Employers of migrants and refugees in regional Australia: profit-minded, ethical, ethnicizing, or all of the above?

Employers play a key role in the current Australian immigration system by shaping the demand for specific skills and the actual immigration of large amounts of overseas migrants. They also influence the internal migration process of humanitarian entrants by facilitating relocation from metropolitan locations to work in regional locations. Beyond paid employment, some employers also provide informal settlement assistance to their recently arrived employees from overseas. This article explores the rationales that underpin these additional roles played by employers of new migrants in some regional locations. Based on recently completed, ARC-funded research on regional settlement in Australia, it highlights the complexity of employers' motivations, which are characterised by business rationales, moral and ethical considerations with some ethnic bias in the mix. Drawing on the perspectives of migrants and employers, the article shows how these seemingly contrasting considerations comfortably co-exist in a regulatory vacuum.