Nobody voted for high immigration — but it’s WEF policy. By Judith Sloan.
Immigration has been in the news lately as various submissions are released to the government-commissioned review, A Migration System for Australia’s Future. …
The most depressing aspect of the submissions is the narrow perspective they take. In particular, there is a glaring failure to acknowledge that there are both costs and benefits associated with immigration and that not all the costs and benefits are economic or calculable. …
A higher migrant intake will make the economy bigger but will not necessarily result in higher per capita income. In other words, being bigger is no guarantee of being wealthier. There is no convincing evidence that migration has boosted productivity.
The second important principle is that there are winners and losers when it comes to immigration. The biggest winners are the migrants themselves, a point demonstrated by the Productivity Commission. But owners of capital and workers with skills that are complementary to migrants are also beneficiaries. Workers whose skills are substitutes with migrant workers will often lose out. …
It is only skilled migrants who generate estimated positive fiscal impacts, with family and humanitarian entrants associated with large budgetary drains. [But] the reality is that it is simply not possible to run a skilled migration program without a family stream; permanent migrants will always seek to be reunited with their family.
We also have to be careful about the definition of skill. Just because an applicant has a university qualification, even one obtained from an Australian institution, does not make that person skilled. Indeed, there is evidence, including from the work of demographer Bob Birrell, indicating that many independent skilled migrants do not work in skilled occupations.
Finally, many of the benefits and costs of migration are not captured by normal economic data. This is particularly the case with costs, which include congestion, crowded schools and hospitals and loss of cultural cohesion and urban amenity. …
Covid:
Prior to [covid], net overseas migration (the difference between long-term inflows and outflows, both permanent and temporary) had been running at around 250,000 per year, making up some two-thirds of population growth. Most migrants headed to Melbourne, Sydney and the southeast corner of Queensland.
It is estimated that Australia’s population could be lower by close to one million because of the interruption of the pandemic. …
What the people want is ignored:
Survey after survey has demonstrated that the majority of people do not support high migrant intakes and would be very happy with slower population growth. Neither the Coalition or Labor has shown any tendency to take into account public opinion on this matter. …
There is a possibility that net overseas migration could reach 300,000 this year. The number of student visas being issued is at record levels, with students from India dominating the intake.
We know from research that a clear majority of students from India intend to stay in Australia. (Students from China are less likely to stay although the duration of their residence in Australia can often be close to a decade.)
In the meantime, international students form a significant part of the unskilled and semi-skilled workforce, particularly given the lifting of restrictions on their work rights. There is no doubt that the hospitality and retail sectors, in particular, welcome the return of this source of labour, easing the pressures many employers were under to lift wages.
The uniparty only does what we want when it happens to want the same thing. Sad but true. Modern democracy has been thoroughly subverted.
Would you fight and die for a democracy that ignores the wishes of its majority?
