SYDNEY: India and Australia have announced a migration deal to cement their economic cooperation.
The announcement came after Narendra Modi, Indian Prime Minister, met his counterpart Anthony Albanese on Wednesday in Sydney.
The deal aims to “promote the two-way mobility of business people, students, graduates, and academic researchers.”
They also discussed matters related to regional security amid rising regional tensions. Australia and India are part of the four-member Quad group, including the US and Japan.
A group meeting in Sydney was cancelled last week after US President Joe Biden had to return to Washington for debt ceiling talks.
Modi, however, continued his planned visit to Sydney after attending the G7 summit in Japan and travelling to Papua New Guinea.
This is Modi’s first visit to Australia since 2014, two months after Albanese visited India in March.
Negotiations for the migration agreement were ongoing for a couple of years. Australia already has a massive number of people who have migrated from India – census data indicates that of more than a million people who moved to Australia since 2016, almost a quarter were Indians.
According to a statement, the finalized migration agreement will also lead to a new scheme called MATES (Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early Professionals Scheme), which has been “specifically designed for India.”
The Indian prime minister on Tuesday said the two nations had also discussed increasing cooperation on mining and critical minerals and made progress in creating an Australia-India Green Hydrogen Taskforce.
Australia and India are also working towards a comprehensive economic cooperation deal for which negotiations began over a decade ago.
Thousands of members of the country’s Indian diaspora had flocked to one of Sydney’s most significant indoor stadiums on Tuesday to hear Modi speak at a rally there.
Albanese said at the event, “The last time I saw Bruce Springsteen on this stage, he did not get the welcome that PM Modi has.”
PM Modi called the Indian community in Australia “a living bridge” between the two nations. “The relationship between Australia and India is based on respect and mutual trust,” he said.
