When Skilled Immigrants Aren't So Skilled

From The Independent Australian, Issue No. 13 (Spring 2007):

When Skilled Migrants Aren't So Skilled

Australia last year granted almost 150,000 permanent visas to migrants, of which about 100,000 were allocated to the "skilled migrant" category. While the definition of "skilled" is very broad, reaching down to hairdressers, the professional skills of many migrants are not necessarily what they seem, writes Alan Fitzgerald.

The top 10 industry classifications for 457 visa skilled workers in 2006-07 were health and community services (17%); property and business services (10%); communication services (10%); construction (9%); mining (8%); personal and other services (6%); accommodation, cafes and restaurants (6%); finance and insurance (4%) and education (4%).

These applications were approved to fill 'gaps' in the skilled workforce with the employers sponsoring the workers.

Yet, you hear stories of earlier migrants - accountants, IT specialists and engineers - reduced to driving taxis because of Australian employers' prejudice against employing them but it is their skill levels, not their ethnic origins, that is the problem.

Anthony Parsons, first assistant secretary of the temporary migrant division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, told a parliamentary inquiry that increased evidence of "fraudulent documentation" had slowed the processing time for lower skilled workers under the 457 visa scheme. The average for higher skilled workers was 27 days.

The mining industry isn't happy about the delays. It is urging the Government to "fast track" its 457 sponsored workers by cutting red tape and bureaucracy that comes with importing overseas workers on a temporary basis.

However, there are security concerns about bringing in thousands of workers from developing countries with scant background checks. Apart from falsification of qualifications, fake degrees and diplomas, there is also the problem that many of these skilled workers' homelands have second rate educational institutions.

A McKinsey study in the U.S. in 2005 found that only 25 per cent of Indian-trained engineers have the skills required to work for an international company. It was just as bad in the finance and accounting professions, where only 15 per cent of Indian graduates had the required skills.

Arts and humanities graduates were even lower down the scale, with 10 per cent being employable by an international company. If anything, the proportions for Chinese graduates are worse.

Recently, as both India and China have enjoyed prosperity, an expanding young "middle class" of professionals have emerged who are eager to acquire a Western lifestyle and salary to match. To underline this change, much emphasis has been placed on the huge turnout of graduates from their universities.

This pool of allegedly well qualified graduates and post-graduates is seen as the answer to the skills shortages in such fast growing countries as Australia, or to the ageing population of Europe.

A study by two academics at Duke University (Gary Gereffi and Viek Wadhwa) suggests otherwise. The study has found that the numbers of professional graduates in both India and China has been grossly exaggerated because all types of diplomas and informal certificates were counted.

The real number emerging with the full engineering degrees in India (112,000) and China is 351,000. The figure to compare these with in the U.S. is 137,000. While the totals appear significant, the Duke University study finds that apart from a handful of elite institutions in China and India, the quality of tertiary education is poor.

Another study by MeriTrac, quoted by Sanjeev Sanyal, Deutsche Bank's chief Asian economist, found that in the field of post-graduate degrees, the Asian giants left much to be desired. Only 23 per cent of Indians holding a Masters of Business Administation were employable, even by local Indian companies.

As the economies of both India and China expand, they are facing a skills shortage that will only compound the global skills shortage.

Australia has only itself to blame for the skills shortage here caused by under-investment in education and a belief that "buying in" migrant skills is a quicker and cheaper solution than producing our own professionals.

Take the doctor shortage. The Australian public health system is now heavily reliant on overseas trained doctors because the Federal Government set out to save money by cutting back on the number of university places for domestic medical students. The result is a shortage of doctors.

The quality and training of some of these overseas trained doctors is questionable. Apart from the notorious case in Queensland of medical incompetence leading to the deaths of 40 patients by an Indian doctor who fled to the U.S. to avoid prosecution, there are other cases that emerge from time to time when inquests are held.

Even worse, the State Health Departments are accepting into hospitals doctors trained, for example, in Saudi Arabia and paid by Saudi Arabia while they acquire additional expertise practising on Australian patients in Australia. This extraordinary situation came to light when the competence of a Saudi specialist at Westmead Children's Hospital in NSW was raised following the death of a teenager who had been struck by a golf ball. The patient had been given the wrong treatment and dosage of medication.

Of course, State Health Departments, trying to manage their budgets, will accept doctors whose wages are paid by someone else. But isn't this getting a bit too thrifty when it is the patients who may have to pay the ultimate price? The bureaucrats aren't held to account.

We may be concerned about the competence of imported professionals but our own universities' standards appear to be lower than they used to be since they now depend on income generated by foreign students. Despite protestations by indignant vice-chancellors, every fee-paying student gets to pass. That's what they are paying for - a piece of paper that says they are qualified.

The University of New England admitted in August that an audit of 210 overseas students enrolled in postgraduate IT studies had uncovered substantial evidence of plagiarism. The plagiarism involved the lifting of material from the internet.

This is only the latest case of plagiarism to emerge. In recent years there have been allegations of plagiarism in Australian universities around the country, most involving full fee paying foreign students. Tutors have alleged that pressure is applied to overlook the students' transgressions because too high a failure rate could only affect the flow of overseas students.

Somewhat disingenuously the National Union of Students president Michael Nguyen said foreign students were more likely to plagiarise material because they were not familiar with academic standards required by Australian universities. He said simply stripping the UNE students of their degrees would not solve the systemic issue.

Frankly, cheating is cheating. If a student who aspires to be a professional, particularly one aspiring to work in a Western country such as Australia, and can't recognise the difference between submitting his own original work or plagiarising slabs of text and passing it off as his own, then he shouldn't be rewarded by entry into the profession of his choice. A post-graduate student could hardly be unaware of the ethical difference.

