Degrees-for-visas a 'powder keg' issue

From The Australian:

ATTACKS on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney may have been only the beginning of the social conflict to be played out as thousands of foreign students stay on with full work rights and compete for jobs and housing, researcher Bob Birrell warns.

"We're just on the threshold of dealing with all the social, immigration and other issues that arise from allowing this juggernaut (the overseas student industry) to go unchecked," said Monash University's Dr Birrell, who is an influential critic of the degrees-for-visas market.

In the latest People and Place journal, he said the federal government had made it much harder for foreigners who emerged from Australian universities and colleges with poor English and no work experience to win visas as skilled migrants.

Many ex-students given these visas in the past had not secured the jobs they were supposedly trained for, leaving Australia with skill shortages.

But Dr Birrell said news of the visa crackdown was taking a while to move through the "recruitment grapevine" and the government had sent a mixed message by allowing about 40,000 former overseas students with little chance of winning permanent residency to stay on temporary or bridging visas with full work rights.

These ex-students would be ripe for exploitation.

"Employers in the hospitality industry will be able to take their pick of the thousands of former students desperate for such work where this is associated with a promise of an employer nomination for a permanent visa," Dr Birrell said.

Indian students had come under attack as enrolments boomed, pushing them into less affluent suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne where they competed for jobs and housing with youth from low-skill migrant backgrounds, Dr Birrell said.

"This has created a powder keg situation as the newcomers find themselves soft targets for youth gangs," he said.

Dr Birrell said it could take a few years to defuse the situation because many students were yet to graduate, thanks to a dramatic growth in numbers leading up to a tightening of the skilled migration rules.

From 2005 to 2008, a qualification in cookery or hairdressing "virtually guaranteed" a permanent residency visa, leading to a massive growth in enrolments, especially of Indian students attending private colleges, he said.

He predicted legal conflict, as ex-students turned to the courts to secure the permanent residency status they had enrolled for. "It is unlikely they will leave Australia without a fight," Dr Birrell said.

Full article

Govt 'bedazzled by the dollar' in race for students

From The Canberra Times;

The Federal Government must look past export dollars and clean up the education of foreign students before Australia's reputation is irreparably damaged, an academic says.

One of Australia's leading social scientists, Bob Birrell from Monash University, told ABC's Four Corners program last night the Government had been ''bedazzled by the dollar'' and must ensure overseas students were not exploited.

Dr Birrell's comments come as federal police and immigration officials raided the offices of a Sydney migration agent allegedly involved in a scam to exploit foreign students.

Police are also investigating allegations of death threats and an assault in Sydney at the weekend on an undercover reporter employed by Four Corners to assist with the item about the exploitation of students.

Dr Birrell said the Federal Government had not properly monitored dealings with overseas students.

''As the figures mounted in billions every year, and they could proudly say that this is a $15 billion [a year] industry more than wheat, wool and meat put together there's perhaps an understandable reluctance to look critically at the foundation of the industry.''

Four Corners said some students had been ripped off to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars by colleges, or by migration or education agents.

*snip*

An undercover reporter with Four Corners named Sydney immigration agent Sam Tejani as assisting students to cheat on the English language tests. The program alleged Mr Tejani charged up to $5000 to fix the results of tests. Mr Tejani declined to appear on the program, but stated in a written response that the allegations were false.

Australian Immigration Law Services spokesman Karl Konrad said there was evidence of a black market in certificates confirming foreign students had 900 hours of work experience in their trade to allow them to stay in Australia.

''There's no doubt that the fake experience certificates or the letters that they need to pass the skill assessment process is very widespread and we brought this to the attention of the immigration department years ago, but it wasn't really acted on,'' he said.

Migration Institute of Australia chief executive Maurene Horder said the migration agents' representative body was concerned about the allegations. ''Unfortunately, hearing reports about international students and visa applicants falling prey to unscrupulous operators is not a new issue,'' she said.

In May last year, the association reported 60 unscrupulous operators in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to the Department of Immigration, she said. She called on the department to crack down on illegal or unethical behaviour among registered migration agents.

