In 2005, in what is often perceived as having been a “thank you” for to Australia for its military support, President George W. Bush inaugurated what is known as the E-3 visa — a visa open exclusively to Australians that allows almost anyone with an appropriate job offer and a university degree to relocate to the United States, valid for two years and renewable indefinitely.
Whatever you think is Trump’s military strategy and however ambitiously you speculate that to be isolationist, the USA can’t give up the Western Pacific. I’m not here to give a long geo-political lesson, and remind folks how much trade and how much energy, flows through the critical maritime choke points to our north. Strategic competition or war in the Pacific with China, just like WW2, requires the geography of Australia. That’s why AUKUS will evolve considerably. It also draws the UK back East of Suez for its important role, not token ans nor just collaboratively, in the Indo-Pacific.
To tear up the E3 visa, in all its original Republican symbolism wouldn’t be worth the diplomatic absuridty and perhaps the controversy with the backdrop of the US-Australian alliance and evolving AUKUS.
What about the pilot market? Will they go to a special effort to “just ban” Aussie pilots from the E3 scheme. Everyone knows the majors will hire again and the shortage as significant as before.
I work for a company that has had 20% attrition when the majors hiring. Aussie attrition maybe a few % and they pass all their checks and don’t require months of additional training-hoovering up scarce resources. Many of local replacements ( for the locals that have left ) will leave too. Everyone knows this. And they leave without an ounce of loyalty, guilt or bond!
I also have an inkling, ALPA has surreptitiously with its machinations got the limits in recruiment it wants with the E3’s. This via actively having its reps lobby for changes in recruiment strategies.
I’ll put a bottle of Grange on the E3 Visa scheme not changing at all.
And the Irish are still in there with a shot! Two bills travelled to the House last month to let them take up the thousands of E3’s we annually don’t take up as Aussies.