The universities talk of counselling students, marking-down their contributions or failing a subject but it is doubtful if few or any students have been stripped of their degrees no matter how blatant their plagiarism. It's all about money rather than academic standards.

Even the Federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, has belatedly got around to warning of the damage plagiarism could do to the reputation of Australian universities.

However, if the Federal Government invested more in tertiary education, there would be less reason for our universities to prostitute themselves for the income stream that overseas students provide. But as successful foreign students can now apply for permanent residency and look for a job on graduation, some of these poor students may enter the professions in this country with dubious ability, no matter what formal degrees they possess from an Australian university.

Australia appears to lose in both ways - importing sub-standard overseas professionals and in diluting the quality of our domestic degrees.

Peter Taylor, chief executive of Engineers Australia, warned the Government against using large numbers of skilled migrants as an easier alternative to overcoming skills shortages than by educating and developing the skills of Australians.

Speaking at an International Public Works Conference, Mr. Taylor said: "Engineers Australia believes that individuals should not be eligible for a 457 visa unless they have successfully undergone a skills assessment to confirm the level of their engineering qualifications and experience."

"Skilled migration must not become a replacement for a reliable and valued Australian skill base."

"The basis for enhancing and expanding Australia's engineering skills base needs to start in primary schools. Australia's children are losing interest in maths and science mid-way through primary school and at the end of secondary school fewer than 15 per cent are studying advanced maths and science that would lead to the oppportunity to take up careers like engineering."

Mr. Taylor said solutions to the underlying problems had to be found now if Australia was not to become simply a source of raw materials for the value-adding, productive world.

See also:

Immigrants worsening, not easing, skills crisis

Gillard: The immigration juggernaut will not be stopped, despite rising unemployment

An update on this story.

From The West:

Govt rejects call to cut immigration

20th February 2009, 10:14 WST

The federal government has rejected research which shows its $42 billion economic stimulus package will not save jobs unless Australia's immigration intake is slashed.

In a paper to be released on Friday, demographic experts warn that new permanent and temporary migrant workers will soak up the 90,000 jobs the package is supposed to support.

That is because the immigration intake will exceed the number of jobs the commonwealth was trying to protect, The Australian Financial Review reports.

The experts advocate cutting the skilled intake to between 40,000 and 50,000 visas - down from a projected 133,500 - and forcing employers who want to import staff to prove that local skills are not available.

"It seems to me that this research could not be right," federal Employment Minister Julia Gillard told ABC Television.

"We are expediting the immigration of people who have the skills that we need."

Meanwhile, a key employer group says the research recommendations amount to a form of protectionism.

"The skilled program... can't be turned off and on," Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) chief executive Heather Ridout told ABC Television.

The government needed to be very careful about "chopping" immigration numbers, she said, adding that employers were committed to current intake.

"If we do not keep the immigration scheme robust our economic growth potential will be much reduced."

Original article

"It seems to me that this research could not be right."

Notice how Gillard dismisses the research out of hand, without even bothering to provide any evidence that the research is "not right", simply because she doesn't like the conclusion. Gillard's comments show that the Federal Government is committed to immigration irrespective of its effects on the existing Australian population. It is not prepared to even consider the possibility that importing record numbers of foreigners during a period of economic contraction and rising unemployment is a bad idea. In Gillard's words, immigration will continue, even if it means large numbers of Australians being forced to compete directly against foreign citizens for a declining number of jobs.

"We are expediting the immigration of people who have the skills that we need."

Oh, like more hairdressers and unemployable non-English speaking accountants?

"The skilled program... can't be turned off and on."

Yes, it can. The Government could slash immigration numbers tomorrow if it wished to.

"The government needed to be very careful about "chopping" immigration numbers, she said, adding that employers were committed to current intake."

I'm sorry, Heather Ridout, but I wasn't aware that Australia's immigration programme existed for the sole benefit of employers who only care about ensuring the uninterrupted influx of cheap labour.

"If we do not keep the immigration scheme robust our economic growth potential will be much reduced."

Wrong. Advances in productivity and technology, not increased labour inputs, are critical to economic growth.

The Howard Legacy

For those who haven't heard of this book yet, I recommend picking up a copy of The Howard Legacy: Displacement of Traditional Australia from the Professional and Managerial Classes by Dr. Peter Wilkinson (you can read a review here).

Below is an extract from the book:

In 1994 the acerbic Lee Kuan Yew, then Prime Minister of Singapore, forecast that Australians were destined to be the poor white trash of Asia. Today one can say that white Australians are destined to be the poor trash of Australia.

What is the enduring contribution that Prime Minister John Howard’s regime has made to the future of Australia?

The scope and nature of taxation, industrial relations and so on can be changed, all in the space of a few years. There is one change that can not be reversed in less than many generations. That is demographic change.

This book is about the impact of the Coalition’s selective immigration policies. In selecting skilled immigrants, those who have done a degree in Australia receive bonus points in the criteria for acceptance for residency. In effect the policy selects those Asians who have higher cognitive ability, predominantly ethnic Chinese. In the ‘knowledge economy’ of today a premium is paid for qualifications and cognitive ability. They and their children (who will inherit their higher intelligence) will fill the professional and managerial ranks in Australia. They will dominate the cognitive class and hence have disproportionate influence in the country. This has important ramifications for both internal and external policies as ethnic demographic change continues.

The Chinese have been described as the Jews of Asia, but they are more than that. Throughout SE Asia and Oceania they are overwhelmingly dominant in the commercial and financial fields, less successful in the professional fields, because there is often discrimination to offset their superior performance in examinations. They form the ‘market dominant minority’, a term used by Amy Chua (Chapter 7). In this book the term ‘economy dominant minority’ is used to describe the equivalent in advanced knowledge economies. In such nations, and in underdeveloped ones where they have the opportunity, the Chinese have moved smoothly into the professions.