Full article

Foreign student industry a "recognised immigration racket"

From The Australian:

AUSTRALIA'S lust for high-dollar Indian students has led to a thriving black market in sham marriages, forged English language exams and bogus courses, and turned a once-respected international education sector into a recognised immigration racket.

While the federal government and industry work to repair the damage caused by a recent spate of attacks on Indian students in Australia, education agents say the violence has shone a light on a $14 billion industry riven with corruption.

An investigation into the overseas student industry has found thousands of Indians each year are being enrolled in dodgy courses at inflated prices and sold unrealistic dreams of cheap living and plentiful jobs.

The Australian has found operators across the Punjab, the main feeder community for Indian students in Australia, openly advertising "contract marriages" for aspiring immigrants to partners who have passed the mandatory English test for a student visa.

For an additional fee, agents will arrange bank documents and loans to satisfy Australian immigration law that demands students have the means to support themselves for the duration of their course.

Industry insiders say a flourishing market has also developed around the International English Language Test System, with students paying anything up to $20,000 for a good result.

Sonya Singh, a respected Indian education agent servicing the Australian market, says the myriad scams offered to foreign students each year have made "Australia a supermarket where people are buying stuff off the shelf".

"A good-quality Indian student notices a completely no-good student on the same flight as him to Australia and starts to wonder where he's going," she said. "Indians are so conscious of branding and Australia's reputation has suffered a lot because of the recruitment process.

"My own kids didn't want to study in Australia because they had a perception that poor-quality students go there and that if they told their friends they were going to Australia, they would be laughed at or thought of as lesser."

Full article

The solution to this problem is obvious: stop granting permanent residency to foreign students who complete a degree in Australia. The Federal Government needs to take some responsibility and clean up the mess it has created. Australian universities should not have to depend on full fee-paying foreigners for income, admission requirements and educational standards should not be lowered simply to put "bums on seats", and a degree from an Australian university should not be a ticket to permanent residency.

See also:

Indians among highest visa rule breachers in Australia

Getting residency via the kitchen door

When Skilled Immigrants Aren't So Skilled

The Howard Legacy

Migrant accountants fail English test

Immigration "not serving the country"

Foreign students exploiting immigration "loopholes"

The Indian student affair

I have so far refrained from commenting on the recent wave of attacks against Indian students in Australia and the subsequent fallout simply because the level of hysteria has been so high up until this point that it has been virtually impossible to examine the issue in a rational manner. Both Indians and the Australia media alike have used these attacks to once again stick the boot into "racist" Australia. The reality, though, is much different, as Neil Mitchell explains in the following article.

From The Herald Sun:

No, we are not racists

Neil Mitchell
June 11, 2009 12:00am

THERE'S no real point to worrying about being politically correct when that will aggravate a situation already dangerous and misunderstood.

It is fact that Australia's reputation for decency is now threatened by racial tension and the fear is that this could be a glimpse of the future.

The predicament is built around Indian students, the attacks on them, their response to those attacks and the ugliness the subsequent tension has provoked.

If there was any doubt about how seriously the problem is viewed, it was dispelled yesterday when the state's three most powerful people tried to quell the fears and end the stupidity.

The Prime Minister called for calm, but with a degree of passion not normally considered Rudd-like. He deplored racial attacks on any person - "Chinese, Indian, Callithumpian, Queenslanders".

He reminded the world that Australians are also bashed and die in India, which does not provoke parades of chanting ocker backpackers in the streets of Mumbai.

The remaining members of the power trio, the Premier and the Chief Commissioner of Police, met at a railway station and pledged a police campaign supposedly directed at street robberies, but really designed to reassure angry Indian students.

It was a stunt, albeit a worthy one, but let's put the spin aside and look to some basic truths.

It is true that there are gangs operating in this country. Some are racially based and racially motivated.

Some do attack particular ethnic groups.

It is also true that there have been attacks on Indian students described as "curry bashing", an awful term Indians themselves say is a motivation for the attacks.
But there have been far more attacks on Indian students motivated by brutality and theft.

