What The TEMi Immigration Survey Tells Us About Employer Pressure In 2026

Australian employers are not dealing with one immigration change at a time.

They are dealing with a system that is becoming more expensive, more procedural, and harder to manage in isolation. For many businesses, that pressure is now showing up across hiring, retention, workforce planning, compliance, and international mobility at the same time.

That is what makes the new work coming out of the TEMi Immigration Advisory Group worth paying attention to.

The Employee Mobility Institute, led by founder and CEO Deborah de Cerff, has created a forum for employer voices to be heard more directly in immigration discussions. That work has been supported by Jamie Lingham in his role as TEMi Immigration Liaison Officer, and by the wider advisory group, which includes Jackson Taylor of Roam Migration Law.

The value of that initiative is simple. It reflects what employers are dealing with on the ground.

According to the TEMi survey, skilled migration is not being used as a substitute for local hiring. It remains a practical response to ongoing talent shortages.

Employers are still relying heavily on overseas talent, while facing rising pressure from cost, delay, procedural complexity, and compliance demands.

That combination is the real story in 2026.

Too often, immigration updates are read as isolated developments. A fee goes up. A threshold changes. A process tightens. A travel issue appears. A review pathway shifts. Each update gets discussed on its own.

That is not how employers experience them. In practice, these changes land together.

A business hiring graduates feels the impact of higher visa costs. A business using training pathways feels the impact of stricter sequencing rules. A sponsor planning future recruitment has to budget for threshold increases that affect role design and commercial planning. Teams managing travel need to account for processing delays and changing entry risks. Employers preparing applications or review material need to assume the written case carries even more weight than before.

This is no longer a matter of tracking policy updates. It is a matter of whether the business is structured well enough to absorb them.

Take cost pressure first.

The increase in Temporary Graduate visa application charges from 1 March 2026 affects more than individual applicants. It affects graduate hiring pathways, workforce budgets, and retention decisions. The expected increase to the Core Skills Income Threshold and Specialist Skills Income Threshold from 1 July 2026 adds another layer.

For employers, this is not abstract policy movement. It has a direct effect on workforce cost, candidate planning, and sponsorship settings.

Then there is planning pressure.

The overhaul of the Training visa, subclass 407, means sponsorship and nomination now need to be approved before visa lodgement. That demands earlier preparation and tighter sequencing. Businesses that have been used to moving quickly at the point of offer or mobilisation now need to build more lead time into the process. The same is true for travel.

If Bridging Visa B applications are taking four to five weeks without follow-up, travel planning becomes an operational issue, not a last-minute admin step.

There is also decision pressure and compliance pressure.

The TEMi update points to more ART matters being decided on the papers. That raises the standard for written material from the outset. It also highlights a broader point. In a tighter system, weak preparation is more costly. Employers and visa holders have less room for reactive fixes.

The same applies to compliance and mobility risk. Arrival control settings, even where limited in current application, are another reminder that a valid visa does not always settle the practical question of movement. For employers with international workforces, the issue is no longer whether immigration sits inside legal or HR. It sits across legal, HR, mobility, operations, and workforce strategy.

That is where many organisations still get caught.

The risk is not always one major mistake. Often, it is fragmentation.

Recruitment is handled in one part of the business. Sponsorship sits with another team. Travel sits elsewhere. Compliance reporting is pushed into the background until there is a problem. By the time the pressure shows up, the business is reacting under time stress.

That approach is getting harder to sustain.

The stronger employers in 2026 will be the ones that stop treating immigration as a separate legal process and start treating it as part of workforce design. They will plan earlier. They will budget more accurately. They will tighten internal approvals. They will make sure recruitment, mobility, and compliance teams are not operating in silos.

That does not remove complexity. It puts the business in a better position to manage it.

This is also where there is real value in employer-led discussion through forums like the TEMi Immigration Advisory Group. The policy environment is one part of the picture. The operational reality for employers is the other. Bringing those two closer together gives government a clearer view of what businesses are managing in real time, and gives employers a stronger voice in the discussion.

From Roam’s perspective, the message is clear.

Immigration in 2026 is not a background function. It is part of workforce planning.

For employers, that means three things.

• Review current workforce plans against cost change. Do not wait until a nomination, offer, or visa stage to think about pricing pressure.
• Tighten process timing. Training pathways, sponsorship steps, travel approvals, and application preparation all need more lead time than many businesses assume.
• Treat immigration compliance as an operating discipline. It should sit inside workforce planning, not beside it.

The employers who do that well will be in a stronger position to hire, move people, manage risk, and make decisions with more confidence.

That is the broader point raised by the TEMi survey.

The pressure employers are facing is real. It is layered. It is not limited to one visa program or one policy change.

And it is now shaping business decisions far beyond immigration alone.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.