Australian employer groups frequently claim that a strong ‘skilled’ migration program is required to overcome perceived labour shortages – a view that is shared by Australia’s state and federal governments. However, the available data does not support their assertions.
First, while Australia’s is said to run a ‘skilled’ migration program, the Productivity Commission’s (PC) 2016 Migrant Intake into Australia report explicitly stated that around half of the skilled steam includes the family members of skilled migrants (secondary applicants), with around 70% of Australia’s total permanent migrant intake not actually considered ‘skilled’:
…within the skill stream, about half of the visas granted were for ‘secondary applicants’ — partners (who may or may not be skilled) and dependent children… Therefore, while the skill stream has increased relative to the family stream, family immigrants from the skill and family stream still make up about 70 per cent of the Migration Programme (figure 2.8)…
Primary applicants tend to have a better fiscal outcome than secondary applicants — the current system does not consider the age or skills of secondary applicants as part of the criteria for granting permanent skill visas…
Second, the Department of Jobs & Small Business produces an annual time-series tracking skills shortages across occupations, which shows that skills shortages across managerial and professional occupations were running well below the historical average and close to recessionary levels:
This matters because out of the 111,099 permanent visas handed out under the skilled stream in 2017-18, three-quarters were for professionals and managers, where skills shortages are largely non-existent, as shown above.
To add further insult to injury, the top five occupations granted visas under the skilled stream in 2017-18 were as follows:
Accountants (3505)
Software Engineer (3112)
Registered Nurses (1561)
Developer Programmer (1487)
Cook (1257)
According to the Department of Jobs and Small Business’ list, not one of these professions was considered to be in shortage over the four years to 2017, whereas Software Engineer has never been deemed to be in shortage over the entire 31-year history of this series.
The situation is little better for Australia’s Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa system. According to the Department of Home Affairs, there were 34,450 primary visas granted in 2017-18, of which 25,620 (74%) were for professionals and managers; again where skills shortages are largely non-existent.
The failure of Australia’s so-called skilled migration program to alleviate genuine skills shortages is hardly surprising given almost any occupation is eligible, as the below list attests:
216 occupations are eligible for the Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186)
673 occupations are eligible for the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (subclass 187)
212 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Independent Visa (subclass 189), the Temporary Graduate Visa (subclass 485), and the Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489)
427 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Nominated Visa (subclass 190)
504 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489)
508 occupations are eligible for the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (subclass 482).
The above lists do not require that these occupations are actually experiencing skills shortages, which means that these visas can be used by employers to access cheap foreign labour for an ulterior motive, including to avoid providing training and lowering wage costs.
Accordingly, the 2016 Senate Committee report, entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, found temporary skilled visas were “not sufficiently responsive either to higher levels of unemployment, or to labour market changes in specific skilled occupations”.
Adding to the mess, the salary floor for TSS visas has been frozen at the pathetically low level of $53,900 since 2013-14, which is $32,700 below the average full-time Australian salary of $86,600 (which comprises both skilled and unskilled workers).
Given the above, it is not surprising that actual pay levels of ‘skilled’ migrants in Australia are abysmally low.
According to the ABS’ most recent Personal Income of Migrants survey, the median employee income of migrants under the skilled stream was just $55,443 in 2013-14.
Separate ABS data revealed that Temporary Work (Skilled) visa holders earned a median income of only $59,436 in 2016.
And across all skilled visa categories, the median full-time salary 18 months after being granted the visa was $72,000 in 2016, which was below the population average of $72,900 (which again comprises both skilled and unskilled workers), according to the Department of Home Affairs.
The ABS’ latest Characteristics of Recent Migrants survey also showed that skilled migrants, and indeed all classifications of migrants, had experienced higher unemployment in 2016 than the Australian born population:
Several surveys have similarly shown that most recently arrived skilled migrants are working in areas well below their reported skill level.
For example, analysis by the Australian Population Research Institute (APRI), based on 2016 Census data, revealed that most recently arrived skilled migrants (i.e. arrived between 2011 and 2016) cannot find professional jobs. That is, only 24% of skilled migrants from Non-English-Speaking-Countries (who comprised 84% of the total skilled migrant intake) were employed as professionals as of 2016, compared with 50% of skilled migrants from Main English-Speaking-Countries and 58% of the same aged Australian-born graduates.
APRI’s results were supported by a 2017 survey from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, which found that 53% of skilled migrants in Western Australia said they are working in lower skilled jobs than before they migrated to Australia.
With this detailed background in mind, it is interesting to read that the Morrison Government has announced reforms to Australia’s permanent residency points system in a bid to ensure it is better targeted towards skilled migrants. From SBS News:
In April this year, the immigration department announced some changes to the point system. These changes will come in effect from 16 November 2019.
According to the new rule, applicants who do not have a spouse or de facto partner will get 10 points.
“Points are awarded for attributes that are linked with the applicant’s ability to make the greatest economic contribution, as the key purpose of the skilled migration program is to maximize the economic benefits of migration to Australia,” the legislation reads…
“The idea is to bring more skilled migrants and discourage unskilled partners who come with married skilled migrants.
“Married invitees with kids fill more places with non-skilled migrants and leave lesser places for skilled migrants,” says [[Immigration Expert Rohan] Mohan.
The reforms are in response to the PC’s findings (above) that half of the skilled stream is taken up by family members of skilled migrants, many of whom are unskilled.
While the changes announced are good in theory, members of the Indian community are already working out ways to game the system and skirt the rules:
[Immigration Expert Rohan] Mohan says many of his clients are waiting for November.
“People have put their marriage on hold to claim these extra points. Earlier people would get married before applying to claim five extra points on behalf of their partners. Now we can see the opposite trend”…
Dilip Kumar, an Australian visa-hopeful says these extra points will help him in a big way.
‘My IELTS score is not very high, so I am counting on the extra points,’ says Dilip who is an auto mechanic in Karnataka and preparing his application for an Australian visa.
Education and Migration agents are also advising clients on Facebook on how to fill in forms to avoid scrutiny by the Department of Home Affairs:
This kind of visa system gaming is common among applicants from India’s Sub-continent, as explained by Melbourne Indian community leader Jasvinder Sidhu, who also acknowledged “widespread… corruption from top to bottom”, with “thousands and thousands of people… being sponsored and they’re all fake”:
JASVINDER SIDHU: These people just get away. Even if they’re caught, media or otherwise through police and thing, they just go on bail and I think the system is very, very easy on these sort of things.
NICK MCKENZIE: It’s easy to rort?