Affluent established nations over the centuries have allowed in unskilled manual workers at the expense of the host countries’ own cohort of people who have least economic advantage in terms of skill and/or IQ. Aggressive reaction can occur. In many underdeveloped countries where immigrants, who have above average commercial and cognitive ability, have been introduced, usually by a colonial/commercial power, violent reaction has occurred frequently and continues to do so.

Under John Howard Australia has become the first ethnic European nation to openly invite in distinct ethnic groups to provide the skills required in today’s knowledge economy. The need arises because governments have not been prepared to provide the necessary finance and motivation to sufficiently educate our own children. They have allowed ideologues in the education system to persuade parents and children that achieving certain skill levels does not matter. Recent arrivals are not fooled, they exploit existing Australian human and physical capital at the expense of the long standing Australian families in our schools and universities. The intergenerational transfer which has been an integral part of our society has been denied to many long established families without them realising it.

How has this come about when Prime Minister Howard has been stigmatised as ‘racist’ by the multicultural/left lobbies? There are no reports of groups participating in a ‘grand plan’1 to introduce a dominant ethnic minority. It seems to have happened through the combination of a number of Government policies, at both the Federal and State levels. Maybe the need for Howard to hold on to his own seat is a contributing factor. Significant changes in selective immigration policies happened over the period when Philip Ruddock, another hate figure of the Left over immigration matters, was the Minister responsible for immigration (1996 to 2003). Ruddock consistently opposed having a population plan. It is difficult to believe that Ruddock and the highest levels of DIMA were not aware of the implications described in this book.

Political correctness has meant that these topics are rarely raised2. Silence on the issue occurs because key players such as the universities, and increasingly the schools, are financially locked in. Few staff raise the question because they will be censured or sacked, since cries of discrmination/xenophobia/racism will be raised, leading to the fear that foreign enrolments will fall creating financial disaster for their institution.

After only five years of the selective immigration policies the results are apparent. In the 18 selective schools in NSW, 12 have more than 50% non-English speaking background, one over 90%. At the UNSW, students who are recent arrivals, Asian or Chinese, are 52%, 44% and 35% respectively. With recently announced increasing immigration and higher skilled quotas this disproportionately high over-representation will accelerate throughout the entire education system. It is true that signs of a significant number of Chinese were moving into the cognitive class before the Coalition took office, largely as a result of the Hawke decisions to allow students to stay after the Tiananmen massacre. But now it is a flood.

Australian politics has a set of largely unspoken bipartisan beliefs and policy directions whereby:

• We believe that our own citizens do not have sufficient innate ability to make Australia a prosperous knowledge economy, so we need immigrants of high cognitive ability.

• We can skimp on educating our own children and compensate by bringing in immigrants with the advanced education which is necessary for the knowledge economy.

• Even better, they must pay for that education in Australia, so that the government can cut grants to the universities for educating Australians.

• We are comfortable with letting the children of recently arrived immigrants have unfettered access to our premium schools and universities, displacing children of long standing Australians from the prestige universities and the lucrative professions.

• We are not concerned that universities discriminate against Australian students by lowering the standard for overseas students, who can then apply for a visa on the basis of the conceded pass.

• We are comfortable with introducing an economy dominant ethnic minority at the expense of long established families.

• We are not concerned that the combination of the economy dominant Chinese and increasing trade pressures will place Australia under the influence of super-power China rather than the USA.

The ALP has a policy to further discriminate against Australians. They would not allow them to enter fee-paying courses leading to prestige and lucrative courses, while overseas students would be free to do so and then apply for residency.

These are issues which need to be discussed prior to the election. We are already at a stage where the Chinese community is influencing immigration policy. In the seats of Bennelong (Prime Minister John Howard) and Watson (Shadow Minister for Immigration, Tony Burke) nearly one-fifth claim Chinese ancestry. Indeed, with less than one-third of his constituents speaking English at home, Burke is better styled the ALP Shadow Minister for Immigrants.

The crucial hold that the ethnic Chinese have over Howard in Bennelong means that the Coalition is unlikely to proclaim any changes. Indeed Howard has promised his Chinese constituents more of the same (see Chapter 12). Burke has no option but to remain silent, in keeping with the ALP strategy of bipartisan-ship on major issues leading up to the election. Kevin Rudd spent time in China, is a noted Sinophile, Mandarin speaker. Is Rudd the Manchurian candidate3 to lead us under the Chinese sphere of influence?


The Abandonment Of Intergenerational Transfer And Displacement Of The Traditional Australia.

"If ever there was a migrant success story, the life of 19 year old Tianhong Wu must be it."

So starts an article by education writer Chee Chee Leung in The Age 13 December 2006.

Tianhong Wu had just scored a perfect ENTER and had applied to Monash University to do medicine. As she had just received citizenship, she would be eligible for HECS. She came to Australia from China five years ago and attended Glen Waverley Secondary College (which is a de facto selective high school). Her English was poor on arrival, and her mother is less fluent. There is no mention of the father in the article, but the mother, a computer science teacher in China, works part time in a fashion house and has applied to do a laboratory skills TAFE course next year. She is applying for citizenship. The tone of the article is that by applying language skills tests to prospective migrants we would be denying Australia the benefits of having Tianhong Wu.

Let us look at her story from another perspective.

Taxpayer subsidized places at medical schools are Government limited. Somebody missed out. Since nobody can specifically claim to have missed out, let us construct a picture of a candidate who just missed out.

Jenny Smith is member of a family long established in Australia. Jenny lived in an outer suburb, one where the school facilities are run down, freely admitted by the Victorian Government. Students in schools in these suburbs are disadvantaged in following academic pathways as shown by declining success of such schools in university enrolments4.