In Sydney, there are dangerous racial undertones to the tension. On the streets at night it has been Middle Eastern versus Indian. That's ugly - and frightening.

The media in India has been hysterical about all this with little concern for the facts and less understanding of this country.

Australian political leaders have been quick to react and overreact, partly because they are concerned about Australia developing a reputation for racism and partly because the education of international students is big business.

And the final truth is that the Indian students have harmed their cause and there is no point pretending otherwise.

Student leaders have portrayed their members as docile, which in itself is a racist generalisation.

Some are gentle, some are not, and the aggressive protests have shown that.

Burning effigies of the Prime Minister makes for good TV, but it incites tensions and alienates decent people.

Worse, the protests seem based on the assumption that Australia's leaders and police somehow endorse this violence and could end it if they had the will.

That's rubbish, on both counts. It's unfair to blame the people and the leaders for the brutality of a few street thugs who are at times just as likely to attack fourth-generation Australians as they are visitors from the other side of the world.

Some of the students have had a rough time, and that is deplorable. But it is the fault of a few criminals, not the society, and not the culture.

Neil Mitchell broadcasts from 8.30am weekdays on 3AW.

Original article

The automatic assumption was that the attackers in these cases were European Australians. But it turns that a number of the attackers were actually of non-European origin, a crucial fact reported neither here in Australia nor overseas. Why is that? Because it doesn't fit the orthodoxy that only people of European ancestry are capable of racism.

As columnist Andrew Bolt points out, political correctness has prevented the public from being properly informed about which groups are actually committing these violent crimes.

Bolt writes:

IF we weren't so scared of seeming racist, we wouldn't now seem so, er, racist that even India is giving us lectures.

Amazing, that. India, which perfected the caste system and is plagued by Hindu-Muslim bloodfests, is telling us we're too prejudiced?

But we have only our own stupidity and grovelling self-hatred to blame. After all, which nation has spent so much apologetic cash and sweat to persuade the world we are vomiting with racism, and which has been, on the other hand, too militantly anti-racist to point out who is actually bashing many of these Indian students?

...

...what police and many journalists refuse to confirm or even discuss is what victims and their spokesmen repeatedly say - that many of their attackers are Africans, Islanders and, less often, Asians who are newcomers themselves, beneficiaries of our eagerness to seem kind and tolerant.

...

That's how the false perception is allowed to grow that these attacks on Indians are just another example of our institutional racism, when the reverse may well be true -- that we're so over-eager to seem not racist that we take in immigrants we perhaps should not, and refuse to admit when they go wrong.

Unfortunately, Australian society is engaged in mass self-deception when it comes to the downsides of immigration-induced diversity. Australian authorities and the Australian media would much rather excoriate the white Australian majority for their alleged "racism" rather than examine those fractious groups actually responsible for much of the ethnically-based crime now plaguing our major cities.

Indians among highest visa rule breachers in Australia

From Business Standard:

Indian students have been placed in the high risk group for visa breaches in Australia along with Bangladeshis and Cambodians, a development that may result in tightening of immigration rules for them.

Based on a review of the student visa programme by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship across all applicant countries, Indians were bracketed with Bangladeshis and Cambodians as a ‘level-four’ risk, which is the second highest risk category.

The student visa programme assessment level was raised from three to four after last year’s review by the Immigration department. No nationalities have currently been placed at level-five, the highest risk category.

Experts say the upgrade may result in significant tightening of rules for Indian students and can affect the demand for their enrolments.

Under the new measure, Indians seeking education in Australia, will now have to prove they have enough funds to survive for the duration of their study and pass more stringent English language tests.

Immigration risk levels for Indian students were upgraded after a department audit that found that in 2006-07, 4.66 per cent of the 58,268 Indian nationals granted visas breached their conditions, compared with an average rate among foreign students of 1.32 per cent, an Immigration department said.

The number of Indian students studying in Australia has risen dramatically in recent years, from 11,313 in 2002 to 96,739 last year, Immigration department spokesperson added.

In 2007-08 the unlawful rate among Indian students was 1.48 per cent of a total 87,145 Indian visa-holders, compared with 0.99 per cent for the average foreign student.