JASVINDER SIDHU: Yes, very easy to rort. You have 10 ways to rort and then if the Government has one rule, you have actually 10 responses how to basically bypass those rules.
NICK MCKENZIE: The Australian Border Force has spent the last 12 months investigating criminal syndicates involved in visa rorting, but insiders say the problem is massive. One of the Immigration Department’s top officials until 2013 has now broken his silence. He says visa rorting was and is endemic and has largely been ignored by politicians focusing on the boat people issue.
Joseph Petyanszki managed investigations for the department for eight years. He wouldn’t be interviewed on camera, but has given 7.30 a statement about what he calls, “The shocking and largely unknown fraud within our working and student visa programs”. He describes a world of “shonky immigration agents” where, “fraudsters …. enter the community with ease”. He points to immigration law “loopholes”, “major integrity problems” and a department which has struggled to cope with such an, “attack on the integrity of our systems”. Petyanszki blames a, “lack of funding and politics”. He says, “It’s been easy to deflect the public’s attention to boat arrivals,” but this fear-mongering has totally ignored, “where the vast bulk of real fraud is most significantly undermining our immigration programs”…
JASVINDER SIDHU: Yes, there’s corruption from top to bottom. Thousands and thousands of people are being sponsored and they’re all fake. The whole system cannot work that smoothly if there’s no corruption in the system.
NICK MCKENZIE: Someone on the inside has to know?
JASVINDER SIDHU: Oh, yes, definitely. Even if you do a bit of overspeeding, you are caught, but this is a huge corruption – huge level of corruption and it is so widespread.
Clearly, Australia’s skilled migration program is a giant fraud that is failing miserably to meet its original intent, lowering wages, crush-loading Sydney and Melbourne, and wrecking overall liveability.
It needs root-and-branch reform, not token changes like those announced above by the Morrison Government.
During the 2015-2016 financial year, more than 2600 health workers were brought into Australia via government-sponsored 457 visas on the basis they were needed for jobs that could not be filled by Australians. Of these 1692 were general practitioners and resident medical officers, 228 registered nurses, 35 specialists, 38 psychiatrists, 28 surgeons, 19 anesthetists and 20 midwives.
The high intake of health specialists occurred despite a senate inquiry in June 2015 where the Australian Nurses and Midwife Foundation (AN&MF) stated that there were 3000 unemployed graduate nurses, often with high HECS debts, while about 1 in 4 nursing positions were being filled by 457 skilled migrant intake[1]. They also claimed that many of the overseas nurses were victims of underpayment and exploitation because they live and work under threat of deportation[2]. The inquiry was also told that importing health workers was not solving the shortages of health professionals in rural areas because most imported workers went to the cities.
As of March 2016 there were 177,390 subclass 457 visa holders in Australia. To be eligible for a subclass 457 visa via standard business sponsorship, a worker must have an occupation on the Consolidated Sponsored Occupations List (CSOL) which is uncapped, meaning that there is no limit on how many can enter. Instead the numbers are determined from the applications made by employers. However there is a loophole that will allow employers to hire an unlimited number of foreign workers under a temporary working visa, in a move that unions say will bring widespread rorting of the system and insufficient support for local employment.
This reliance on skilled migration has been a long term policy of, not only our governments, but those of many developed nations, particularly the US, UK and Canada. As a consequence, about a quarter of doctors in Australia are from overseas and in 2010 the U.S. had 265,851 licensed physicians trained in other countries, constituting 32% of the physician workforce. Among these, 128,729 came from countries categorized by the World Bank as being from low- or lower-middle income. The World Health Organization (WHO) published a detailed 40-country study on the magnitude and flow of the health professionals. According to this report, close to 90% of all migrating physicians were moving to just five countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, UK and the USA. Even as far back as 1972, 6% of the worlds physicians were located outside their country of origin.
This poaching of skills or brain drain has been embraced by developed nations because it reduces the expense of training in the host nation. According to the African Capacity Building Foundation, African countries lose 20,000 skilled personnel to the developed world every year. All the developed world's efforts to increase aid to these countries may not matter if the local personnel required to implement development programs are absent. Every year there are 20,000 fewer people in Africa to deliver key public services, drive economic growth, and articulate calls for greater democracy and development. South Africa loses almost half of its doctors to Canada, Britain and Australia and is forced to recruit medical staff from countries like Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Ghana has lost half of its nurses and has more doctors working outside Ghana than in the country itself. This has cost it an estimated $63million of its training investment while the UK has saved $117m by the recruitment of Ghanaian doctors since 1988 alone. To address some of the concerns of “brain drain” from developing nations, the Commonwealth Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health Workers was adopted by Commonwealth Health Ministers in 2003. This serves as a framework within which international recruitment should take place and is intended to discourage the targeted recruitment of health workers from countries which are themselves experiencing shortages. The code also suggests that high-income countries consider how to recompense the donor nations for the recruitment of their health workers.
However there has been been considerable opposition to this approach, with some economists arguing that the transfer of skills is actually beneficial to both nations because many 3rd world nations are highly dependent on the remittances that their nationals return . According to the World Bank, workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, and in some countries these remittances are more than 20% of the nations GDP. Which of course is great unless you happen to urgently need the doctor that is now somewhere else. It has also been found that researchers and scientists who migrate are far more effective in their new locality because of better facilities that are available but then again this hardly flows on to benefit the donor nation. Shortages of skilled people in the education sector of developing nations is reducing training capacity and according to a report in the Wall Street Journal the US is to blame for Africa's doctor shortage that made the Ebola epidemic much worse than it should have been[3].
Today there are more doctors from Benin working in France than there are in Benin; more Ethiopian doctors in Washington DC than in the whole of Ethiopia. When you add in the effect of other professions that are poached from these countries under skilled immigration policies, teachers, engineers and others, it becomes plain that the developing nations will stay that way, a supplier of resources and skills to the developed world while ever this policy remains in place.
While the media and political debates focus on cracking down on boat people, Fairfax media have exposed that rampant visa fraud is happening. It's a multifaceted yarn. Up to 9 in 10 skilled migrant visas are bogus.
Militants are suspects in visa frauds. Afghan applicants 90% flawed!
Rampant visa fraud and migration crime involving people flying into Australia are going unchecked while the government focuses on stopping boats, according to secret government files detailing entrenched Immigration Department failings. Leaked confidential departmental documents obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that Australia's national security is being compromised by wide-scale visa rorting and migration rackets operating with impunity.
Internal documents reveal that despite repeated warnings, the department is failing to crackdown on wide-scale visa rorting.
Australia's open borders are a threat to our national security, and can't be justified on any sound basis.
