Time to take a breather on migration numbers

HAVE you found yourself waiting for three months to get an appointment with your hairdresser?

You may wonder why I am asking.

The reason is according to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's skilled occupation list, a qualified hairdresser is entitled to 60 points when applying to enter Australia as a skilled migrant, the same number available to an orthopaedic surgeon. You will also be pleased to know this list has been revised - deleting hairdressers and assorted other occupations - but for all potential migrants who held student visas at the beginning of the year the old list applies until the end of 2012.

There is no doubt the student visa program had been getting out of hand. In 2002-03, there were 163,000 student visas granted; in 2008-09, the number had risen to 320,000, a near doubling across a six-year period. The main source countries are India and China.

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In turn, the skilled occupation list was the mechanism whereby a student visa could convert to permanent residence. In too many cases, the education tail was wagging the immigration dog.

The effect of the new list on the number of overseas students in Australia will be lagged, given the transitional arrangements. But the flow of new students will fall, particularly in vocational education. Most occupations on the new list require university qualifications. Is this a good or bad thing? There is no doubt that having about 600,000 overseas students in the country at the same time has created pressures, particularly on accommodation and public transport. Fewer overseas students will ease these pressures.

At the same time, the business models of some educational providers will be exposed as unsustainable. And some rethinking will be required on federal government funding for universities, as the cross-subsidisation from overseas student fee income dwindles.

Another area of strong growth in temporary migration has been the business (long stay) visa category, the 457 visa entrants. In 2007-08, there were 110,000 457 visas granted, up from a figure of 71,000 in 2005-06. The most common source country of 457 visa holders is Britain.

So what has been happening to the numbers of permanent migrants? Under the capped scheme by which skilled and family migrants enter the country permanently, the government sets down the planning levels each year. Again, the number of migrants has risen significantly in the past decade.

In 2001-02, the numbers in the migration program totalled 93,000; in 2008-09, they had grown to 171,000. The plan for this year is about this mark. About two-thirds of the migration program entrants are in the skilled category, although significant numbers (50,000 to 60,000) do enter under the family category.

The overall impression of Australia's immigration policy in the past decade is one of controlled and uncontrolled expansion that has occurred at almost breakneck speed, from one year to the next.

A case for a breather has existed for some time. This has been acknowledged by the Labor government through the recent changes to the regulations affecting overseas students and 457 visa holders, as well as keeping steady the planned numbers in the migration program in the past few years.

So what should be made of the Coalition's proposed new target for net overseas migration of 170,000, down from a figure of close to 300,000 for the year ending December 2008.

The first thing to say is the formulation of the target is strange and unworkable. Governments cannot control net overseas migration directly as the components include emigration and return of Australians. One of the reasons we reached the figure of 300,000 was because so many Australians working overseas decided to flee the poor economic conditions and come home.

Moreover, the immigration intake is made up of capped and uncapped components, the latter for temporary entrants. Short of altering this arrangement, there is only so much a government can do to exert its control over the annual net migration numbers.

Having said that, there is scope for a government to alter the planning levels in the migration program by reducing the targets within the subgroups. It is feasible to cut the entrants under the family category, for instance.

But one of the strange aspects of the Coalition's policy is its insistence that "two-thirds of our permanent immigration program will be for the purposes of skilled migration", when that proportion has been the case for some time.

One of the more constructive aspects of the Coalition's policy is the suggestion that a white paper be produced to "reframe the structure and composition of Australia's immigration program to address the policy challenges of sustainable population growth".

The economics of immigration are clear that there are limits to a country's annual capacity to absorb new migrants without undue adjustment pressures. In the past, a measured immigration program kept below that speed limit; it is not clear this has been the case in the past decade.

Judith Sloan is a professor at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, and a board member of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Source:http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/time-to-take-a-breather-on-migration-numbers/story-e6frg6zo-1225902745750