Sydney - Immigrants everywhere complain about having to drive taxis despite having the paper qualifications for better paid jobs. Poor English largely explains the discrepancy in Australia, according to a recent survey by demographer Bob Birrell of Melbourne's Monash University.
But poor communication skills is not the whole story. A new Australian National University (ANU) study shows employers discriminating against those who don't have Anglo-Saxon-sounding names.
"To get the same number of interviews as an applicant with an Anglo-Saxon name, a Chinese applicant must submit 68 per cent more applications," ANU economist Andrew Leigh said.
Leigh has just published his results after sending out 4,000 resumes to employers who had advertised for restaurant staff, data-entry people and openings for other semi-skilled workers.
"What we did with the CVs was we changed the name to denote ethnicity," he explained. "So, for example, one CV might carry the name Brian Robinson and another CV might carry the name Bilal Kasir and then that allows us to look at whether or not hiring discrimination varies systematically with the ethnicity of the name on the CV."
The most discriminated against were Chinese.
"It did surprise me," Professor Leigh said. "My stereotype had been that you would discriminate in favour of them (Chinese) rather than against. They are hardworking and conscientious."
One explanation could be that Chinese are recent migrants and the big influx could raise fears - as right-wing politician Pauline Hanson deliberately did in 1996 - that Australia is being "swamped by Asians."
Leigh found that Middle Eastern applicants had to submit 64 per cent more resumes, Aborigines had to send in 35 per cent more and Italian applicants 12 per cent more (the Italians faced less discrimination because the big migrations came in the immediate post-war period and in the 1950s).
The simple conclusion from the study was that employers were discriminating on the basis of race. "There is no other reasonable interpretation of our results."
But, as Leigh pointed out, "it's not clear whether our findings are driven by a small number of employers who are very strongly discriminating or a large number of employers who are potentially discriminating just subconsciously."
In subconscious discrimination, Leigh explained, people make snap decisions on the basis of familiarity. "A quick rule of thumb is that you know to run to the people with the same colour," he said.
The ANU study deliberately allayed the fears of potential employers that applicants with foreign-sounding names would have poor English. None was identified as a new migrant; all had been through Australian high schools.
"It's possible you could still say that they would have inferior communications skills, but if you looked at the CV you couldn't conclude that," Leigh said.
It's not the first study to look at racism in Australia and find discrimination.
Sydney-based market research firm Crosby-Textor published a survey two years ago that showed Australians like best those people who lived a long way away or those who were near and shared a similar culture, language and history. The British were tops followed by New Zealanders and Americans. The Chinese were rated only half as nice as the British.
To put racism into context, Leigh said that Anglo-Saxon jobseekers are now getting a taste of the sort of economy that the Chinese and Middle Eastern jobseekers faced before the recession. It was hard for them in the boom times - it's even harder now.
