Immigration policy
What is our immigration policy?
We are good at congratulating ourselves for our success in taking in so many immigrants over the last 80 years, and developing a multicultural society, but do we realize that until now successive governments have done this without setting net migration numbers? (Net migration is the difference between long-term arrivals and long-term departures.)
OK – we haven’t just let immigration happen. We have had numerical targets and quotas around the number of permanent visas issued, but over recent years, because so many people have been coming to Australia on temporary visas and have stayed on, and because Australian citizens are coming and going, our mechanisms to regulate migration haven’t been working.
This is one of the basic points made by Abul Rizvi, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration, at a National Press Club session carrying the somewhat alarmist, but fortunately misleading title Is Australia's great multicultural experiment over?. (No, it isn’t.)
Rizvi covers the broad issues of immigration policy, and he is followed by Michael Wesley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Melbourne, who covers the specific issues associated with international students. Issues of multiculturalism get only a passing reference from both speakers, whose main concerns are about how the government can reconcile competing and often contradictory objectives in immigration.
The broad issue is about the emerging age structure of our society. Because the fertility of native Australians has fallen, we need somewhere in excess of 200 000 net migrants a year to avoid rapid ageing. The government has set a target of 235 000, and the opposition is proposing a target of 160 000. Such targets are hard to achieve because there are long lags in the system, as Rizvi explains, but they do have significant consequences, that go beyond issues such as demand for housing.
To put Rizvi’s explanations into context, it’s relevant to point out that among all “developed” countries Australia probably has the youngest population. (New Zealand may be a tad younger.) That has shaped our economic and social structure. It has allowed us to keep down the costs associated with ageing, which in turn has allowed us to collect less tax than in other countries. High immigration has provided a growing market for firms – that’s why the business community is so obsessed with GDP rather than per-capita GDP.
If we clamp down on immigration we could find ourselves ageing very quickly, and our economic structure will have to change. Housing may become more affordable and the roads may become less congested, but we will face problems of age dependency and have to require a relatively small working population to pay more taxes to support the old. We will have to rely on training our own skilled workers – everyone from nurses through to nuclear engineers – and that takes a long time.
Both Rizvi and Wesley are critical of the government, and the opposition, for not coming to grips with problems in immigration, and for not explaining the consequences and trade-offs associated with different policy settings.
Rizvi notes the ongoing consequences of the loss of visa integrity when Dutton was minister, which saw huge processing backlogs and people left in uncertainty. The government isn’t doing enough to clean up the mess it inherited, and is implementing poorly thought-through measures, particularly its focus on capping student numbers.
It is on this aspect of capping student numbers that Rizvi’s and Wesley’s criticism of the government’s policies converge. Wesley goes into much more detail about the consequences on universities.
Their criticism of the government is strong, but it isn’t partisan. Rizvi explains that while the government’s policies are unsustainable, the opposition’s would lead to pure chaos.
Wage theft
The Fair Work Act aims to ensure that workers will enjoy a guaranteed safety net of fair, relevant and enforceable minimum legal rights and entitlements.
That’s all noble, but it’s also difficult to enforce in an economy heavily dependent on short-term immigration in sectors such as food, hospitality and horticulture.
Lauri Berg of the University of Technology, Sydney, and Bassina Farbenblum of the University of New South Wales have a Conversation contribution Recovering lost wages is nearly impossible for Australia’s underpaid migrant workers. Here’s how to fix the problem.
They outline the difficulties faced by immigrants who have been underpaid, noting that many migrant workers don’t know they have been underpaid, and that among those who are aware of underpayment not many have taken action, because “the perceived risks and costs of taking action substantially outweighed the slim prospect of success”. Also, because any recovery process takes time, claimants have to stay in Australia, which may be in violation of their visa conditions.
They note that the government is working on new visa provisions designed to allow migrant workers to pursue wage claims without jeopardising their visas. They suggest that the government should go further: it should institute faster and simpler procedures for migrant workers to pursue wage claims.
The broader issues associated with wage theft are dealt with in a panel discussion on the ABC’s The Moneyprogram, about the cost of wage theft. They cover not only the wage theft experienced by immigrants, which tends to be grossly short of award conditions, but also the spectrum of behaviours ranging from deliberate misinterpretation of awards through to genuine mistakes. They estimate that around 40 percent of businesses are not fully compliant with awards.
This situation stems, in part, from the decline of unions. Besides their role in strengthening workers’ power, they also functioned as a source of information for workers about their award conditions.