While the immigration debate is anchored on asylum seekers, our open borders are allowing fraudsters to exploit the loopholes in our generous visa system with non-genuine "students", and bogus "skilled" migrants - at a time of record unemployment! There are bogus "skills shortages" that lure students to pay tens of thousands of dollars to study here, expecting a job and residency at the end - when the shortages don't exist! Thousands of foreign cooks and accountants being given visas despite an excess of local candidates.
The whole model of Australia as an Immigration Nation is outdated, and there's no correlation between grass-roots reality, and the number and type of visas distributed.
While there's a lot of media and political attention on a few ad hoc asylum seekers arriving by boats, the overwhelming majority of migrants are arriving by aeroplane, daily, enjoying anonymity and the lack of media attention.
Asylum seekers, and our humanitarian intake of about 20,000 per year, hardly add to our immigration intake, or population growth at all, yet they confuse the public on who our immigrants really are! Refugees make up less than 5 per cent of Australia's annual population growth of around 400,000 people.
This employment migration program and corrupt, especially considering the harsh crackdown on assumed "dole bludgers" who are failing to gain non-existent new jobs! Everyone knows it's going on.
Immigration experts Dr Bob Birrell and Dr Ernest Healy have obtained fresh Australian Bureau of Statistics information showing that 380,000 arrivals to Australia since 2011 had found jobs. But over the same period, net job growth in Australia was only 400,000. Australia continues to grant skilled migration visas to thousands of foreign cooks and accountants despite an excess of local candidates suitable for those jobs.
Afghanistan and Somalia have a trade in passports. Investigators identified a scam of people using each other's passports, after being lost or stolen. A loophole in passports lets people come into the country twice, without leaving first! With all the sophistication of technology this is happening.
A 2010 report reveals that immigration investigators had uncovered a Somali people-smuggling cell in Melbourne linked to terrorist suspect Hussein Hashi Farah, who "is believed to have links to the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Shabab".
The leaked files revealed that tens of thousands of immigration fraudsters are living freely after being assisted by migration crime networks exploiting weaknesses in working, student, family and humanitarian visa programs, and corruption within the Department that allowes the fraud to happen.
There are too many visas, flexibility and categories of immigration, and passports are not secure for all the tens of hundreds arriving each day at our airports. It's mayhem, and open-border chaos.
The immigration Department is dysfunctional, and needs to be closed for investigation. The number of visas is excessive, and our system is clearly porous and unaccountable.
The holes and flaws the system have been exploited. We've (almost) stopped the boats, but now it's time to stop the planes.
Youth unemployment has reached crisis point in Australia, the Brotherhood of St Lawrence says, as it releases an analysis of the latest official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The number of young Australians out of work has reached ''crisis point'', as more 15 to 24-year-olds struggle to find jobs in the ripples of the global financial crisis.
An average of 12.4 per cent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were out of work in the year to January. Executive director Tony Nicholson has described the result as a disaster. "And in our modern economy that means that they're really being sentenced to a lifetime of poverty."
He has called on the Federal Government to invest in a national strategy to turn things around. The national strategy should be to turn our economy around, and end the "growth" model.
There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty, and while agencies are sweeping up the mess of human fallouts and poverty, and welfare dependency, governments still continue with their "growth" agendas! Instead of trying to "grow" out of the mess, and make the hole deeper, they should be making the logical U-turn from economic growth, to stability.
While youth especially are facing high unemployment, there's nothing being done to mitigate the myth of "skill shortages" in Australia! With over 1000 new arrivals each day in Australia, at airports, the competition for jobs keeps getting harder. Our economy can only "grow" to a natural height, determined by natural resources and prices, and forcing higher population growth ignores the costs of growth.
A leading migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Chief Executive Officer Cath Scarth has told a conference at the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) 2013 Conference on the Gold Coast, that effective unemployment rate among some communities from non-English speaking backgrounds in Australia could be as high as 20 per cent.
Over the past fifteen years, hundreds of thousands of sponsored workers have come to Australia, with just under half opting to take out permanent residence. Unemployment among skilled migrants and their families is 30% higher than for the population as a whole, but those who do have a job are more likely to be in a professional role.
Approximately one quarter (26.1 per cent) of Australia’s total population were born overseas and a comprehensive survey last of recent migrant labour force data showed that recent migrants have significantly higher unemployment rates.
The Brotherhood of St Lawrence and other do-good agencies trying to be a voice for Australians who are unemployed should end their obstruction of the real facts. Our population growth, driven by record levels of "skilled" migration and family reunions, is at a runaway rate and can't be justified. It is out-pacing jobs creation, and housing and infrastructure building is only a short-term fix, and adds to the misanthropic "growth" agendas of governments.
Australia's net overseas immigration absolutely dwarfs any asylum seeker or refugee program by about 280,000 to 20,000 people, yet almost no-one is blowing the whistle. (Planned immigration for 2013-2014 is 190,000 alone. The permanent migrant worker program called “Skilled Migration” is now completely out of whack with Australia’s current and future jobless numbers. "Whether you’re one of the many young people concerned about your future job and career prospects, or how you will purchase your first home, or an older Victorian concerned about the type of Victoria we will leave behind for future generations; Victoria First is taking up the fight," says MP, Kelvin Thomson, about this new organisation formed to fight for Victorians' democratic rights.
John Masanauskas reports in the Herald-Sun on 31 January that last year 129,000 permanent migrants arrived under Australia's permanent immigration program. (That's not counting family reunion and business immigrants). The largest occupation was cooks – more than 8000 got permanent visas. Hairdressers (1500) also made it into the top five categories. The other top five were accountants (5700), software engineers (2160) and IT business analysts (1550).
What gives? Gov Importing more skilled workers as more Australians unemployed
At the same time Australia had a 20% increase in the number of people receiving Newstart or Youth Allowance. As of December the total number of people receiving Newstart or Youth Allowance was over 827,000. Another 825,000 people are receiving the Disability Support Pension.
The Government says the welfare bill is too high, and must be cut.
How do you cut welfare if there are no jobs?
But how is it to be cut unless these people have jobs that they can go to? And what about the workers at Ford, Holden, SPC Ardmona, Qantas, and BP, who face the prospect of losing their jobs sooner rather than later? The market theory, enthusiastically promoted by this Government, is that these workers can be re-trained for, and should be prepared to work in, other areas. This theory falls flat on its face when every year we bring in 129,000 people under the permanent migrant worker program, rather than training up, and giving jobs to, our own cooks, hairdressers, and accountants. The size of the Skilled Migration program is a recipe for growing and long-term unemployment, social disadvantage and hardship, and an outsize welfare bill.