While in May this year offshore applications for Indian students grew by 20 per cent as compared to last year, statistics for this month have till date remained the same as compared to June last year despite the attacks on Indian students being widely publicised.

The number of Indian students enrolled in Australia stood at 47,639 in the period between July 2007 to June 2008. The number was 38,162 in the period between July 2008 to February 2009.

Original article

"The number of Indian students studying in Australia has risen dramatically in recent years, from 11,313 in 2002 to 96,739 last year, Immigration department spokesperson added."

Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the changes made by the former Howard Government which made it easier for foreign students to apply for permanent residency after they graduate?

As Monash academic Bob Birrell explained in a 2006 article:

In 1999, the Australian Government introduced a suite of reforms to its skilled migration selection system. Among the most important of these was the granting of incentives to former overseas studentsto encourage them to obtain permanent residence on completion of their courses. These incentives included additional points for Australian training and the waiving of the job experience requirement that skilled migrants applying offshore had to meet.

Policymakers thought that persons who had been trained in Australia, in English, would be more attractive to Australian employers than their counterparts trained overseas, especially if the overseas training had been conducted in a foreign language in a non-western educational setting. In mid-2001 new onshore visa categories for overseas students were introduced which permitted foreign students to apply for permanent residence without having to leave Australia, as long as they applied within six monthsof completing their training.

...

In a numerical sense these policy initiatives have been spectacularly successful. There were 5,480 onshore visasissued to principal applicants who were former overseas students under the three student visa subclasses in 2001–02. By 2005–06, this number had grown to 15,383.

These changes, quietly introduced without any public consultation, have effectively transformed Australia's higher education institutions into "visa factories" for foreigners seeking permanent residency. Australia's universities, starved of public funding, have welcomed and encouraged this influx of full fee-paying foreign students. As Dr. Peter Wilkinson noted in his book The Howard Legacy (2007), "the universities market themselves as providing education but they know, and certainly their prospective applicants know, that they are marketing permanent residency visas."

Educational standards have predictably dropped as the universities prostitute themselves for foreign cash. As several reports have pointed out, many of the foreign students granted permanent residency are largely unemployable in their particular fields due to poor English. This means that Australia loses out both ways by accepting sub-standard foreign workers while also degrading the quality of its domestic degrees. Worse still, the selling of permanent residency to foreigners also degrades the value and undermines the meaning of Australian citizenship, given that permanent residency provides an almost guaranteed path to naturalisation.

Getting residency via the kitchen door

Another day, another immigration racket. From The Age:

Cooking up a foreign storm

John Masanauskas
April 01, 2009 12:00am

TOO many foreign cooks are spoiling the broth for locals seeking jobs in hospitality, says a Monash University study.

New figures show that the annual number of overseas students who did cooking courses in Australia and then gained permanent residency had more than tripled to 3250 in just two years.

This compares with only 2300 Australians who completed cooking apprenticeships in 2007.

The Monash report, to be released today, says many of the private operators that are providing the one-year courses have poor standards and are an easy route for immigration.

Thousands of students, mainly from India, attend cooking schools in Melbourne as part of an international student boom worth $11 billion to Australia.

So competitive is the industry that overseas students are stopped on city streets and offered laptops and discounted fees to change schools.

In leaflets obtained by the Herald Sun, agents for the schools boast of their success in getting residency visas while offering weekend classes with no exams.

The Monash report, The Cooking-Immigration Nexus, was written by migration experts Dr Bob Birrell and Dr Ernest Healy, and labour market researcher Bob Kinnaird.

The authors said that despite the Rudd Government's moves to tighten the skilled migration program, it was failing to stem the rising tide of foreign students trained as cooks in Australia.

While cooking had been removed from the list of critical skills needed here, foreigners with minimal work experience could still be sponsored by employers, they said.

"Employers have an incentive to take advantage of the relatively low wages and conditions former overseas students will accept in return for a permanent residence sponsorship," the report said.

The report is published in the latest issue of People and Place, the journal of Monash's Centre for Population and Urban Research.

