Immigration will be high on the agenda at the next election, whether our political class wants to discuss it or not. The consequences of high immigration numbers are felt most in the middle and outer suburbs, where the next election will be decided. This is where people are being sledgehammered by rising interest rates, the Reserve Bank’s response to inflation, which remains stubbornly high in no small measure because of migration.
Without immigration Australia would be in a technical recession. The decline in productivity would be taking its toll. Bottlenecks would have eased and inflation would be receding. With the size of the immigration program, the last thing we needed was the return of concerns about border control. Yet its mishandling of the High Court’s decision to release illegal migrants with serious criminal records from indefinite detention achieved just that.
The decision to issue 860 temporary visas to Palestinians since October 7 hardly helps Labor’s case. It finds itself wedged between the legitimate concerns of Australians and the elevated ideals of the progressive left.
The government is trying hard to portray the spike in immigration as a post-pandemic surge. It pains to point out that numbers will return to normal, whatever normal might be, in the coming years.
Yet the average cap of 227,000 migrants in the 13 years before Covid was significantly higher than the previous 10-year average of 97,000 under John Howard. It was markedly higher than the average for developed countries, including Sweden and Germany, where the scale of immigration has seriously damaged the social fabric....
The holes in Treasury’s crude, inflated expectations of the benefits of migration are large enough to be seen from space. Not all migrants are skilled and few are primed to earn significant salaries the moment they step off the plane.
A new set of data on migrant employment, compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, offers a more realistic picture of what happens in the real world as opposed to the world inhabited by the Treasury. Migrants in 2019-20 comprised 29.8 per cent of the population but held down just 26.3 per cent of all jobs. The median annual personal income for migrants was $45,351 in 2019-20, compared with $52,338 for the general population.
There is massive disparity between the annual income of permanent, skilled visa holders ($79,300) and those on temporary visas ($34,600) and temporary student visas ($20,400), whose contribution to tax revenue is low or non-existent.
Student visas, with their associated working rights, account for much of the growth in immigration in the past 15 years. It has had a dramatic impact on campus culture and the quality of university education. The proportion of overseas students at Group of Eight universities has risen from 32 per cent to 38 per cent since Covid. A recent study by Navitas predicts 50 per cent of students will come from overseas by the end of the decade.
Sooner or later, governments and university authorities must confront the degrading effects of uncapped overseas enrolments. Any attempt to reduce these numbers to more sensible levels will face strong opposition from the universities and, by extension, the inner-metropolitan elites with their starry-eyed commitment to a big Australia, rich in diversity and social justice.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/dutton-cant-baulk-at-chance-to-hit-a...Australia's skilled migrants:
https://twitter.com/GoldingBF/status/1728473749505089695
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How stupid is our High Court & our Politicians? (Read 5469 times)