Victoria First
To fight this public policy craziness, Kelvin Thomson has set up a not for profit non-government organisation called Victoria First. Their first meeting as an incorporated organisation was yesterday, Saturday 1 February 2014, at the “Community Room” at Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy.
Guest speaker, Dr Ernest Healy of the Centre for Population and Urban Research of Monash University, gave his talk on "Melbourne – Heading for 'CARmageddon?” The subject was the problem of increased car ownership and dependence as Melbourne's population increases. The problem of overloaded public transport and gridiron traffic is one of many terrible problems Australians face with overpopulation. It was not, however, the only problem canvassed at the meeting on Saturday. Many other matters were put to the open mike in a packed room.
It will not be easy to unite and organise Australians in the face of the disorganising effect of mass media and government propaganda, but Thomson is showing leadership and attempting to empower. For more grass roots democracy avenues in Victoria check out some other anti-growth activists here.
Kelvin Thomson encourages all Victorians, young and old, to come to meetings of Victoria first and find out more about the problems of overpopulation. He says,
"Whether you’re one of the many young people concerned about your future job and career prospects, or how you will purchase your first home, or an older Victorian concerned about the type of Victoria we will leave behind for future generations; Victoria First is taking up the fight."
"France isn't in the business of stealing educated elites from developing countries that need doctors and engineers." (French Minister responsible for immigration) In France, university education is free for citizens and for foreign students - but there are quotas on foreign students and preference is given to French citizens. In view of the global financial crisis, the French Minister in charge of immigration now aims to cut the number of work visas for foreign student professionals by half.
French policy on Foreign Student visas and Change of status in marked contrast to Australia's
Claude Guéant is the Minister for the Interior in France, a position that traditionally carries the immigration portfolio. At the moment he is attempting to reduce the opportunities for legal immigration to France. One of his targets is to reduce by half the list of 30 occupations open to non-Europeans. (France has an open-door policy to other European Union nationals, who almost automatically acquire ten-year visas and permits to work. For people outside the EU, including Australians, Canadians, Americans, non-French Africans, Chinese and Indians, visas rarely extend over three months. A 'permanent visa' only lasts up to one year. No visa comes with an automatic permit to work. The latter must be sought independently from local prefectures. Although policy 'memos' (known in France as 'circulars') emanate from the Minister for the Interior from time to time, the interpretation and execution of these policies is carried out at local and regional level. On November 18, 2011's France 2, 8pm news, there was a report on protests and complaints from international students who had gained their qualifications in France but who were either being refused work permits or work permit renewals and being asked to leave the country. Guéant has said that "The right to study in France does not equal the right to work in France." Note that, in France, universities are free to French and foreign students with visas, but there are quotas on numbers, with preference given to French citizens.
Claude Guéant's Memo on skilled migration to France
France: 31 May Skilled Immigration Policy memorandum to Regional and Departmental Prefects from Minister of the Interior:
"Objective: Controlling skilled immigration"
"Summary: The Government aims to adapt legal immigration to French society's needs and her capacity to welcome and integrate it. Taking into account the impact on employment of one of the most severe economic crises in history, this objective implies a reduction in immigration numbers, in line with the national objective recently announced, by adopting a qualitative and selective approach. In effect, priority must be given to the employment of professionals already legally resident in France, whether they be French or foreign. It is therefore your responsibility to exercise vigilance to ensure that applications for work permits are rigorously informed. You should be all the more rigorous where the employment in view is not particularly highly skilled. The procedure for change of status (students applying for professional work permits) should be closely supervised. Exceptions for students applying for a provisional visa in order to look for work must remain rigorously limited. Having lived legally in France as a student, salaried worker, or holder of a card of "competencies and skills" does not carry a right to any special consideration in the procedure of granting a work permit. These rules also aim to reinforce the fight against employers who misunderstand regulations protecting the right to work. To ensure that these instructions are properly executed, you should organise a meeting of specialists in these matters at your level." Source: http://www.circulaires.gouv.fr/pdf/2011/06/cir_33321.pdf - Translated by Sheila Newman from original French.)
This 2011 French immigration policy is interesting because it denotes a policy reaction that is very similar to one taken during the 1974 oil shock by the then Minister for the Interior responsible for immigration in France, Andre Postel-Vinay. Similarly, today, in 2011, the global financial crises that repeatedly threaten are probably symptoms of the rising cost of petroleum and other energy sources - like nuclear, plus the huge cost of wars currently being fought to regain power over oil producing states that won independence through OPEC.
The rationale which accompanied the ministerial recommendation to reduce immigration to France in 1974 was clearly based on the perception that economic hardship would be long lasting, blow out of population in the Third World would be inevitable, and that France could not save the world's poor by taking them all in.
André Postel-Vinay was the Minister responsible for immigration at the time. He had also previously been the main person responsible for administering foreign aid funds[1] for 27 years and was well aware of the burgeoning populations and economic and political problems in the third world. As well as this familiarity with external events, from 1963 to 1974 he had overseen the administration of an organisation for immigrant housing in France. His knowledge of the situation which had created the bidonvilles was extensive. His "Immigration Policy" recommendations were copiously studded with statistics about the gravity of immigrant housing problems. Whilst urging diversion of funding to improve housing for those immigrants already in France, he also advocated publicising the appalling housing situation and poor economic outlook overseas to the traditional sending countries in order to discourage both prospective immigrant workers and their families.[2]
Postel-Vinay said that three factors made ceasing immigration a preventative necessity: the doubling of third world population by late in the 20th Century; the likelihood of profound and lengthy economic crisis; and the problem of the public housing shortage for both French and foreigners.[3]
“The doubling of third world population that we are led to expect by the end of the century, gives rise, in my opinion, to considerable danger. [...] Unless development skills and technology were to improve at an astonishing rate, unless the spirit of human solidarity were to spread in a quite novel way, the proliferation of the human species will increase poverty and malnourishment over vast territories...
To reject, on principle, the idea of stopping or limiting the entry of new immigrants, would mean that we must allow immigration to increase, even if it adds to unemployment and the peopling of slums. This is indefensible. [...] I am aware of the shocking character of any kind of interruption to or limitation of arrivals, the inhumane quality of sending people back to poverty; but that poverty, alas, is likely to constantly increase and to reach geographical regions ever further away: we cannot take in an unlimited amount. We would perish without relieving it.” (André Postel-Vinay in an interview with Le Monde, 29/9/74, translated by myself.)[4]
This was to become long-term policy in France and the EEC.
