Any and every opportunity to improve the lives of ordinary Samoans is always welcome and any government that is truly representative of its people should not get in the way of citizens’ attempts to better their lives. 

A government that aspires to improve the lives of its people should empower them by creating pathways for them to realise their dreams and potential to become successful in life, which would see them contributing to nation-building and ensuring the country’s prosperity.

The above should form the basis of any economic policy that the Samoa government now or in the future would formulate and implement. International migration could be one of those pathways with multiple global case studies showing how the movement of families for greener pastures abroad outside of their home countries results in more remittances, which in turn can lead to increased income and poverty reduction for families as well as improved health and education outcomes.

Using the above context how should Samoa and other Pacific Island nations see Australia’s Pacific Engagement Visa? We ask this question because last week Australia’s Labour government claimed a major foreign policy victory after the federal parliament in Canberra passed key legislation to introduce the Pacific Engagement Visa. 

This new visa category will open the door to 3,000 people from the Pacific to settle permanently in Australia every year.

In a story in yesterday’s edition of the Samoa Observer, Australia’s Pacific Affairs Minister Pat Conroy hailed the passage of the new law as a crucial part of the Albanese government's efforts to build a Pacific diaspora in Australia.

"This was a policy we took to the last election, and it is revolutionary in nature," he told the ABC. "People-to-people links are one of the critical ways we rebuild links with the Pacific and are the partner of choice."

Under a proposed two-stage process, thousands of workers and their families from across the Pacific will be offered a path to permanent residency under a visa scheme which the government hopes to have running by mid-year 2024.

But what are the likely ramifications for a small and vulnerable tourism-dependent economy like Samoa’s when contextualised with Australia’s Pacific Engagement Visa and the bid by the Labour federal government in Canberra to “build” the Pacific diaspora in Australia?

While we cannot deny the positive impact of remittances on the Samoan economy – and how it acted as a safety net for many Samoan families during the two-year COVID-19 pandemic – leaders in both Samoa’s government and the private sectors have expressed concern at any attempts to push for permanent migration of Samoans to the region’s bigger and more developed economies.

Prime Minister, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa in an interview with the Australian state broadcaster ABC late August this year, expressed her opposition to skilled workers from Samoa moving to Australia and Pacific Island nations being used as “outposts where we grow people.”

"You know, either to send them off as sportspeople or to send them off as labour mobility teams and so forth, as though that's our lot in life," she said. "I really don't like that."

Late last month, Samoa Chamber of Commerce President, Seulupe Michelle Macdonald in a panel discussion on the Samoan economy also raised concerns about the depletion of the local labour workforce to seasonal work schemes, as well as the migration of skilled and semi-skilled labour from Samoa.

"You are talking about labour mobility, we are actually being hit by the cost of doing training, loss of labour, we are also being hit by the fact that we have to, even recruit these people,” said Seulupe. “The reality is these people are not even here for nine months, now three-year schemes which was not the original design of the R.S.E. programmes so it is a real double-edged sword.”

Now that Australia’s federal parliament has enacted the legal framework governing the Pacific Engagement Visa, the Samoa government should meet with the Australian government to discuss the finer details of the new visa scheme, in order to avoid the country’s labour workforce being totally decimated over time.

Like all laws enacted by a parliament, the devil is in the details so getting the Australian government leadership to throw more light on the new visa regime, and what it would mean for interested Samoans should be the first course of action undertaken by both parties.

With over 6,000 Samoans currently working abroad – most of them in seasonal work schemes in Australia and New Zealand – this number represents 3 per cent of the country’s total population and a mammoth 14 per cent of Samoa’s total employment numbers.

Surely, both the Samoa and Australian governments can find the middle ground to get the best of this opportunity, which the Pacific Engagement Visa now offers to citizens. But this should be without adding to the pressures already being felt by Samoa’s fledgling private sector, which successive governing administrations have described as the “backbone of the economy”.