The top matriculation teachers had transferred to de facto selective schools like Glen Waverley. Jenny’s parents did not have a tertiary qualification and did not realise the necessity to shift to another school zone. Besides, they had other kids and relocating costs are considerable. At Monash University, at equal ENTER, students from ordinary public schools perform better than those from selective schools (see Chapter 3), so Jenny was innately superior to some of those who made it, but she didn’t get a chance to prove it.

Jenny’s parents (maybe grandparents, and even further back) have dutifully paid their taxes for many decades, funding the considerable capital, human and financial, that has gone into building up the first class institutions such as Glen Waverley and Monash University. Tianhong’s mother has contributed virtually nothing to this during her short stay. Furthermore the medical course, and the TAFE course for her mother, will be part paid for by Jenny’s parents. Tianhong Wu will study medicine at a Group of 8 university, which guarantees her a very comfortable income for life. Her mother will build up very little super and so will be eligible for a pension.

If Tianhong Wu had never come to Australia, her position would have gone to Jenny. Maybe Jenny is committed to the health professions; then she can apply for the lower status, less well paid profession of nursing.

In effect the traditional Australia is being displaced. Their birthright is being handed to the overseas born on a platter. Not one letter published in The Age made this point in response to Leung’s article.

Immigration policy and health care costs in Australia

From The Social Contract:

How Long Is a Public Purse String?

Immigration policy and health care costs in Australia

By Denis McCormack
Volume 14, Number 1 (Fall 2003)

Try this from a bygone era of Aussie public health pragmatism. It's an item from Melbourne's The Age dated 24 August 1896.

"Leprosy in New South Wales: Chinese patients shipped to Hong Kong"

"Arrangements were recently carried out whereby 19 of the 20 Chinese lepers in the Little Bay Lazarette [hospital in Sydney] were shipped on board a vessel, and they are now on their way to Hong Kong... but one of them managed to hide himself and could not be found in time... Everything has been done to make them comfortable... now in [the] charge of an experienced warden... a small sum of money has been given to each so that on their arrival in Hong Kong they will have means to go to their respective districts. It has been ascertained that no trouble will be experienced in landing the lepers in Hong Kong... Some two years ago a leper was deported from Victoria to China at great expense..."

Contrast the above with today's public health/immigration insanity. I'm listening to radio news as I write (6 August 2003) and by coincidence it carries a report of Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock having exercised his lawful but controversial "discretionary powers" to intervene in a "humanitarian" case in favour of allowing an African with AIDS to be reunited with family already in Australia. One could be forgiven for thinking this is just a bit of image softening from a government lashed for and to its tougher border protection policy of recent times, but the facts would suggest a wider set of problems arriving.

"African migrants will double this year with 5206 expected... African refugees will make up 43% of Australia's humanitarian intake."(1)

It's just this sort of no-brainer from a supposedly conservative government that drives reasonable people nuts in this country. We the reasonable majority who read of police services mobilizing against nascent African gangs (2) are supposed to continue supporting the "conservative" Government of John Howard because the Labor Party Opposition tells us that they would be even more "compassionate" on refugee/asylum issues should they take government at the next election. Heads they win, tails we lose, but I digress...

Unraveling immigration's costs to full length, to separate and identify the many strands, to tease them out and run the micrometer over the cascading, inter-twined masses of fibers, is a forensic accounting task which can be accomplished, but only by a willing bureaucracy directed to do so by government at all three levels in a federal, state and local government system.

In 1991, impatient of successive governments ever undertaking such purse string measurement and analysis, Stephen Rimmer, a senior economist knowledgeable on all three levels of administration, wrote a no-nonsense booklet, "The Cost of Multiculturalism" which was briefly reviewed in The Social Contract (vol. II, no. 4, Summer 1992, p.251). Having had an arms-length hand in editing, proof reading and funding the first print run of Rimmer's booklet, I wasn't surprised to see the consternation it attracted from all the usual suspects in the mainstream Australian press and the immigration industry at the time. Happily he was given right of reply in the press, nor did he lose his job.

A point he was at pains to make on page one was the difficulty in cost separation when tracking Federal funding of immigration and multiculturalism once those funds are added to, atomized by, and filtered through:

"Hidden expenditures by other state and local governments... The control of information is designed to minimize public debate and allow governments to hide from the public the economic costs... In addition the indirect costs... including the growth of organized fraud against governments; organized crime; terrorism; declining community health standards and affirmative action policies."

He even touched taboo topics like migrant workplace accident and motor accident insurance fraud. It was a punch-packed 71-page booklet not since bettered, and for the above good reasons laid no claim to be comprehensive. It begs statistical update and reissue for its shock value alone.

Here is what Rimmer had to say on "Community health and the policy of multiculturalism... Measuring the indirect economic costs" pp. 48, 49, 53, 57 about which little has changed:

"For instance, in the 1980s the Federal government assured the Australian community that all migrants and refugees settling in Australia were medically screened prior to migration (Senate Hansard 22 August 1988). However, throughout the 1980s State governments and medical professionals publicly claimed on numerous occasions that such medical screening of immigrants was ineffective.(3)

For example, in 1986 Dr Streeton, Adviser to the Victorian Public Health department, indicated that of the 246 cases of tuberculosis in Victoria, sixty percent were migrants and most had not been effectively screened prior to entering Australia. Professor Boughton, a leading figure in the development of the hepatitis vaccine, claimed in 1988 that approximately 10 percent -- or 4000 -- of Asian migrants who came to Australia each year carried the hepatitis B virus (Daily Telegraph 1988).(4) In addition, the incidence of syphilis had increased dramatically in Australia since the 1960s, when there were tougher health screening procedures for migrants. However, a spokesman for the Minister for Immigration, Mr Holding, said that health screening procedures were considered adequate by the Federal Government (Messina 1988a).

