India and Australia last week inked a migration and mobility partnership pact to open up opportunities for students, academic researchers and business people.

Under the new scheme, Indian graduates of Australian tertiary institutions on a student visa can apply to work and pursue professional development without visa sponsorship for up to eight years.

This is slated to begin from 1 July this year.

The programme will also include a new pilot program MATES (Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early-professionals Scheme) that will have an annual cap of 3,000 places for four years.

MATES will offer a new mobility pathway for Indian graduates and early career professionals with knowledge and skills in targeted fields of study to live and work in Australia for up to two years.

According to reports, the first list of eligible educational qualifications covers renewable energy, mining, engineering, ICT, artificial intelligence, FinTech, AgriTech. More areas will be added at a later date by a joint working group.In April, Australia proposed overhauling its immigration system to speed up getting highly skilled workers into the country and smoothening the path to permanent residency.The federal Labor government said the current system used to select skilled migrants – the points test – will be modified to identify people with the correct skill sets the Australian economy needs going forward.

The government said the visa process for high-skilled professionals will be made quicker and easier, while steps would be taken to retain international students.

Temporary skilled visa holders, who had been denied even the opportunity to apply for permanent residency, will be able to do that by the end of this year, O’Neil said. But it will not add to Australia’s annual intake of permanent migrants, she said.

In September last year, Australia raised its intake of permanent migrants to 195,000 this financial year, up by 35,000, to help businesses battling widespread staff shortages and pledged more staff and funds to speed up visa processing.