The French immigration writer, Weil, theorised that shifts in French power-elites' bipartisan positions were based on fundamental economic changes, rather than on democratically expressed resentment of immigrants. (Immigration theorist, Money, maintained the latter.)[5] Weil's theory finds support in contemporary documents and interviews with Postel-Vinay in France and I found corroboration of these in opinions later expressed by Postel-Vinay to myself.[6] Postel-Vinay said that the situation with immigrants was reaching crisis proportions of homelessness and unemployment. I asked him if anything in particular had influenced him to believe that the oil shock related recession would be especially long and serious. He replied that he had been particularly influenced by the head of the CNPF (Confederation nationale du patronat français - National Confederation of French Employers)[7] at the time who had told Postel-Vinay that the recession was likely to be long and hard, with materials shortages, and that, since industry would be unable to employ immigrants it would be advisable to stop immigration.[8] Postel-Vinay then recommended the reduction in immigration. He also gave me a copy of the original document, "Immigration Policy" which alluded to advice from the CNPF.[9]See "The Growth Lobby and Its Absence," Appendix 6, "Copies of Original Documents from André Postel-Vinay.
Was ceasing immigration a logical economic decision arrived at independently by Germany, France and Belgium?[10] André Postel-Vinay told me that it had been his own idea to suggest it, but that persuading the government was helped considerably by the fact that Germany had already made the decision.
More on Foreign Students and French employment from Claude Guéant in 2011
Guéant further precised that there has been absolutely no reduction in the number of foreign students admitted on French territory, which remains at around 60,000 per annum. [...]
But I say that in a country [...] where each year 110,000 more people people arrive on the job market, you have to start by concentrating on local demand for work. You have to recognise the differences between several kinds of countries (...) We have to be very careful about some countries. France isn't in the business of stealing educated elites from developing countries that need doctors and engineers." [11]
[1] From André Postel-Vinay, Minister responsible for Immigration from May 1974, in an interview in Le Monde 24/9/1974, cited by Weil in La France et ses étrangers, pp.83-84.
[2] See "The Growth Lobby and its Absence," Appendix 6, Document 'B', p.A6-3 for a copy of the original in French: André Postel-Vinay, "Politique d'immigration", (Note de M. André Postel-Vina pour le "Comité restreint"), 1 July 1974 (8 pages, numbered to 9, with pages 2 and 3 cut and stuck together and then photocopied. For instance, he wrote that "Whilst our housing program has never exceeded 117,000 dwellings in total, for the entire population, French or foreign, the number of families of foreign workers arriving each year in France has risen, on average, to 38,000 since 1970. In a country like ours, where there are a considerable number of slums, the comparison between the two numbers - 117,000 and 38,000 - gives an idea of the tensions and social oppositions that can arise in response to such a high rate of family reunion." Patrick Weil, La France et ses étrangers, op.cit., p.86, contains details of the anouncement that was circulated immediately to sending non EEC States warning them of France's decision to stop immigration and of the problems intending immigrant would encounter if they attempted to find work, housing and visas in France.
[3] From André Postel-Vinay, Minister responsible for Immigration from May 1974, in an interview in Le Monde 24/9/1974, cited by Weil in La France et ses étrangers, pp.83-84.
[4] Postel-Vinay gave me a copy of this interview himself, commenting that he had just re-read it and wanted me to know that it was an extremely accurate journalistic account of his reasons for ceasing immigration. He told me this on the occasion of a visit to his Paris apartment to collect copies of documents on the morning of Saturday 13 January 2001. The quotation is of André Postel-Vinay, Minister responsible for Immigration from May 1974, in an interview with Jean Benoit in Le Monde 24/9/1974, pp 19-21.. Here is the original of the text translated above. “Le doublement de la population du tiers monde que l’on nous promet pour la fin du siècle, présente, à mon avis, des dangers considérables. [...] À moins que l’art et les techniques de développement ne réalisent des progrès d’une étonnante rapidité, à moins que l’esprit de solidarité ne se répande d’une manière imprévue, cette prolifération de l’éspèce humaine aggravera la misère et la sous-alimentation sur de vastes territoires ... “Rejeter, par principe, l’idée d’une interruption ou d’une limitation des entrées de nouveaux migrants, cela reviendrait à soutenir que nous devons laisser se développer l’immigration, même si elle contribue à l’accroissement du chômage et au peuplement des taudis. Ce n’est pas défendable [...]. Je n’ignore pas les aspects choquants de toute mesure d’interruption ou de limitation des entrées, le caractère inhumaine de ces refoulements de la misère; mais cette misère hélas, risque d’affluer toujours davantage et d’arriver à des secteurs géographiques de plus en plus lointains : nous ne pouvons pas l’accueillir sans limites. Nous en périrons sans la soulager.”
[5] See Chapter 4, thesis, "The Growth Lobby and its Absence," for my literary review of these authors.
[6] During a visit to his Paris apartment to collect copies of documents on the morning of Saturday 13 January 2001.
[7] The CNPF is the National Federation of French Employers.
[8] In response to a question that I asked Postel-Vinay during a visit to his Paris apartment to collect copies of documents on the morning of Saturday 13 January 2001. See other documents supporting these recollections of Postel-Vinay further on in my thesis, where I go into the events of 1974 in more detail.
[9] See "The Growth Lobby and its Absence," Appendix 6, Document 'B', p.A6-3 for a copy of the original in French: André Postel-Vinay, "Politique d'immigration", (Note de M. André Postel-Vinay pour le "Comité restreint"), 1 July 1974 (8 pages, numbered to 9, with pages 2 and 3 cut and stuck together and then photocopied. On page 7 he has written: "Dans la conjoncture présente, il y a tout lieu de croire que cette décision d'interruption serait bien vue des grandes organisations syndicales et, même, sans doute, du CNPF, au niveau supérieure." "In the present situation there is every reason to believe that this decision to stop [immigration] will be looked upon favorably by the big unions and, even, without doubt, by the CNPF, at a high level."
[10] As claimed by Georges Tapinos in "The Dynamics of International Migration in Post-War Europe", in G. Luciani (ed), Migration Policies in Europe and the United States, 1993, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, Chapter Six, p.133.
[11] "Étudiants étrangers : Guéant défend sa circulaire"
Australia's population is now rising by a million every three years. It used to grow by only 200,000 a year. The increase has not been driven by natural increase, refugees or family reunions. It has been driven by an increase in skilled migration from 24,000 in 1996 to over 100,000 now. (Kelvin Thomson - Member for Wills electorate, Victoria, Australia)
"I do not agree with raising the skilled migration target to a record level"
I do not [...][2] agree with raising the skilled migration target for the 2011-12 financial year to 125,850-a record level.