In 1987 the Australian Health and Medical Research Council said that large numbers of immigrants with active cases of leprosy and tuberculosis had passed through Federal Government medical screening tests without their condition being recognized. The Council recommended that the immigrants from high-risk areas be screened prior to reaching Australia by the Federal Government, and evaluated again when they reached Australia. (Sun, 1987). This finding was confirmed by the "Medical Journal of Australia," which expressed alarm about the number of immigrants and refugees entering Australia with infectious diseases (1987).

In 1988 the Victorian Health Minister, Mr White MP, called on the Federal Government to upgrade medical screening of migrants for infectious diseases. He argued that because of the ineffective screening Australia faced the threat of existing and eradicated diseases being reintroduced and Australian children contracting and spreading the diseases further (Messina 1988b). Consequently, large numbers of migrants with infectious diseases such as hepatitis A and B; AIDS; tuberculosis (TB); leprosy; malaria and syphilis are reported by such authorities to have been allowed into Australia over this period.

However, the Federal Government appears to have ignored these pleas, arguing that only a small number of persons with infectious diseases slip through current screens. By 1989, 238 cases of tuberculosis were reported in Victoria and 73 percent of these were migrants. Dr Jonathon Streeton, who co-authored a National Health and Medical Research Council report on TB, indicated that unless effective screening measures were implemented, TB would be spread throughout the community (Australian 1990b). In addition, in 1989 Dr Rouch, Victoria's Chief Health Officer, claimed that 10 migrants from Africa, who had settled in Victoria, had been found to have AIDS shortly after migrating to Australia. He indicated that both the Victorian and NSW State governments had consistently urged the Federal Government to introduce more widespread medical testing and stated that: "Its really high time there was an adequate policy for screening migrants" (Allender 1989).

In 1991, the Medical Journal of Australia again expressed concern about inadequate screening of migrants, who were contributing to the spread of TB. While there was an apparent shortage of statistics available to health researchers, some 225 of the reported 290 cases of TB in NSW in 1986 were migrants. While the United States government was campaigning to eradicate this disease by 2010, negligence by Australian governments had seen cases of the disease increase rapidly to the point where it might become common. The journal stated that: "It would be an indictment of our public health system if a disease of yesteryear, so close to elimination, returned with its resultant human and economic costs" (Canberra Times 1991b). The Medical Journal of Australia was also reported to have found cases of migrants entering Australia with live roundworms as long as 13cm in their bodies. It was claimed that the worm had infected 1.3 billion people worldwide and that immigrants who tested positive were not routinely treated, as it was felt that the parasite did not pose a significant risk (Canberra Times 1991c).

It has to be taken into account that medical screening of migrants, foreign tourists and students will not be effective in all instances, because of the nature of the diseases and the inexperience of many health professionals in identifying the early signs. However, it is also clear that throughout the 1980s the administration by governments of health screening of migrants has been negligent. Australian governments appear to have displayed an arrogant disregard for the health of current and future generations of Australians, regardless of ethnic background. The policy of multiculturalism has assisted governments to ignore pleas by health professionals over the last decade to implement effective health screening in the national interest...

While the economic cost of ineffective screening of immigrants are unknown, Mr Paul Gross, Director of the "Institute of Health Economics and Technology Assessment" estimated that in 1987 Hepatitis B, which is far more infectious than AIDS, cost the community over $50 million per year diagnosis and treatment costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity and premature death. The cost per patient was estimated to be more than $22 000 (Romei 1987). Given that approximately four thousand migrants are reported to come to Australia each year with this disease alone, the estimated cost to the community of ineffective health screening for Hepatitis B is $88 million per year, expressed in 1987 dollars. However, the cost of other infectious diseases imported into Australia by legal and illegal immigrants, foreign students and tourists cannot be ascertained. Nor can the cost of Australians infected with such diseases be ascertained. Clearly, a conservative estimate of these costs would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year - the total cost is likely to be several billion dollars higher than the estimate provided here."

It is fair to say that over the last decade or more as increasing numbers of Asian, Sub-continental, and Middle Eastern immigrant doctors have become more established across the Australian medical scene, one sees and hears less of the criticism catalogued by Rimmer above. Can professionally prudent self-censorship in the service of "community harmony and understanding" be more accurately described as institutionalized cowardice leading to abrogation of responsibility and duty of care?

Three years after Rimmer's booklet, The Age of 5 December 1994 carried the article "Migrants more likely on welfare" by Karen Middleton reporting unsurprising but surprisingly-admitted findings of the then Labor Government created and funded pro-immigration think-tank, the Bureau of Immigration and Population Research (now defunct):

"A higher proportion of migrants receive age or invalid pensions, sickness benefits, and the dole than do people born in Australia..."

According to a report in The Australian Doctor, 4 April 1997, "HIC swoops on medicine exports at airports" by Christina Anastasopoulos, a one-day search operation of passengers' luggage run jointly by the Health Insurance Commission, Federal Police, and Customs Officers at Sydney International Airport in November 1996 resulted in 24 people being charged under the National Health Act for attempting to illegally take medicines overseas which had been obtained through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (read public purse):

"All travelers involved were boarding flights bound for the Middle East or South East Asia."

Multiply by number of international airports, times 365 days, by how many years? (5)

Most recently a Melbourne University study of increased welfare dependency over the last twenty years reported in the Australian, 11 July 2003 by Christine Wallace said:

"Most of the increase appears to have occurred after 1989-90 and has been most pronounced among single males, particularly those born outside Australia."

