Oz Gov complains about less visitors, but is waay too strict

Over on The Register, there's a story about Sun MySQLers barred from Oz, which highlights how disfunctional Australia's visa system is. These people are smart, well paid and are going to spend money. With a world wide recession, this kinda of malarkey is costing Australian jobs, rather than protecting them.

Over Christmas, my brothers wife who is Indian and works in the states, couldn't get a tourist visa to come visit for one week. This is complicated because I think the shortest visa is three months and she only was coming for a week.

We sorted it out in the end, but I think both these stories really highlight how broken the system is. My brothers wife is bloody married to an Australian, how dumb is that!

Chris Evans, Where the bloody hell are you? sigh