SYDNEY — For years, the working-holiday visa was the closest thing the international travel industry had to a promise: a year in Australia, a job in a fruit orchard or a fish-and-chip shop, and the option to stay for a second or even a third year, if you had done the work. This week, the government introduced a new rule that turns that third year into a lottery, and the backpackers, who have been treating the third year as a given for as long as there have been backpackers, have started, in the words of one of them, “stressing out.”
The change, announced by the Home Affairs Minister, caps the number of extended working-holiday visas at 5,000 a year, down from the roughly 31,000 that had been granted. To be eligible for the 5,000, a backpacker has to pay a fee to enter a ballot — a lottery — for a chance to win one of the 5,000. The fee, the rules, and the odds have not, in fact, changed the fact that the backpackers are now in a lottery, and the lottery is now a thing, and the thing is now a panic, and the panic is now, in the words of the 25-year-old waitress working toward the 88-day target, “everyone is talking about that. The mood is low.”
The mood is low because the mood was, until this week, high, and the high mood was, in a sense, the entire point of the working-holiday visa, which is to say the visa was a thing that let a person come to Australia for a year, and then stay, and then stay again, and the third year was the year that made the first two years feel like a choice, and not just a year. The lottery, by contrast, is a thing that makes the third year feel like a scratch-off ticket, and the scratch-off ticket is a thing that is, in a sense, a thing that you buy, and then you hope, and then you find out, and then the finding out is the part that the mood is low about.
The government’s stated reason for the lottery is a crackdown on overstayers, which is to say the reason is the people who stay longer than the visa lets them stay, and the crackdown is, in a sense, a thing that is aimed at the overstayers, and the overstayers are, in a sense, a thing, and the thing is now a lottery, and the lottery is now aimed, in a sense, at the people who were not overstayers, which is to say the lottery is, in a sense, a thing that has, in a sense, caught the wrong people, which is to say the people who were doing the work — the 88 days of work, the fruit, the fish and chips — are now the people who have to enter the lottery, and the lottery is now the thing that the work was supposed to avoid.
The 5,000 visas are, in a sense, a number, and the number is, in a sense, small, and the smallness of the number is, in a sense, the point, because the point is that the third year, which was, until this week, a thing that 31,000 people got, is now a thing that 5,000 people can hope to get, and the 5,000 is now a lottery, and the lottery is now a fee, and the fee is now a thing, and the thing is now a panic.
The backpackers, for their part, have, in a sense, done the work. The work is the 88 days, and the 88 days are, in a sense, a thing that they did, and the doing of the thing is, in a sense, the thing that was supposed to be the ticket to the third year, and now the ticket is a lottery, and the lottery is a fee, and the fee is a thing, and the thing is a panic, and the panic is a mood, and the mood is low.
At press time, the ballot had not opened, the fee had not been paid, and the 5,000 visas had not been drawn, which is to say the lottery is, in a sense, still a thing that has not happened, and the thing that has not happened is, in a sense, the thing that the mood is low about, and the low mood is, in a sense, the thing that is, in a sense, now the thing.