Worry as we should about immigration's day-to-day public health costs, they are minor in the order of things most concerning about immigration. Think about the mass mental health implications for frustrated dwindling white majority societies whose well-founded and well-documented fears about our ongoing multiracial immigration continue to be flatly ignored by their elected governments, decade after decade. To what degree does the generalized repressed frustration and resentment so generated feed into mass subliminal post-modern apathy and political disengagement? Think about rising levels of despair, depression and dysgenic behavior -- conspicuous consumption, substance abuse, below replacement fertility. For too many people who have never considered the culture/history/curricular wars to be their business, life seems naturally disconnected from their past or future. As life's passengers they work, shop, eat, drink, watch TV, party, and too often holiday right on past family and children, trying to be merry today -- for tomorrow, continued bipartisan immigration policy ensures displacement, and eventual replacement by Third World immigration. Although a whole range of demographic and social indicators don't look good at present, these trends need not be terminal -- which reminds me of an alternative title I considered for this article, "Immigration Overdose: When tonic turns toxic, STOP!"

For the hyper-informed readership of activist newsletters and journals such as The Social Contract, the daily deluge of bad news from the mainstream media continues to confirm our worst fears about where immigration is taking us. We sift and clip, copy and fax, post, email, download and quote, discuss, catalogue, file, and otherwise integrate and incorporate the latest details into a broader more intricate mental landscape of related information. Sometimes for we realists, it may all seem a bit daunting or depressing even, but that's only to be expected:

"Indeed some studies have postulated the existence of 'depressive realism,' on the basis of evidence which suggests that depressed people have a more realistic assessment of both their level of control over events and their likely future circumstances than the non-depressed... those who are in a condition of mild depression that tend to see themselves and their world with the least amount of cognitive distortion." (6)

So there you have it -- our well-earned excuse to wallow in the occasional downer. Yet, irrepressibly, we are the types who leap at the letterbox on arrival of the latest edition of expert distillations on our collective predicament. We read in wonderment the detailed mirroring of our local immigration-derived problems reflected from around the world. We observe increasing numbers of journalists who are no longer able to so comprehensively avert their gaze from immigration's multifaceted downside. They signal an awakening that is as yet inchoate as it is general among Europeans worldwide: that Third World mass immigration and multiculturalism are unfolding disasters, only brought into sharper focus and magnified since 9/11. As social capital heads south along with social cohesion in increasingly multiracial "western" countries, collective white survival anxiety must eventually rise as a result. But what of the white masses around the world right now? Do they not fret as we do over the immigration/multiculturalism/demographic bad news stories sprinkled throughout the media? Do they not ponder a dim future for them and theirs? As T.S. Elliot observed in his Four Quartets, "humankind cannot bear very much reality," a concept perhaps reflected by some recent research:

"Humans possess a psychological immune system that allows negative events to fade from memory much faster than positive ones...� Researchers have found the human memory to be heavily biased toward the positive. But far from simply being in denial, the study says our memory systems process pleasant and unpleasant emotions differently. The study to be published in the Review of General Psychology says that the fading of negative memories faster than positive ones should be viewed as a 'healthy coping process.'" (7)

"Perhaps that might be one explanation..." -- so mused Jean Raspail through his narrator (more than once) in The Camp of the Saints when pondering the docility of the "paralyzed west" facing imminent immigration inundation. (8)

Having blacked out for too long under the accelerating G force of immigration-induced social change, more of our opinion makers and leading writers are awakening in white-knuckled fright to an imminent civilizational psycho-sonic boom-crash scenario. With immigration's reality kicking in so rudely and widely, some of print and TV journalism's long-embedded left are turning right. In Britain especially (9) they are stimulating the release of more adrenaline fueled "future fear" into the white English-speaking world than has been pumped into its mainstream organs since Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, along with President Woodrow Wilson, won their unorthodox tag-team TKO at the post-WWI Paris Peace Conference. Against the odds, and at times each other, these two men prevailed to ensure immigration restriction and regulation remained in the domestic policy domain of sovereign nations. They stopped immigration becoming the plaything of internationalist do-gooders in Paris and thereafter at the soon forthcoming League of Nations.

We live in hope. It's only the end of the beginning. The fat lady is merely clearing her throat. There is every chance that eventually she'll be singing our song, in harmony with a growing chorus of those who are now hurriedly rehearsing to make the lyrics their own.

Denis McCormack is Australian correspondent for The Social Contract.

Notes:

1. Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun, 25 May 2003, "African intake to rise."

2. The West Australian, 23 July 2003, "Police plan gang squad." "It will respond to the bloody machete and knife fights between the Asian gangs... the unit will also target the predominantly Lebanese gang the Sword Boys and smaller groups including an African gang with the potential to develop into a powerful..."

3. On the Australian Government website covering immigration health clearances updated to 30 June 2003, all the predictably exculpating caveats are cited including:

"Australia's health requirements are designed to:

a) Minimize public health and safety risks to the Australian community;

b) Contain public expenditure on health and community services including Australian social security benefits, allowances or pensions... No health condition with the exception of tuberculosis automatically precludes the issue of a visa...where signs of earlier infection, however small or old are apparent...you will not be permitted to visit Australia until you have completed recommended treatment and successful re-testing" Needless to say, cases of TB x-ray substitution fraud are not unknown."

4. Australians Against Further Immigration with Graeme Campbell, former Federal MP for Kalgoorlie, expended great effort and attracted much P.C. flack for politicizing the immigration -- Hep B connection as spelled out herein by the medical profession heavy-weights. A Federal Government recommendation for childhood Hep B immunization was eventually declared in May 2000 with little fanfare and no public acknowledgement as to Asian immigration being the driver of the belated recommendation.

5. Cited from an Australia First Media Release by Campbell and McCormack, 6 April 1997.

6. Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Post-modern World by Oliver Bennett, Edinburgh University Press 2001, pp.194-5.

