Slashing migration to Australia won't hurt, says report
AUSTRALIA could meet looming skills shortages created by the resources boom with just half the annual migration intake planned by government, a report says.
Researchers led by demographer Bob Birrell have found that if today's net overseas migration target of 180,000 a year were slashed to 90,000, the pool of available workers would still expand significantly over the next decade.
Business groups and economists have argued net overseas migration of at least 180,000 will be needed as mining skills shortages intensify in the next few years. This is a far cry from the 320,000 peak reached in 2008, which sparked the "Big Australia" debate.
However, the report from Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research, to be released today, challenges "alarmist" business claims that the mining boom requires higher migration.
Instead, it suggests the key to skills shortages could lie in the participation rate - the share of the population who enter the labour force - and some temporary migration.
For instance, there has been a sharp increase in participation among men and women over the age of 55 in the past decade. If this trend of more participation continued, the report said Australia's workforce would expand by 1.7 million by 2021 if annual net migration were halved to 90,000.
Even if participation rates remained unchanged, the workforce would grow by one million over the same period, it said.
Alongside temporary migration, this would be adequate to meet skills shortages if migration were better targeted to employer's needs, it said. "It can safely be concluded that a [net overseas migration] of 90,000 per year is not the dark apparition business advocates imply," the report said. "The bulk of current migration has little to do with providing scarce skills to the resources industries."
Rather than mining, the majority of recent migrants worked in professional urban jobs, or were studying or taking working holidays, it said. Twenty-six per cent of migration growth in recent years was linked to employer sponsorship.
The report has one point of agreement with government: it concedes temporary migration would be needed for the mining boom. This year's budget made it easier for projects worth $2 billion with a peak workforce of 1500 people to employ foreign workers.
Although the report is likely to receive a cool reception from mining companies, there is a point of agreement with the industry. Miners have also recognised the need to tap more diverse domestic sources of labour, including female workers.
The chief executive of resources employer group the Australian Mines and Metals Association, Steve Knott, last month said the industry could do more to attract women to the male-dominated trade.
"With 92 per cent of AMMA resource industry employers stating they wish to employ more women, and being an industry where currently less than one in five workers are female, there are immense opportunities for Australian women to have a fulfilling and long-term career in the industry," he said.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. Backgrounder: Deportation Basics: How Immigration Enforcement Works (or Doesn’t) in Real Life
2. Op-Ed and Blog: How Can the Asylum System Be Fixed?
3. Video: Jon Feere discusses birthright citizenship and foreign diplomats on Fox News
4. Blog: Asylum Fraud Takes Center Stage
5. Blog: Case Study: ICE Moves at Glacial Speed to Deport Convict
6. Blog: Alabama's Religious Left Sues
7. Blog: The Death Penalty for Immigration Marriage Fraud?
8. Blog: Government Departments Offer Dueling Nonimmigrant Worker Programs
9. Blog: USCIS Hails More Permissive Handling of EB-5 Alien Investor Program
10. Blog: More Secure Communities Kabuki
11. Blog: The Tale of Two Immigration-Related Freedom of Information Act Requests
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
No comments:
Post a Comment