These permanent residency visa factories masquerading as "cooking schools" are just another example of the kind of niche businesses that comprise Australia's flourishing "immigration industry". It is a parasitic, largely unregulated "industry" infested by unscrupulous people who specialise solely in the sale of Australian permanent residency and, thus, citizenship. Much like those small, impoverished Pacific Island states which openly sell their citizenship to foreigners, Australia is allowing its citizenship to become a commodity that can be bought, except that the price is actually lower in Australia compared to those Pacific Island countries. Moreover, in those Pacific Island nations, the Government actually profits for the sale, compared to the situation here where it is some shady "migration agency", "cooking school" or even university which makes an easy buck by crassly and shamelessly providing a pathway to Australian citizenship.


UPDATE

Popular columnist Andrew Bolt has picked up on this story over at his blog. Some of the reader comments are worth reading.

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

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.

Migrant accountants fail English test

From the SMH:

OVERSEAS accountants are flocking to Australia under the skilled migration program but few pass the English requirements to work in the sector, leaving labour shortfalls unmet, a study into immigration policy has found.

There are now more overseas accountants gaining visas each year than there are domestic graduates in the field, a study in the upcoming edition of the People And Place quarterly journal has found.

But the occupation remains on the critical skills list because students using Australian accounting courses to gain permanent residency do not find work.

"The main reason is poor English skills," said the director of the Centre for Population & Urban Research at Monash University, Bob Birrell. Of the 9107 foreign accountants granted visas in 2007-08, more than two thirds studied at Australian institutions.

"The fact that such a large majority of overseas student graduates possess poor English indicates that Australian universities are conferring graduate credentials on students who do not have the skills needed to practise their profession," Professor Birrell said.

The study that Professor Birrell wrote with Ernest Healy uses the "abysmal" employment experience of overseas accountants, by far the largest group in the skilled migration program, to illustrate the program's shortcomings.

For example, the accounting firm KPMG said substandard English resulted in less than 1 per cent of former overseas student applicants landing a job in the company's entry level program.

"This experience indicates the potential for pruning the current program without damage to its core objective of filling skills shortages," the paper said.

The number of skilled migrants entering Australia is at a record. The Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, has said a small cut to the yearly intake of 133,500 was "more likely than not" when numbers for 2009-10 were adjusted in the May budget to factor in the global financial meltdown.

The mismatch between accounting graduates and available jobs exposes a problem that was allowed to brew for a decade, the paper said.

From 1996 to 2007, the Coalition government tied only a small number of new university places to accounting studies. At the same time, universities hungry for the bigger financial returns of full-fee-paying students gave priority to overseas students, it said.

Part of the solution was for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to raise the English language standard for student visas and demand higher standards of accrediting bodies, the paper said. "DIAC is fully aware of the dire employment situation of migrant accountants and of the role of English language skills in producing this outcome."

Full article

More:

Degrees still lure low-skill migrants

Bernard Lane | January 14, 2009

AUSTRALIA'S misguided trade in selling accounting degrees to migrants seeking permanent residency visas should be tightened up yet again and locals should be trained to fill severe shortages in the profession, says Monash University researcher Bob Birrell.

Dr Birrell, whose earlier work on the visas-for-degrees industry has inspired sharp debate and partial reform, will release this week new, more complete figures showing that more than a third of overseas students who secured visas as Australian-trained accountants had worryingly low English language skills.

"I regard the 2006-07 data as the best indication yet of the standards of Australian universities ... they're nowhere near the standards required by the profession," Dr Birrell told the HES.

In a paper to be published by People and Place journal, he and co-author Ernest Healy use updated figures and a new breakdown of nationality and occupation to show that accountancy as an easy route to permanent residence is especially attractive to the weaker English speakers among mainland Chinese students.

On the English language test known as IELTS, 45 per cent of mainland Chinese given visas as accountants did not manage a score of six (see tables, page 26). The percentage for mainland Chinese awarded visas across all university disciplines was 37 per cent while the figure for all nationalities given visas as accountants was 38 per cent.