7. Melbourne Age, 10 June 2003 "Bad News? Forget it, we all will."

8. The Camp of the Saints is available from The Social Contract Press.

9. There is next to no daylight between what the top end anti-immigration literature has been saying for fifteen years and the recent anti-immigration writings of widely published British journalists like Anthony Browne, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchins et al. Sample Anthony Browne in The Spectator, 2 August 2003: "Some truths about immigration" (or "Britain is losing Britain" also by Browne in The Times, 7 August 2002) in which immigration/public health concerns are worked in well with all the usual themes. British tabloids such as The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, and Daily Mail have been pounding the Blair Government on immigration's downside, including its impact on the National Health Service. For a good summary see Spearhead, September 2003, "The great health scandal" by Rob Smyth. Also a very useful and welcome change has been BBC Radio World Services' frank reportage on immigration. Ethnic demographics, multiculturalism's dilemmas, and mounting asylum problems are now getting something closer to the coverage they deserve on BBC radio which is in stark contrast to their previous studied neglect of these issues.

Original article

The Murdoch press on immigration

From CanDoBetter.org:

Murdoch media contradicts itself on immigration

Posted February 18th, 2009 by James Sinnamon

Rupert Murdoch never misses an opportunity to preach to his captive Australian audience that this country must continue rapid immigration-driven population growth.

He usually does so through his media outlets controlled by editors who apparently know instinctively what their master wants the Australian public to think. On other occasions he will do so in person, as he recently did on the occasion of a dinner in honor of immigrant Frank Lowy:

"In my recent Boyer Lectures I spoke of the importance to Australia's future of a liberal immigration system,' Mr Murdoch said.

"'Few other Australians embody the breadth of achievement or the contribution to Australia's prosperity made by immigrants in this country than Frank Lowy."

One of Frank Lowy's more visible contributions to Australia has been the erection, by his Westfield Corporation, of massive sprawling shopping mall complexes in almost every substantial urban agglomeration in this country. Rupert Murdoch evidently fears that, if Australia's current record immigrant influx is not maintained, future generations of Australians will not be able to enjoy equivalent contributions from the potential Frank Lowy's that would be prevented from coming here.

In one of his Boyer Lectures referred to in his speech, Rupert Murdoch stated:

"In my view, Australians should not worry because other people want to come to our country. The day to worry is when immigrants are no longer attracted to our shores."

A possibility not acknowledged by Rupert Murdoch is that overcrowding this country may be precisely what will eventually make this country unattractive to immigrants, or, indeed, to people already living here. This was implicitly acknowledged in an editorial of 18 March 2008 "Queensland faces a tougher job on regional development", which stated:

"... much of (Queensland's) growth comprises city refugees making a sea change ..."

If high immigration is as beneficial as Rupert Murdoch insists, why is it that so many of Australians need to flee from the cities into which most immigrants have settled?

The story "English expats make Moreton the only Bay in the village" in Rupert Murdoch's Courier Mail newspaper of 10 January 2009 states:

"ESCAPING the overpopulated boroughs of the UK, British immigrants are moving to Brisbane's bayside suburbs, creating their own Little Britain by the Bay."

In the story one women stated, "I would never raise my kids back in England." Another stated " Back in the UK, five-year-olds ... don't know how to play any more."

The overcrowding of both England and the larger southern cities of Australia are precisely the consequence of governments having accepted similar such gratuitous advice in the past from the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

As a consequence, not only have living conditions become intolerable for many, but our very capacity to sustain any sizable population in the longer term, is under threat by runaway population growth brought about to satisfy the insatiable short-term greed of the property speculators and related concerns, whose interests Rupert Murdoch's media promotes.

Original article

The reality is that by most standards, Australia's major cities over the last few decades have become immeasurably worse places to live due to the very high levels of immigration that Murdoch and his fellow immigration enthusiasts have been championing. But don't expect them to ever openly admit the link between sustained high levels of immigration and Australia's rapidly declining quality of life.

Aim for a sustainable population

Aim for sustainable population and generous immigration

CHARLES BERGER
13/02/2009 9:25:00 AM

Last October, the Commonwealth Treasury released modelling intended to inform the design of the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme. The modelling assumed net migration to Australia of 150,000 people a year through to 2050, which would result in an Australian population of about 33million by 2050.

Operating on an assumption of 200,000 a year in the last half of this century, Treasury's modelling envisages about 45million Australians by 2100.

Pause for a moment to consider whether you support an increase in Australia's population that would, among other things, transform Melbourne and Sydney into mega-cities of 10 million residents each.

Now consider that the Treasury's assumptions about Australia's population in advising the Government on climate change were woefully on the low side.

Australia's actual net migration in 2006-07 was 177,600, the highest on record at the time. The preliminary net migration figure for 2007-08 is 213,500. Because the Government further increased skilled migration numbers in 2008, it is likely net migration for 2008-09 will be higher still. In fact, we are now roughly tracking a ''high-growth'' scenario developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2006, which projects an Australian population of more than 62million and growing by 2100.

There is a real difference between an Australia with a stable population of perhaps 25 million to 30 million people and an Australia with twice that number and still growing fast. Our ability to cope with climate change and manage our environment sustainably is vastly improved with a lower, stable population.

It is not only the Treasury assumptions for its climate change advice that now appear completely superseded by population growth. Most state planning frameworks, including Melbourne 2030, were based on population estimates that are now laughably out of date, largely due to the massive increase in migration begun by the Howard government and accelerated under the Rudd Government.

As a result, state and local planning schemes for housing, water supply, electricity, health care, education and transport are becoming redundant almost before the ink is dry on them. Victoria's latest State of the Environment report concludes that development on Melbourne's urban fringes is driving the loss of natural habitat and biodiversity, degrading waterways, taking up good agricultural land and creating a host of other pressures.

