New Australians come, earn and go

New rules, not spin, are needed on the type of migrants Australia is looking for, writes Joanna Howe.

Australia is replacing its history of permanent migration with a preference for those who come, work and leave.

Since concerns about a big Australia began to take root last year, the question of who makes up Australia's population has become politically explosive. It's no longer just about ''queue-jumping'' boat people: it's about asylum seekers, international students, temporary migrant workers and all those seeking to get a grab at the Australian way of life.

Our new Prime Minister is smart. Julia Gillard knows John Howard's battlers well and knows her government is losing them in the face of Tony Abbott's scare campaign depicting an Australia swamped by waves of desperado boat people.

Gillard's interview with Laurie Oakes on Sunday repeated the buzz words ''our sanctuary'' and ''sustainable population''. Her appearance was primarily used to assuage the battlers' fears we are being swamped by non-Australians.

In case we think she's anti-immigration, Gillard is quick to point to her migrant credentials, referring to her parents as ''the right kind of migrants'' whom Australia needed at the time to build the nation. When pressed as to how to distinguish the right kind of migrant from the wrong kind, Gillard says we need to "make sure we've got a focus on employers sponsoring people who are the skilled labour that they need … if we need skilled migrants, then of course we should enable them to come".

But when Gillard's mother and father migrated, Australia's policy was one of permanent migration. Migrants were sponsored by Australian employers and were encouraged to become citizens. The focus was on permanence: tapping into skilled workers who could come to Australia and help build the Australian way of life.

Yet the Gillard government and its two predecessors have unequivocally given priority to temporary migration. For the first time in our history we now have more overseas migrants arriving on temporary visas than for permanent settlement.

The 457 visa scheme, initially introduced in 1996 under the guise of meeting chronic skills shortages for IT and health professionals, has ballooned, bringing in huge numbers of migrant workers who come for a stint and leave once their job is done. These temporary workers have no incentive to help build the Australian way of life; their family, cultural and economic ties are overseas.

There's nothing wrong with this shift to temporary migration if our politicians are being honest with us about what they are doing and why they are doing it. However, from Howard to Rudd to Gillard, we keep getting doublespeak.

Howard was adamant his 457 visa scheme only allowed in skilled workers. But by 2006 nearly a quarter of all 457 visa holders were low- or semi-skilled workers such as travel agents, hairdressers, sales assistants, transport clerks, cooks and bakers: hardly jobs Australians cannot do or be trained to do.

Labor's reforms have only weeded out some of the low-skilled workers allowed in via Howard's loophole. These workers still get 457 visas despite a new obligation on employers to seek governmental permission before engaging low-skilled migrants.

There are too few checks and balances because of the structural problem that the 457 visa is aimed at skilled migration. Applicants has to prove on paper that their skills match Australian standards, but there is no opportunity at the time of assessment for independent scrutiny.

Labor has failed to tackle other problems that leave some migrant workers vulnerable. Despite Labor's policy of protecting all workers' entitlements, migrant workers, often the first to be let go when businesses are in trouble, lose their hard-earned entitlements under the government's General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme (unlike their Australian counterparts).

While migrant workers previously had employer-covered healthcare, they now have to fund it themselves and cannot gain access to Medicare even though they pay taxes like the rest of us. And migrant workers who earn above $81,000 are exempt from English testing, meaning they are susceptible to unsafe work practices.

Gillard should be honest about what her rejection of a big Australia entails. While she has made it clear she does not want our population to reach 36 million by 2050, is she still opening the back door to temporary migrants? These workers are not like Gillard's parents - they cannot vote, their children cannot aspire to be prime minister and ultimately they return back home.

Is it desirable to surreptitiously replace Australia's tradition of permanent migration with temporary migrant workers who are often low-skilled, have no long-term commitment to Australia and are vulnerable to exploitation?

Source:http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/new-australians-come-earn-and-go-20100629-ziun.html