I have seven objections to increasing skilled migration.
First objection: Immigration drives rapid population growth
The first is that it is the principal driver of Australia's rapid population growth. Only recently our population used to grow by 200,000 a year; now it is rising by a million every three years. The increase has not been driven by natural increase, refugees or family reunions. It has been driven by an increase in skilled migration from 24,000 in 1996 to over 100,000 now. This is the main reason net overseas migration is now 180,000 per annum and the main reason Treasury is using net overseas migration of 180,000 per annum to project that Australia's population will rise to 36 million by 2050. That is, it is giving us big Australia.
I have set out in numerous speeches in the parliament and at public meetings my objections to big Australia: cost of living pressures and pressures on food,water,land and energy supplies, carbon emissions, housing affordability, traffic congestion, species extinction, loss of open space et cetera.
Second objection: Australian unemployed should have priority
My second objection to increasing labour force migration is that there are people in Australia who want work and we should be getting them jobs. There are 500,000 people on Newstart allowance and 800,000 on disability support pension. These people should be our first priority. In the last decade the numberofpeople receiving disability support pension grew around six per cent per annum in real terms.
As Budget Paper No.1 outlines: Past growth … reflects increases in the number of beneficiaries arising from population growth and changing composition of the population … Population growth will continue to contribute to sustained real growth in the cost of this program.
As I mentioned earlier, I support the steps that seek to move people from these benefits to employment, but there needs to be jobs for them to go to. Cutting back workforce migration numbers will ensure there are jobs for them to go to.
Third Objection: Many skilled immigrants unemployed or working as unskilled labour
Included among the people who are out of work and are deserving of our attention are quite a few skilled migrants already in Australia who are either not working at all or not employed in areas for which they are qualified. As reported by Michael Quin in the Melbourne Times Weekly, a local newspaper which circulates in my electorate, four out of five skilled migrants in Melbourne are unemployed or underemployed, according to a recent survey. The article outlined the case of Preston skilled migrant Natalia Garcia, who has applied for 17 engineering jobs in the past four months without getting an interview or feedback, despite speaking advanced English and holding an engineering degree and seven years industry experience in Colombia.
Ms Garcia said: We were told Australia was desperate for engineers and that we would find a job in a maximum of two months, Ms Garcia is working as an office cleaner, and said most skilled migrants she knew were doing the same.
It is highly revealing that a qualified engineer with seven years industry experience should be working in Australia as a cleaner. I suspect that quite a few of the business leaders who bang the drum incessantly about skilled migration know about this kind of outcome perfectly well. They are not so much interested in the skills of migrants as their potential to provide cheap labour in occupations such as cleaners and taxi drivers and in providing personal services like house cleaning and chauffeuring at cut price rates. So my third objection to the skilled migration increase is the treatment of, and outcomes for, many skilled migrants.
Fourth Objection: Skills shortage overstated and abused to undermine wages and conditions
My fourth objection is that the skills shortage is overstated and is abused in ways which undermine the wages and conditions of Australian workers. National Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Dave Oliver, believes the skills shortage issue is overstated and that successive federal governments have failed to deliver an adequate labour market testing system, which means employers can exploit the system. The AMWU has launched a skills register to give skilled workers and young people seeking apprenticeships the opportunity to register for work before employers are allowed tobring inworkers on 457 visas.
As Dave Oliver has said: "We do not deny that skills shortages exist in some areas, but they are being exaggerated by employers seeking to use 457 visas to undermine local wages and conditions and avoid the cost of investing in apprenticeships."
With apprenticeship completion rates below 50%, the long term answer to our skills problems cannot be importing workers from other countries on a temporarybasis. Employers can't complain about skills shortages while they are dropping their investment in training.
I encourage people who have skills which are not being made use of to make contact with the AMWU to get their details put on the skills register.
Fifth Objection: Australian economy overdependent on immigration
The fifth objection I have to increasing skilled migration is that we have become addicted to it.
We need to do more to educate and train our own young people. Going back two or three decades, governments and employers dropped the ball on training.Governments closed technical schools and cut back on technical education. Private employers lost interest in taking on apprentices. We started outsourcing our requirement for training. This has been an addictive, self-fulfilling circle and we need to break the habit. Those countries which do not run a big migration program put more effort into educating and training their young people, and they have better participation rates as a consequence.
The Sixth Objection: High immigration feeds vulnerable overstoked commodity economy
The sixth objection I have to increasing skilled migration goes to the claim that this is necessary to avoid capacity constraints and bottlenecks in the resources industry.
The truth is that running the resources boom as fast as possible has a number of economic consequences, not all of which are positive. Using the resources boom as a reason to ramp up skilled migration and staking a lot of our economic prosperity on Australia's high terms of trade overlooks some of the negative ramifications of the two-speed or multispeed economy. For example, as reported in the Australian in early May, hundreds of fruit processing workers face the sack if Coca-Cola Amatil goes ahead with plans to close parts of its SPC Ardmona division and capitalise on the strong Australian dollar by importing food from Indonesia.
CCA chief executive Terry Davis has said one or two of SPC's three plants in central Victoria could be closed due to the strong Australian dollar putting pressure on the business. He said that the current strength of the dollar severely limits the potential for SPC Ardmona's export business, which produces some of the country's best-known canned fruit brands.
The strong dollar has been cited by the Reserve Bank as impacting adversely on manufacturing and tourism.
A report in 2006 by the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance on the previous mining boom used modelling to determine its impact on non-mining states and found that there were adverse consequences for Victorian exporting and import-competing firms.
Their modelling results showed that the Victorian and New South Wales gross state products were about half a per cent lower. Most industries in these states contracted, apart from the mining industries.
Australia needs to ensure it doesn't become a 'one trick' economy
I believe the relentless rise of the Australian dollar as a result of the resources boom presents a real challenge to the Australian economy. The current mining boom mark 2 represents the highest terms of trade in 140 years, so the pressure on manufacturing and other trade exposed industries not directly benefiting from higher commodity prices is severe. Retail, manufacturing, building and tourism are labouring under the weight of subdued sales, weak profits and low orders. We need to ensure that we do not become a one-trick economy and that the structural changes that occur as a result of this boom do not leave ordinary people behind.
If the resources boom generates growth levels that cause the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates, then many Australian households and small businesses will suffer.
As a nation, we need to be more sophisticated than simply trying to run the resources boom full throttle.