In this context, the release of the book Overloading Australia by Mark O'Connor and Bill Lines has sparked another round of debate about Australia's population. Some commentators have been quick to detect a murky agenda of xenophobia hovering behind a green cloak in the population debate. They are right to be suspicious. Population control movements have been associated in the past with anti-migrant agendas and coercive birth control policies in developed and developing countries. In light of this dark history, it is critical for those who advocate population stabilisation to reject any such association unequivocally.

And yet it is possible to argue for a sustainable population policy that includes some limits on migration without being anti-migrant. When I was in law school in the US, I spent many late hours volunteering at a legal clinic that represented refugees making application for asylum. I feel deeply that one of the true measures of a society's ethics is how it treats refugees and others on the wrong end of the modern global economy.

Many people may not realise that in recent years more than half of Australia's permanent migrants have been through the skilled migration stream, compared with only 7 per cent of the total being humanitarian migrants and 25 per cent family migrants. So having a sound population policy that brings migration back down to reasonable levels does not mean shutting the door on refugees. In fact, Australia could even increase its refugee intake, while still tracking for stabilisation of the overall population by about 2050, if we reduce skilled migration substantially.

Since most of the recent increase in migration is attributable to perceived economic requirements, not humanitarian or family obligations, perhaps we should scrutinise more closely the claims by industry that they are needed to meet ''skills shortages''. One wonders whether such claims are really just code for ''lower wages''. The truth is, the rapid increase in skilled migration is being used as a crutch for the economy, a way of providing a short-term boost to things like housing construction and retail demand but without any serious reckoning of the long-term consequences. Relying on migration to prop up sectors of the economy also diverts us from the task of devising more sustainable solutions.

In trying to ease the pressure overpopulation and excessive consumption are having on our planet and its ecological systems, we must debate immigration and demographic patterns while keeping Australian values of justice, equity and fairness front and centre.

Those who are sceptical of calls for a sustainable population policy are also fond of pointing out that our modern, high-consumption lifestyle is the most pressing cause of our environmental problems. They are correct that we must tackle our high pollution and consumption levels and shift to a more sustainable lifestyle. According to the World Resources Institute, Australia's greenhouse pollution level of 26tonnes of CO2-e per person per year is double Germany's, six times China's and 11 times Indonesia's.

But, while a lower-impact way of life must be a top priority, we must also understand that a rapidly growing population will make that transition much more difficult. For instance, in 2002, a CSIRO report analysing the possible consequences of different population levels for Australia found a 28 per cent increase in the nation's population by 2050 would lead to 20 per cent more energy use and greenhouse pollution, 25 per cent more urban water use and higher food import requirements (especially for fish and vegetables), among many other impacts. The sobering reality is that the growth of a consumption-intensive population in Australia is seriously damaging our environment. Despite these pressures, Australian governments have continued to pursue high-population-growth strategies or have had no coherent demographic policy at all. The baby bonus (or the new plasma screen bonus, as they call it at one major retailer) is an example of such a misguided policy.

Australia now needs to shift its focus to policies that seek to match human populations and consumption levels within nature's carrying capacity, while transforming our economic and social systems to function within the limits of ecological systems.

We should also support programs in high-fertility countries that improve education and maternal and child health care as well as provide sustainable economic opportunities. The good news is, these programs are the most effective means of reducing fertility and promoting sustainable development. We can achieve a sustainable population while discharging our ethical obligations to accept refugees and play a positive role internationally. It is not only achievable: our future may depend on it.

Charles Berger is director of strategic ideas at the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Original article

I found some of the reader responses to this article interesting.

One reader called "Katherine" commented:

It is absurd that our Government is pursuing high population growth while, at the same time, having no population policy at all. It is also odd that the motives of environmentalists who question immigration-fueled population growth are sometimes deemed suspect. In contrast the business interests that profit from population growth (and lobby for it) are seldom subjected to scrutiny.

I would argue that the Government does have a tacit population policy: import as many people as quickly as possible!

As for the question of motives, Mark O'Connor and William Lines made this point in their book Overloading Australia:

"In general, rather than opponents of high immigration having a hidden agenda, it is immigration's advocates who have a personal or institutional vested interest, whether they are are ethnic 'leaders' seeking to increase their 'market share', industry groups seeking to increase their business opportunities, or New Class intellectuals expressing their moral superiority."


Another reader called "Milly" wrote:

We in Australia have a right to control who comes here to live, and how many. It is not about being "anti-migrant" or discriminating according to nationality. It is about numbers. Without people emigrating, our gross numbers are increasing, and already our environment is under stress. Garnaut's report is being virtually ignored, and the threat of losing our MDB food-bowl is not even making any impact in Canberra! Kevin Rudd is denying and ignoring climate change. We cannot reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or have any real conservation while our numbers are increasing, deliberately. Only few people benefit from our heavy immigration program. With contradictory policies from our government, they are obviously not taking our environment seriously and future generations will pay the price for their short-sightedness and greed.

Milly is correct. For conservationists (which I am not even though I obviously share their concerns about the ruinous environmental impacts of population growth), the issue is about numbers and numbers only.

To quote O'Connor and Lines again:

"Questioning population and especially immigration will always attract controversy. But conservationists need not involve themselves in debates as to whether our national identity benefits or suffers by a very large influx of people with different cultures or values. (Although this is an important debate to have.) Conservationists need not even be interested in the effects on living standards, life-style, house prices, or security from terrorism. The conservationist's main point is that all groups coming to Australia aspire towards the same high-consuming material culture and lifestyle. In terms of their impact on nature in Australia, differences in language or ethnicity are irrelevant. Numbers, not culture, count."

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.