immigration
22 Oct 2008
Cutting Off Immigration to Spite Our Face
It may seem politically attractive, but trying to fight rising unemployment by cutting immigration will just make things worse, writes Andrew Bartlett
Brisbane's Courier-Mail this week wrote of "mounting pressure" on the Federal Government to slash the nation's historically high immigration intake, so that we may cope better with an expected rise in unemployment due to economic downturn.The call came from the Shadow Immigration Minister Sharman Stone in comments made directly to the paper, and it was difficult to determine just how much pressure is "mounting" as the paper offered no evidence of any other examples of such calls, despite the article's title, "Opposition leads calls to slash immigration in 2009".
In the absence of any reference to other such calls, it's possible the Opposition is "leading" from a very long way in front on this issue, and that there is no concerted pressure to make any changes to our immigration arrangements. At least not yet.
Calls to make blanket cuts to immigration always increase when the economy declines, and unfortunately public hostility towards migrants and refugees tends to increase along with it.
The myth that "migrants take jobs" is still very strong, but this is precisely the time when such myths should be countered, for both economic and social justice reasons.
The majority of migrants create economic activity and jobs. At a time when our Government is going to extreme lengths to urge people to spend money to stimulate the economy, it would be extremely short-sighted to try to actively curtail a significant source of economic stimulus that, unlike the Government's recent $10 billion overnight splurge, does not require a handout from the taxpayer.
One of the many reasons calling for a deliberate, across-the-board reduction in immigration is that it misunderstands the actual situation.
To put these workers in context, take a look at a sector of our workforce which doesn't attract the same kind of criticism. A big filler of labour shortages in casual and seasonal employment are backpackers and international students. The hundreds of thousands of them now entering Australia each year is a record high.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see that a big fall in numbers in these groups will have a negative impact on the major export industries of education and tourism, leading to further unemployment.
These numbers will almost certainly decline significantly in any case due to major economic downturns in our region or in Europe, but I doubt very much that when it happens you'll hear our universities or our tourism industry saying that it is a good thing for our economy or for employment.
Another reason why cutting immigration doesn't make sense is that economic downturn tends to make its own adjustments to immigration levels. I don't have any problem with there being some reduction in the number of migrants in times of economic downturn, since it happens anyway.
It's already happening in the UK and it will undoubtedly happen here. As a researcher at the UK think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research says, "migrants move to be able to work and if jobs are not available, or not better than at home, they simply will not come or stay". There are some differences in migration patterns and laws in Australia compared to Europe, but such differences as there are work in our favour.
The majority of economic migration is driven by demand. This demand will fall if unemployment rises, and migration will fall with it. This is particularly the case with temporary skilled workers such as those on the subclass 457 visa — employers usually turn to importing skilled labour only if they cannot find locally based workers to fill vacancies.
In the vast majority of cases, it is more expensive for employers to import a new migrant worker than to use people already in Australia (many of whom are migrants themselves). They only do so if they cannot find workers here. So if unemployment increases, the skill and labour supply available locally grows, automatically reducing the numbers of migrants needed.
Contrary to common understanding, much of Australia's migration intake is not capped in a formal sense, where the government hands out a set number of visas each year and knocks the rest back or tells them to wait until next year. However, the anticipated flow of migrants in various visa categories is continually tweaked by modifying a multitude of criteria. It would be wise for the Federal Government to examine these criteria in the light of the changed economic circumstances, but it would be foolish in the extreme to give in to calls to simply cut back across the board, as it would risk causing long-term social and economic harm.
As part of the game of politics, a government may see advantage in saying it is cutting back the migrant intake, even though such a reduction would naturally occur in any case. But while not directly harmful, since they aren't actually doing anything themselves, the danger of such an approach is that it reinforces negative and incorrect assumptions about the relationship between economics and immigration.
Just as we would not try to fix the economic crisis by cutting off flows of investment or finance or trade, we should not try to artificially constrain the flow of skills, services and labour through unnecessary restrictions on the flow of migration, both into and out of Australia.
Crude calls to "slash the immigration intake" across the board run the risk of making economic and unemployment problems worse, not better.
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douglas jones
What you say may serve for the short term but in the longer term we and the rest of the world must reduce population and or reduce our consumption and in any case increase our energy efficiency.