Dr Birrell argues that even an IELTS score of six is not good enough for genuine university study while professions that take communication seriously demand a minimum score of seven, a standard adopted by large accounting firms such as KPMG.

Poor English is commonly cited by employers when asked why so few overseas graduates accepted as skilled migrants manage to secure jobs as accountants at a time of chronic shortages.

"The (former overseas) students who have struggled in the boom years are almost certainly going to go to the back of the queue as the economy slows," DrBirrell said.

"(Universities) are going to come under pressure from the students who are looking for permanent residency - that they can actually achieve this result from their heavy investment of time and money."

Dr Birrell pointed to a "wilful neglect" of domestic training of accountants and cited Curtin University of Technology as a dramatic example of an imbalance whereby overseas students greatly outnumbered locals (see tables).

He hoped the Bradley review would lead to more local opportunities in the medium term but urged the federal Government to complete the reform of the visas-for-degrees market started in September 2007 and revisited last December.

Little improvement would be found in the 2007-08 figures given the "very long pipeline" of former overseas students in the system. He said the 2007 and 2008 rule changes meant many overseas students pursuing the accountancy route to permanent residency would take up the soft option of a new professional year, the Skilled Migrants Internship Program, because it did not stipulate any English language requirement.

"What happens if people finish their professional year and (get a visa but) but still don't have level seven (in IELTS), which is quite likely?" he said.

Full article

If the Department of Immigration and Citizenship is aware of the situation, as the authors of the report claim, then why hasn't it acted to rectify the problem? Why does it continue to allow the universities to serve as permanent residency factories* for non-English speaking foreign students? Why has the Department allowed this to continue even though the students in question are virtually unemployable and, thus, no benefit whatsoever to the Australian economy?

* See chapter six of Dr. Peter Wilkinson's book The Howard Legacy (2007) for a detailed look at how Australia's universities have allowed themselves to be exploited as visa factories. As Dr. Wilkinson notes, "the universities market themselves as providing education but they know, and certainly their prospective applicants know, that they are marketing permanent residency visas."

Immigration "not serving the country"

From The Australian:

Migration Not Helping Skills Shortage

Guy Healy
Oct. 16, 2008

The Immigration Department has admitted tertiary enrolments are failing to meet state and territory demands for graduates in mining, construction and nursing, despite an overhaul of the skilled migration system to meet the labour shortage.

The surge in vocational education and training and intensive English-language courses for overseas students was in areas “which appear to be outside those demanded”, senior Immigration official Peter Speldewinde told a Brisbane conference.

The skilled immigration category was revamped last year to give greater emphasis to speaking English and developing skills among the tens of thousands of overseas students who now go on to form a key plank of the permanent skilled migration program every year.

Registered nurses, dentists, engineers, radiographers, urban planners, occupational therapists, electricians, bakers, bricklayers, mechanics, carpenters and chefs are among the top 20 occupational shortage areas identified by the states and territories.

But Immigration Department data shows overseas students under the skilled immigration category are flocking instead into hospitality management, welfare studies, hairdressing, accounting, cookery and computing.

There were almost 11,000 course commencements in hospitality, almost 2000 in welfare studies and almost 1500 in hairdressing, all winning valuable points towards permanent residency.

Mr Speldewinde, the department’s skilled-migration director, told educators at the conference last Friday that it was “clear there are not so much loopholes, but areas in which (earning) points probably stimulate people to go down certain paths”.

“Clearly the Migrant Occupation on Demand List (under which migrants get points toward permanent residency) is driving very, very strongly migrants’ choices,” he said.

Mr Speldewinde said the system was under review to conform with Immigration Minister Chris Evans’s aim of ensuring the selection of high-quality skilled migrants who will more directly address labour market shortages.

“The focus is on quality, not quantity,” he said.

Two of the key architects of last year’s reforms, Monash University demographer Bob Birrell, and National Institute of Labour Studies director Sue Richardson, yesterday described as a mixed success the effort to recruit skilled migrants instead of educating younger Australians.

Dr Birrell told The Australian “the surge in skilled migration program is not delivering the skills needed in mining and construction industries, and that’s the Government’s main concern”.

