migrant worker Sarah* has been in and out of tribunals and courts for the past five years, trying to appeal the immigration's decision to reject her permanent visa application.
Sarah said she was offered a skilled sponsorship in 2013, working as a marketing coordinator with an hourly rate of $15 – which was below the minimum wage at the time.
She alleged she was subjected to sexual harassment in her workplace for years which ultimately led to losing her job.
"He touched me while in the office and office kitchen," the South-East Asian worker told the ABC.
"I was embarrassed, and nobody helped me, I was scared [of speaking up because] I would have risked my visa.
"He knew he had the power to decide my fate, that's why he could do anything, and he can get away from anything."
Normally, after a certain number of years of working under the same sponsor, the worker can apply for their permanent residency, but they must be nominated by their employer.
In 2018, Sarah's employment ceased and, because of that, her permanent visa application was rejected by the Department of Immigration. She is now waiting for a hearing at a federal court for her appeal.
Sarah also lodged an unfair dismissal application to the Fair Work Commission seeking reinstatement and recovering claimed underpaid wages of more than $33,000 and unpaid superannuation of more than $10,000.
Migrant workers 'over-represented' in FWO
Lisa*, a massage therapist originally from South-East Asia, is another migrant worker alleging that she was sexual harassed while working under a sponsorship earlier this year.
"He pushed me against the wall, and press himself onto mine," she told the ABC.
"He asked for sex. Like, 'can we go and have sex? You don't need to tell anyone'."
She claimed the harassment went on for half a year until June, when she had a car accident that impacted her ability to go to work.
She is now taking legal action against her employer and has also lodged a complaint to regulator, the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), regarding her pay issues.
Data from the FWO shows in 2020-21, there were 18,696 completed disputes overall. Where visa holder status was captured, 19 per cent related to migrant workers.
"Migrant workers continue to be over-represented in the FWO's work, due to factors such as their limited knowledge about Australia's workplace rights and entitlements, and language and cultural barriers," a spokesperson told the ABC.
"For example, in 2020-2021, while visa holders made up only 4 per cent of the Australian workforce, 32 per cent of the matters we put in court involved visa holder workers, and the total amount recovered for visa holders was more than $820,000.
"We also secured more than $2 million in court-awarded penalties through litigations involving visa holders."
The FWO said it has an agreement with the Department of Home Affairs, called the Assurance Protocol, under which visa holders with work rights can seek assistance from the FWO without fear of their visa being cancelled.
A 2021 report from the Migrant Workers Centre, surveying more than 700 temporary visa holders, found on average, it takes migrant workers 5.1 years to acquire permanent residency, with the longest wait time being 13 years.
It said loopholes in employer sponsored visas leave workers vulnerable to exploitative bosses and visa scams and often tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
"For too long, Australia's temporary migration system has condemned migrants to living in limbo, in an endless cycle of temporary visas with limited workplace protections," the centre's chief executive, Matt Kunkel, told the ABC.
Calls for better visa and whistleblower protections
Earlier this month, the federal government announced at the jobs and skills summit that it would lift the permanent migration cap to 195,000 to address economy-wide skills shortages, but there are calls for protections to be increased to stop migrants being exploited.
Eighteen grassroots legal centres across the country have written a letter to the government, calling for key legal reforms, such as criminalising wage theft, allowing migrant workers to act against exploitative employers and extending the Fair Entitlements Guarantee to all employees, including those on temporary visas.
Ms Bargon is one of the signatories on the open letter. She said the group was seeking a key commitment from the government to provide effective visa protections for migrant workers.
"We need to provide visa comfort and protection to migrant workers that are brave enough to take steps to recover their unpaid entitlements and other workplace claims," she said.
Ms Berg said if the government wants to allow more workers to come to Australia, it needs to urgently fix the systemic problems that cause migrant worker exploitation to flourish in this country.
"The system is broken in a number of ways," she said.
"First, there are no visa protections for migrant workers who come forward and fear they might lose their visa for a range of reasons.
"There also is not an effective labour enforcement agency that they can go to and know that they're going to get assistance to pursue their claim or register a complaint.
"And there's also no way for them to clearly easily recover their wages from an employer, whether going to court to the Fair Work Ombudsman or another tribunal."
She added that if the government is not able to encourage migrant workers to come forward and report their employers' misconduct, there is little hope to detect the extent of labour exploitation, and even modern slavery, in this country.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles declined the interview with The Business due to the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II.
The federal government announced a review into Australia's immigration system after the job's summit earlier this month.
*Names of case studies have been changed for legal reasons
Watch the story on The Business tonight at 8:45pm AEST on ABC News Channel, or stream on ABC iview.
