Immigration policy must improve

IN its April 22 edition, The Murray Pioneer had a very good article by Tony Pasin highlighting the problems in our migration policy and listing some of the policies of the Federal Coalition’s Australian Values Migration Plan to improve it.

He highlighted three new measures in the plan and said that further measures will be announced in due course. We are still waiting.

The Albanese government must be able to see that the majority of Australians are in favor of much tighter immigration controls. The rapid rise of One Nation’s appeal is surely due to making reduced immigration one of the party’s key populist proposals.

But making it dependent on restricting certain nations or religious groups is quite wrong and morally depressing.

Our astronomic rise in immigration numbers – pushed by industry beneficiaries, and promoted as increasing our GDP – should be realistically assessed instead by GDP per capita.

This would be a proper measure of whether our living standards have improved and actual productivity has increased. Uncontrolled immigration is helping contribute to our housing shortage, consequent rises in housing prices, and alarming continuing losses of our last remaining areas of native forest.

Under the Howard government permanent and temporary work visas jumped from 162,000 in 1995-96 to over 439,000 in 2007-08. In fact, temporary work visas in particular have rapidly risen to more than the number of permanent work visas granted.

Many of these migrants on temporary visas subsequently extend their stays by applying for extensions or for new permanent visa status.

How fussy are we about granting this? Have they learnt English? Have they gained certification in something badly needed in regional areas, such as nursing or aged care?

Tertiary education providers are charging exorbitant fees for courses leading to qualifications with little demand but claimed to provide work rights in Australia.

Our whole migrant classification system needs upgrading. It is ridiculous that a new migrant electrician qualified in Victoria should have to start again qualifying in NSW if that is where he eventually finds that some of his friends or family members have settled.

Currently there are over 600,000 migrants not working in their trained professions despite our critical shortages in those fields.

Let us get an Australia-wide system that recognises their skills and gives them a universal licence to practice.

Our original migrant selection process should be far more critical, using the standards I have raised above.

Surely our politicians should be starting to get some control over the standards of our immigration policy?
PETER FREEMAN
Renmark