Nobody controls immigration into Australia. If Big Australia wants to increase it, they can't. If Small Australia wants to reduce it, they can't. When John Howard said, "But we will control who comes to this country," he was lying then, and it is an even bigger lie now.
There are no caps on any of the hundreds of visa categories. Oh yes, there are rumours of caps on students. But Indian and Pakistani students at second rank universities are being held back by backroom jaw-jaw in preference to Chinese students at the Group of Eight. Not by failure to return rates. Not by rorting 20 hr part-time work rules. Not by skin colour, but by the size of the course fees. Rich old China can pay gigantic fees to UniSydney (45% foreign), and UniMelbourne. If second rankers recruit harder in China and hike their fees, they will be able to bring in as many as they want. Oh yes, and talk of more beds before more student visas? Just talk. The Vice Chancellors would be terrified that beds for additional visas will soon explode to beds for ALL student visas. Quel horreur.
The New Zealand economy is sicker than Australia at present. Perhaps they lead us, like they lead on interest rates. NZ arrivals are booming, always uncapped, always visa free. If the entire population of New Zealand wants to come, they can. We especially welcome child rapists and wife bashers, and Africans and Asian refugees previously denied entry into Australia who now possess bright shiny new NZ passports.
Parent visas - uncapped (according to Rizvi - the immigration whisperer).
Backpacker visas - uncapped.
Temporary skills and tradies - uncapped. (Bricklayers, carpenters and electricians are not on skills wanted list. But yoga teachers and wellness coaches are!)
Fruit-pickers - uncapped.
Tourists - uncapped.
On and on through hundreds of weird and wonderful visa classes - all uncapped.
All these years I've been fixated on PERMANENT PLACES. I've allowed myself to be distracted by Judith Sloane and her campaign to find the permanent quotas carefully buried in each year's federal budget. Yes, permanents count a bit, in the margins. But its TEMPORARIES where the action is.
Can the Department and Parliament control temporary visas? Did Morrison try to slow the avalanche by letting the visa applications build up and processing them slowly? I don't know. But O'Neill and Giles now brag that they have increased staff and process "without delay." Give them medals and koala stamps.
When I arrived at Athens airport in 2017, I was surprised to be offered an automatic EU visa. I'd wasted half a day in a queue at the Greek consulate in Albert Park. But if the EU gives instant visas to Australia, surely in return, we give instant visas to Europeans. And if to them, surely we must give instant visas to US, Canada, UK, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. I just don't know. Do we give instant tourist visas to just about anyone who arrives at airports? Just don't arrive in a leaky boat - that's the only visa class with a cap of zero.
So who controls immigration?
The free market.
The capitalist free market. So beloved by powerful economists within Treasury, who nonetheless like the security of a public servant salary and superannuation for themselves.
If the wider Australian economy is going OK, and unemployment is low - as it still is quite extraordinarily - they will come. And nothing can stop them. If we go into recession and unemployment rises - they won't come. Simple.
If Sustainable Population Australia wants to reduce immigration, don't waste time on all those crap arguments about congestion, greenhouse gases, paving farmland, wiping out natives, stealing from the third world, housing crisis, degrowth, etc etc. Wasting oxygen. All we have to do is engineer a good healthy recession. Get unemployment rates up and and away - 7%, 8% even 10%. Then they will stop coming.
For a while.
David Zpg Hughes
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