Australia offers regional visa schemes for skilled migrants who reside in nonmetropolitan Australia for a minimum of 2 years to alleviate nonmetropolitan depopulation and skills shortages. To assess the efficacy of this program in attracting and retaining migrants, we apply survival analysis to administrative longitudinal microdata from the Person Level Integrated Data Asset linked to census data from 2010 to 2020. We find that this program attracts few new migrants to regional Australia given that over 80% of regional visa holders applied onshore. Furthermore, close to 65% were already in a nonmetropolitan region for an average of 2 years while the remainder took on average 7 months to relocate to a nonmetropolitan area from overseas or from within Australia. While nonmetropolitan retention is high — 70% after 10 years — it is significantly lower in remote and very remote regions, and it is lower than the Australian population at large, suggesting limited policy efficacy in retaining rural populations in the long term. We also identify a negative selection, with migrants with low English proficiency being more likely to remain in nonmetropolitan regions, which suggests a possible segmentation of nonmetropolitan labor markets where migrants are concentrated in low-wage sectors. Two policy levers emerge to improve retention: (1) targeting co-ethnic communities and (2) focusing on young families with children. The mixed results from this policy evaluation highlight the difficulties of stimulating nonmetropolitan population growth via immigration.

中文翻译：

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基于签证的分散政策是否能有效地吸引和留住澳大利亚农村地区的技术移民？


澳大利亚为在澳大利亚非大都市居住至少 2 年的技术移民提供区域签证计划，以缓解非大都市人口减少和技能短缺。为了评估该计划在吸引和留住移民方面的有效性，我们将生存分析应用于与 2010 年至 2020 年人口普查数据相关的个人层面综合数据资产中的行政纵向微观数据。我们发现，鉴于超过 80% 的区域签证持有人在境内申请，该计划很少吸引新移民到澳大利亚偏远地区。此外，近 65% 的人已经在非大都市地区平均工作了 2 年，而其余的人平均需要 7 个月才能从海外或澳大利亚境内搬迁到非大都市地区。虽然非大都市居民的保留率很高——10 年后为 70%，但在偏远和非常偏远的地区，这一比例明显较低，并且低于澳大利亚总人口的水平，这表明长期留住农村人口的政策效果有限。我们还确定了一个负面选择，即英语熟练度低的移民更有可能留在非大都市地区，这表明移民集中在低工资部门的非大都市劳动力市场可能存在细分。出现了两个提高留存率的政策杠杆：（1） 针对同族社区和 （2） 关注有孩子的年轻家庭。这项政策评估的结果喜忧参半，凸显了通过移民刺激非大都市人口增长的困难。