Rudd Govt's immigration programme a threat to Australian workers

From the Herald Sun:

Sponsorship system open to exploitation, say academics

John Masanauskas
February 20, 2009 12:00am

AUSTRALIA must slash migration to protect local jobs, argues a Monash University report.

The report said the Rudd Government was running a record high migrant intake while job prospects for locals were bleak amid the global economic crisis.

"On the face of it, Labor's migration program constitutes a direct challenge to the interests of domestic workers," the report said.

"It will add a huge influx of job seekers at a time when the bargaining power of domestic job seekers has taken a turn for the worse."

The report, Immigration and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, will be released today by Monash's Centre for Population and Urban Research.

Authors are demographers Dr Bob Birrell and Dr Ernest Healey, and labour market expert Bob Kinnaird.

Last year the Government increased annual permanent migration by 37,500 places to about 200,000 people.

That's about the same number of Australian school leavers and uni graduates who will be looking for work over the next year.

The number of temporary skilled migrants sponsored by employers has also grown rapidly, reaching almost 60,000 last year.

The report said the Government's $42 billion stimulus package to protect Australian jobs was compromised by high migration figures.

"If the migration program is not cut sharply, the growth in migrant job seekers will exceed the number of jobs the stimulus plan proposes to protect," the authors said.

They also called on the Government to crack down on employer sponsorship of skilled migrants, claiming the system was open to exploitation.

"There are no rules stopping sponsors from recruiting migrants instead of locals, or even of retrenching locals ahead of temporary visa holders," the report said.

It also recommends the range of jobs eligible for migrant sponsorship be reduced and that bosses give proof locals can't be found at market rates of pay and conditions.

Original article

No surprises here. Bringing in record numbers of immigrants, many of them with dubious skills, during a period of growing unemployment is sheer stupidity. But, then again, the Rudd Government's immigration policy never made sense in the first place, even before the economy nose-dived.