Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil is announcing big changes to the visa system, but that won’t do much to deter surging net immigration numbers.
Anthony Albanese says his government inherited a migration system that was “not fit for purpose”. That’s true. Just how Labor expects to fix the biggest issues in migration is still not clear after the release of its response to visa fraud and exploitation on Wednesday.
According to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, she is getting on with the job of cleaning up the mess left by one particular ministerial predecessor Peter Dutton who she claims presided over a failing migration system that facilitated “some of the worst crimes in our society”.
The government’s commitment is to crack down much harder on visa rorts and fraudulent agents while offering up some dramatic expulsions of criminal sex and drug traffickers.
Naturally, Dutton denounces all this as a distraction on the eve of the Voice referendum, arguing he cancelled 6000 visas of criminals far more than O’Neil has managed. He won’t be taking lectures from Labor, he insists, given its previous record of “losing control of the borders”.
The Opposition leader also blames O’Neil for “presiding” over 105,000 asylum seekers without acknowledging most arrived in the Coalition era. Labor is about to announce reforms in this area too.
But beyond trading political barbs over criminality or abuse or asylum seekers, the larger policy dilemma for the government is surging legal net overseas immigration numbers.
These are running at well over 450,000 to the year to March relative to the official annual delivery of 190,000 permanent visas for migrants.
Immigration numbers are always a sensitive issue domestically, especially in Sydney and Melbourne which attract the majority of new migrants.
How this official 190,000 permanent annual intake will work with the much higher number of temporary visa holders remains to be explained.
Successive Australian governments have always expressed pride in a highly successful multicultural society given nearly 30 per cent of people were born overseas far more than the comparable figures in the US (14 per cent), the UK (17 per cent) or Canada (23 per cent). Another 20 per cent plus of people in Australia have at least one parent born overseas in a country that has relied heavily on waves of immigration over generations.
Given the low unemployment rate and the extreme labour shortages, business certainly wants to encourage more immigration now, whether temporary or permanent. The union movement is traditionally reluctant to endorse this rather than providing more training and jobs for Australians. But when housing supply is so scarce and rents so expensive, the politics of today’s record numbers become ever more difficult generally.
Federal governments are careful never to express detailed opinions on what the long-term targets for net overseas migration should be, wary of reviving the “big Australia” debate and, more recently, of risking Australia’s lucrative export revenue from international students.
The intergenerational reports under both the Coalition and Labor simply nominated the figure of 235,000 as a Treasury “assumption”.
O’Neil maintains that one of the real drivers of today’s high figure for net overseas migration is lower departure numbers.
“People are coming and they are staying for longer and in some instances they are not leaving,” she said. “We can’t run a sustainable migration system in that way.”
Yet, the obvious benefits in making it easier and quicker to expel criminals and dodgy long-term visa holders or blocking highly dubious international student applications will do relatively little to reduce overall numbers in Australia.
As of July this year, there are just over 2.5 million people here on temporary visas. This figure, though, includes around 700,000 New Zealanders who will now find it easier to get Australian citizenship after Labor agreed to this pathway for those who have lived here for more than four years.
As well as around 650,000 international students, 200,000 graduates, 330,000 visitors and 130,000 working holidaymakers, there are 130,000 temporary skilled workers and 190,000 temporary visa holders who are also employed.
Labor’s immigration policy reforms to be announced this month will focus on encouraging the particular skills the workforce badly needs while also allowing more temporary visa holders to become permanent residents.
Measures will include simplifying the plethora of categories and visas, reforming the current complicated “points” system and fast-tracking approvals for both highly paid professionals and for lower paid workers in aged care. Temporary visa holders won’t have to remain with their sponsor employer.
Yet how this official 190,000 permanent annual intake will work with the much higher number of temporary visa holders remains to be explained.
Some of those on temporary visas and already here, including international students, will be granted permanent status from that annual quota, for example. But many more temporary visa holders have been staying despite having no real prospects of being granted permanent residency while new temporary visa holders continue to flood in. There are 200,000 more international students who have arrived since the beginning of the year.
The government’s tougher compliance and education standards for student visas as well as a reduction in work hours permitted may reduce that imbalance over time. But it’s hard to imagine Labor can engage in mass deportation, especially when many of those here can legally extend their stay by enrolling in more courses.
Such training should logically fit with Australia’s desperate need for more skills and trained workers assuming, of course, that the courses are appropriately tailored and adequate to address the real shortages.
So far, meeting that goal, too, has proven elusive.
Jobs and Skills Australia’s report released on Wednesday notes Australia faces a skills challenge not seen since the 1960s. It predicts that as well as building the necessary training and skills in the vocational and higher education sectors, the government’s migration reforms will allow skilled migration to effectively address labour shortages and boost productivity.
That’s the harder test to come.