The Federal Government's new Temporary Skills Shortage visas, which have replaced the 457 visas that were being used to bring in technology and other workers from outside the country, appear to be taking a very long time to be processed if at all, sources tell iTWire.

The president of IT workers' lobby group IT Professionals Association says the shafting of IT workers, as revealed to be happening at logistics behemoth Toll Holdings, is much more prevalent than is made public.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has knocked back an FOIA request from an IT workers' lobby group about the extent to which 457 visas are used in the IT industry because "the data doesn’t exist, we can’t find it or it’s all too hard".