Our work drives significant changes to laws, policies and standards that reduce exploitation and empower migrant workers to access justice in Australia and globally.
Impact highlights
Australia adopts MJI’s model for visa protections that enable migrant workers to address exploitation. Decriminalisation of undocumented work in Australia, implementing our recommendations over many years
New federal laws establish that everyone in Australia is entitled to basic protections at work regardless of immigration status, flowing from our research and advice to government.
MJI’s global research on migrant wage theft directly leads to issuance of a new International Labour Organization guidance on international labour standards for migrant workers.
The federal government reverses its exclusion of international students from JobKeeper during COVID lockdowns as a result of our survey of 6,000 migrant workers that demonstrated a humanitarian crisis.
A dedicated legal service for migrant workers in NSW is established as an explicit response to our research demonstrating lack of support for exploited international students following the 7-Eleven wage theft scandal.
“[MJI’s] work brought home to the federal and state governments the magnitude
of the humanitarian crisis… an outstanding, positive policy impact in
addressing inequality.”
Edward Santow, Australian Human Rights Commissioner (2016-2021)