The Seventh Objection: Immorality of Skilled immigration
The seventh and final objection I have goes to the question of the morality of skilled migration. Last week I participated in a debate[3] on Sky News TV Channel on the program known as The Nation, with the Member for Mayo, the former Member for Cook, and Geoff Gallop, the former Western Australian Premier. We were talking about migration, and Geoff said he thought it was a moral issue, that Australia had a moral obligation to take large numbers of migrants from poor countries. Now Geoff is a great guy, a fine Australian who has made a very valuable contribution to this country. But skilled migration is not a moral duty.
It is not about Australia being unselfish. It is about us being utterly selfish, taking the best and brightest from poor countries and denuding them of the people most likely to lift them from conditions of poverty. When we take a poor country's doctors or nurses, we damage their health system. When we take a poor country's engineers, we damage their capacity to build infrastructure. It is a moral question alright, but there is nothing moral about what we are doing.
In closing I welcome the measures in the budget on improving workplace participation but I am concerned that the government has bowed to industry calls for higher migration.
We need to ensure that the right policy settings are in place that will not leave behind those industries, individuals and households who are not benefiting from the mining boom mark II, and avoid short-term policy 'fixes' that cater to the vested interests who shout the loudest.
Kelvin Thomson MP Federal Member for Wills
NOTES
[1] In order to focus quickly on Kelvin's incisive contribution to critical analysis of Australian economic policy, this article has left out the beginning of the speech as delivered to the House of Representatives. Here is the text we left out:
"I wish to commend the Australian government on this budget, which continues our tradition of sound economic management. It stands in stark contrast to the opposition's troubling lack of insight on this core issue.
Peter Costello is on the record as saying that an opposition leader's responsibility consists of going through the budget saying what the opposition agrees with and what it does not agree with; putting forward alternative tax proposals and saying when they would start and how they would be paid for; and saying what the opposition would do if it were bringing down a budget. Peter Costello was scathing of any budget reply speech that was short on detail or full of motherhood statements and cliches, which he believed let the Australian public down. What, then, are we to make of the opposition's budget reply?
The opposition say they would bring the budget to surplus sooner than Labor, yet they oppose and run interference on all of our savings measures, they produce no savings measures of their own and they even come up with more spending measures. They are not serious. Family payments is a classic example. The government will maintain higher income thresholds for certain family payments at their current levels. When the government announced similar measures two years ago, the opposition leader said they were soft and wanted the government to go harder. Now he wants to talk about the 'forgotten families' on $150,000 or more!
Analysis by Commonwealth Securities suggests that, on an Australia-wide basis, families with incomes above $150,000 are among the better-off families in the country. The average male income is currently around $57,500, with the average female income just over $38,000. Only three per cent of all taxpayers have an income above $150,000. In 2012-13, the number of people who will cease to be eligible for family payments will be less than two per cent. You would think, based on the scare campaign of the Leader of the Opposition and shadow Treasurer, that the government is running an assault on all families' standard of living.
As Tom Dusevic identified in his article of 14 May in the Weekend Australian on the coalition's position:
Abbott and Hockey have lost the plot on the basic tenet of Liberalism. Unlike Menzies, who saw government handouts as helping hands to the destitute, the Liberals became the chief advocates for unsustainable middleclass welfare, which grew out of the revenue boost from the first phase of the mining boom.
Absolutely right.
I would like to acknowledge the measures in the budget to boost workplace participation and expand the economy's productive capacity. I agree with the Prime Minister that we do not want to see a situation where the economy is booming but where we still have long-term unemployed people who do not have a job and people on the disability support pension who want to work, who do not have the opportunity of a job.
And the Treasurer is right when he says, 'Our economy can't afford to waste a single pair of capable hands.'
In my electorate of Wills there are at present 1,397 very long-term unemployed people who have been without work for two years or more.
To help them prepare for and find work, the Labor government has provided in the budget an additional $2.7 million over the period 2012 to 2015 to support local employment services in Wills. This will provide them with training and work experience. Additional funds have also been provided for a wage subsidy to support employers who give the very-long-term unemployed a job.
An investment of over $1.6 million for Australian Disability Enterprises in Wills is also welcome. It will support the work of the Brunswick Industries Association, North West Employment Group, the Trustee for The Salvation Army Victoria Property Trust, and Yooralla.
The budget initiative establishing the $558 million National Workforce Development Fund will assist in responding to the most critical emerging skills needs facing Australian industry. This will deliver 130,000 new training places over four years. The fund will be supported by the establishment of a new National Workforce and Productivity Agency, from 1 July next year, which will work closely with industry to identify critical skill needs and build a more skilled and capable workforce. The Labor government is improving support for Australians with a disability to help them into work where possible. I support these significant reforms to address the issue of workplace participation and skills shortages."
[2] The very first line of this paragraph as delivered in the House of Representatives ran, "I do not, however, agree with raising the skilled migration target for the 2011-12 financial year to 125,850-a record level."
[3] - The rest of this speech is the text which Kelvin intended to deliver, but which was abuptly cut off in the House of Representatives because the Opposition called a quorum and time ran out.
A SENIOR Treasury official has sounded the alarm over Australia's property market.
He has warned that the prospect of a sudden and dramatic drop in prices is "the elephant in the room" and should not be ignored by the federal government.
[Source: Treasury warning on home price bubble by Sean Parnell, FOI editor, The Australian, 20th November 2010]
While the government and Reserve Bank insist Australia does not have a housing bubble - as some economists and the International Monetary Fund suggest - it remains such a worrying concept that Treasury has privately sought reassurance from its analysts that prices are not artificially high and that Australia does not face the kind of house price collapse that has hit Britain and the US.
Documents obtained by The Weekend Australian under Freedom of Information laws show the Treasury officials preparing the so-called Red Book of briefs for the incoming government were as divided as private sector economists about the strength of the property market.
Phil Garton, the manager of Treasury's Macro Financial Linkages Unit, sent colleagues a draft paper on the rise in household debt, prospects for further growth in the debt-to-income ratio and the potential implications of slower household debt growth.
His email prompted an exchange with Steve Morling, currently the general manager of the Domestic Economy Division, who argued the paper should "make a bit more about the risks".
"The elephant in the room is house prices or more specifically the risk of a precipitous drop in them, perhaps from an external shock or perhaps from their own internal dynamics when affordability constraints or capacity debt levels see prices and expectations of house prices start to move in the opposite direction," Mr Morling wrote on June 15.
"(I) know there are very supportive fundamentals, but prices rose by 50-60 per cent in three to four years in the early part of this decade, with largely unchanged fundamentals, so they can have a life of their own.
"And given what's happened elsewhere I'm far less sanguine about this - and the interplay with debt - than in the past."