This in order to have some chance of containing climate change in the short term. and should we do this then change the mismatch between what the environemnt can supply and whilst containing the resultant waste and our consumption.
Those who say we can adapt presumably talk of the fewer rich who will survive the change.
The humane concerns expressed here will thus be negated.
We need to change our economic system from being dependent on consumption and massive resource use including space to put our waste, to one which treats the world as having finite resource whose use can only be exceeded for a short time before trouble appears.
Herman Daley and Cobb, amongst many others expressed such an accounting years ago, including the maligned and derided Club of Rome report of was it 1974?
Ignored of course, hardly even given space in the erudite journals let alone the common meant to inform media.
Even supposing that once again some technical solution exists to supply water, soil and so on this will only delay the ultimate crash. Such like our current economic system, can expect deregulates depending even more on production/consumption for profit but cheats as well and this with the connivance of governments.
As we now see Governments will, as now work to save the failing system. In the current case the tax payers money, in the coming case presumably the third world will be allowed to die. On the grounds of course of posing a nuclear risk to us all with many black headlines in the sycophantic media.
Thus may delay the event a little.
Such is morality, short term, rich style.
I agree the world needs to reduce (and ideally halt) its population growth, Douglas. We need to reduce consumption too (or at least consume in a far less wasteful way), which can be done much more rapidly and easily than reducing population growth, if the will is there (which is a rather big IF).
But migration determines whereabouts on the planet people live, not how many people there are living on it. It obviously contributes to population growth in the areas people are relocating to, while reducing it in the areas people are migration from, but its immediate net impact on global population is zero.
What of the extra pressure for water and houses among other things? Who gains from large immigration levels except those powerful forces in business that need growth to pay their large salaries?
We need to consider an economic model that is more permaculture than this constant slash and burn for uncontrolled growth.
We live on the edge of an ancient depleted desert, Australia has some of the most marginal landscape on earth, it’s not the USA or Brazil. This country can support only a relatively small population compared with its area. Many objections to a large immigration intake have nothing to do with fear of job losses or xenophobia or any of the other pc criticisms. We should let scientists inform us to what our sustainable population should be, not politicians, capitalists or economists.
I don’t know why we don’t just all pack our things and go back to where we all came from.
Rockjaw,
Where to? Back to Africa? Most of us would like to stay here, I presume.
The sustainable population for Australia is probably less than 20 million. To achieve this, immigration should be cut to around 50,000, the replacement rate for permanent overseas migration. A new economic model has to be developed for OZ, with lower consumption, more intelligent and environment-friendly activity, and a population growth of zero! A higher participation rate and more investment in training will solve our labour shortage problems.
I like where Andrew has come from, over the years, as a global citizen - and I see no problem with migration if we meet the aim of zero population growth at the same time.
{Can’t believe the stupid baby bonus still exists.}
Sensible water policies that only allowed the nubile to wash once a week might also assist in bringing home the reality as well as putting people off the sort of intimate contact that might lead to yet another nipper needing a drink and a laptop.
The issue is not migration but population control and effective education for the skills and emotional intelligence to give us a future.
I agree that with the premise that unemployment is about to rise and that by reducing our intake of immigrants, this is only going to make economic matters worse, by reducing demand for goods and services.
And I do believe we should still try to attract the same level of highly skilled workers as immigrants that our workforce still lacks.
Also we already have a brain drain and as most Australians won’t do a lot of the jobs that backpackers and new immigrants do, therfore we need a certain level of immigration for economic stability.
As an Irishman living in Holland, I constantly hear all this "no more immigration" claptrap and I’m pretty fed up with it. The Dutch betray their proud boast of bring a "tolerant" nation on a daily basis. (I have never liked the word "tolerance"; I find it a very negative thing.)
When I go back to my beloved homeland for a visit, I hear complaints about the Poles/Lithuanians/Rumanians, and the ironic thing is, half of the gripers have worked in England or the States at one time or another.
Immigrants have enhanced not just economies, but cultures over the centuries, and long may they continue to do so. I would have liked to have been able to live and work for a time in Australia, but I have no trade or specific qualification, sadly.
The world is over-populated and over-polluted. Birth-control methods are readily available in most countries. Illness, war and disease will also take their toll..and you don’t have to be an immigrant to suffer from any of these miseries.