Mr Garton agreed that there would be risks if the fundamentals of low interest rates, unemployment, and financial deregulation "reversed significantly". But he maintained the price growth in the early 2000s was based on a "lagged response" to improvements in the fundamentals, and questioned how Australia could have maintained a bubble for more than six years.
Australia's greatest social, environmental and economic problems are 'root (cause) driven' by immigrated (human) overpopulation.
Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) is putting unsustainable pressures on Australia's economy (demand driving higher prices, interest rates, raising the cost of living, reducing housing affordability, unemployment, record consumerism driving import demands and a spiralling trade deficit.
Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) are putting unsustainable pressures on Australian urban society (creating ethnic enclaves, fueling racism, causing road congestion, overloading public infrastructure - water supply, energy, hospitals, roads, schools, childcare etc).
Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) is putting unsustainable pressures on Australia's environment (river flows, sprawl destroying bushland and killing off wildlife, sprawl invading arable land).
Perhaps Sydney's Gang Gang Cockatoo deserves to be made symbolic of the environmental harm driven by the pressures of excessive immigrated population sprawl. An endangered Gang Gang Cockatoo population is found in forested gullies in Sydney's northern suburbs. It is threatened with extinction by encroaching urban development resulting in clearing of forest and woodland habitat for more human housing. [DEC]. The Gang Gang surely has a supreme moral right to be protected from extinction than the rights of invading humans.
Yet both Gillard's Federal Labor & Abbott's Federal Liberal talk of 'sustainable population' is mere hollow headline spin. Both are committed to economic growth, because they know no better.
Both are committed to encouraging skilled immigration because if is a cheaper bandaid measure for industries not prepared to invest in local vocational training. Both have deceitfully chosen a joint campaign of media distraction on a miniscule refugee issue.
Both are only using the phrase 'sustainable population' as a slogan for vote catching. The LibLabs have become irrelevant.
The Greens immigration policy is mainly about encoyraging more asylum seekers and vaguely "support(s) skilled migration programs that do not drain critical skills from other countries and do not substitute for training or undermine wages and conditions in Australia."
The Nationals are just adopting a combined Coalition policy - committed to blind economic growth, a vague interpretation of what 'sustainable population means and a nominal reduction in annual immigration from 2% to 1.4% (170,000 p.a.) while "liberalising" arrangements for temporary business visas (457s).
So where are there immigration policies for Australia that seriously address the problem and subsequent immigration harm being caused? My own policy would be to effect an absolute moratorium for 24 months, during which time an independent commission assesses the triple bottom line (TBL) impacts and establishes true TBL targets and maxims for (1) population, (2) immigration, (3) supply minimums on a per capita basis for TBL outcomes - e.g. infrastructure minimums like '1 hospital bed per 5000 people' within a 30 minute car journey, etc. Such maxims set quantifiable limits on Australian social, environmental and economic values.
"Australia First Party agrees with the notion that our primary reason for immigration should be based on Australia's need, i.e., the only justification for immigration is net value to Australia. We will make sure that immigration takes into account social cohesion, employment opportunities, urbanisation and environmental issues.
Our policy on immigration is "zero net" which means the number of immigrants we will allow in each year will equal the number of people permanently leaving Australia per year."
Although not advocating reduced immigration, the Secular Party of Australia does advocate reducing the Australian birth rate and has some comparable initiatives:
The Secular Party of Australia's immigration policy reads:
"Global population is a significant issue in dealing with many environmental problems. Australia is a dry but relatively rich country, and has a low population compared with our neighbours. Australia's resource wealth will enable us to maintain a privileged position in the global community. The Secular Party is opposed to policies that encourage a higher birth rate. It is the policy of the Secular Party to abolish the baby bonus.
The Secular Party deplores xenophobic attempts to demonise refugees and asylum seekers. We support continuation of an immigration program that is both economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable, and which provides sufficient allowance for our humanitarian obligations. We note that migrants to Australia must agree to respect certain values, including the equality of men and women, as part of the Australian Values Statement in the immigration application form. It is the policy of the Secular Party to consider means by which migrants may be required to respect these values that they have already agreed to."
is not registered with the Australian Electoral Commission for the coming Federal Election.
Its policies are:
"1. Adopt a formal national 'population policy' to stabilise Australia's population at around 23-26 million through to 2050. (Since we are at 22 million, this would mean a moratorium).
2. * Adopt a balanced and sustainable migration program, with annual immigration at around *50-80,000, being equivalent to total annual emigration.
3. Reject any selection of immigrants based on race.
4. Maintain Australia's current annual refugee intake of 13,750, within the broader immigration quota.
5. Phase out the Baby Bonus and re-direct funds to an appropriate parental leave scheme that promotes greater female participation in the workforce.
6. Tie foreign aid wherever possible to the improvement of governance and economic and environmental sustainability, with a particular focus on women's rights and education and on opportunities for couples to access family planning services."
"The Stable Population Party was due to be officially registered on July 24, but Julia Gillard called an early election on July 17 and prevented us from standing candidates under our party name." [SPPA website]
Serious immigration reduction policy for Australia is overdue. The longer we allow more and more arrivals, the closer Australia is approaching social, environmental and economic crises.
The ABC describes Ms Gillard as having rejected the research, saying there is still a need for skilled migrants.
"We've made some recent changes so that we are taking skilled migrants who have jobs," she claimed, insisting that, "(...) even in today's economic circumstances there are still some parts of our nation where people are crying out for skilled labour, and we have the migration system to assist with that."
Let's see, Gillard believes that there are still some parts of the nation that desperately need skilled labour. Maybe so, but do they "still" need (as if they ever really did), an imported labor force and all its family members coming in annually at a higher rate than ever before, equivalent to the population of a small, rapidly growing city each year? And what do we do with the newly unemployed when these immigrant-demanding businesses go bust?
Politically addicted to unsustainable immigration; any excuse will do
I'm afraid that Ms Gillard sounds to me as if she is more interested in satisfying the demands of the property development and finance industry (which have driven our economy and democracy into the ground) than in serving her constituents (the broad population of Australia) and looking after our long-term welfare.
As candobetter commentator, Greg Wood, rails, "Can someone get Gillard to specify where the skills shortage is now that the resources industry and construction industry are beginning to majorly shed jobs?
Who pays for this costly habit?
While they are at it, can they also ask how increasingly unemployed and under-employed Australians are going to pay the pressure-cooked urban rentals that her lackey Government seems intent upon trying to prop up?"
Update: Immigration Minister Chris Evans 'expects' skilled immigration numbers to drop 'next year' due to the global economic crisis. See "Australia to cut skilled immigration" in the Age of 23 Feb 09
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