“More than half the skilled immigrants are settling in Sydney and Melbourne,” not in Queensland and Western Australia where they are needed, he said.

Dr Birrell—a fierce critic of aspects of the migration program—said that despite the sobering assessment from Mr Speldewinde, Australia was “likely to get better-equipped migrants and it’s a good thing Labor has stuck by this initiative of former (Coalition) minister (Kevin) Andrews”.

“The acknowledgement the system is not serving the country is quite striking, as is vocational education overtaking higher education because it’s an easier and cheaper route to permanent residency,” he said.

Professor Richardson told The Australian she was concerned that more than half our population growth was now coming from migration rather than births.

Original article

Foreign students exploiting immigration "loopholes"

From The Australian:

Fast-tracked residents not tied to their trades

Jonathan Porter | September 20, 2008

AS far as immigration mandarins are concerned, Jinal Patel is meeting a critical skills shortage in hairdressing. But it may not be that cut and dried.

Migration experts have branded as a loophole a scheme that gives preference to onshore students who study trades such as hairdressing and cookery.

Ms Patel paid $16,500 to a migration agent in her home town of Gandhinagar, in India's west, for the ironclad promise of permanent residency in Australia. She arrived on a student visa in July.

In the process, the 23-year-old became part of the largest and fastest-growing sector of our immigration program: young people who arrive on student visas and change their status, usually by completing a trade certificate in hospitality.

There are about 20,000 of these students who achieve permanent residence each year. Most have university degrees, particularly in accounting. But there has been a surge in the number of trade-qualified cooks and hairdressers -- and their numbers are likely to escalate in the near future.

These students make up about half of the skilled migrants selected under Australia's points-tested skilled migration program.

Sydney-based Ms Patel, whose husband is here on a dependent spouse visa and doesn't work, said Australian immigration authorities did not deem her bachelor of commerce degree sufficient to give her permanent residency.

Once Ms Patel, who also doesn't work and is being supported by her family back home, and fellow student Eileen Li, from Fouzhou in southern China, complete their two-year hairdressing certificates, their papers will be stamped by Trades Recognition Australia.

They will then submit their applications for permanent residency to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and will be given permanent residency.

Immigration expert Bob Birrell said that, in 2005, there were 10,782 overseas students starting courses in the service, hospitality, and transport areas.

"In 2006 there were 18,524 and in 2007 there were 30,492," Professor Birrell said. "Of these, in 2005 some 1800 were from India, rising to 4661 in 2006 and 11,866 in 2007. They will be seeking permanent residency at the end of 2008 and in 2009."

Sydney-based migration agent Mark Webster said the fast track for trade certificates in hairdressing and cooking was "a loophole" and called for the Government to re-examine its migration program.

"The system doesn't really pick people the economy needs," Mr Webster said.

"I don't think anybody has asked themselves if that's the best way for the immigration program to be run."

The students are flooding into private colleges set up under competition reforms introduced by the Howard government as an alternative to TAFE.

An industry insider at one private hairdressing school said that in a class of 26, maybe six actually wanted to be hairdressers.

"They are just doing it to get permanent residency," the source said. "But once they have paid their $15,000 a year, the bosses are not going to fail them, are they?"

The occupations of cook and hairdresser have been on the preferred list for immigration for four and nine years respectively but Professor Birrell said the large numbers of migrants coming here supposedly to fill the gaps "are not solving Australia's skill shortage problem".

"However, by leaving hospitality jobs on the eligible occupation list they are acting as a beacon of opportunity for migrants to come here," he said.

Professional Hairdressers Association chief executive Gregory Christo said the private colleges were "bastardising the industry".

"This is a huge problem," Mr Christo said. "The vast majority (of migrant students) are using hairdressing to get residency with no intention of staying in the industry."

Original article

Stricter immigration rules for Indian students, but not for Chinese

From The Australian:

Tougher immigration rules for Indian students

Guy Healy
September 03, 2008

AN immigration crackdown will make it harder to recruit students from India, the fast-growing big market in Australia's $12.5 billion education export industry.

University of NSW's pro vice-chancellor (international) Jennie Lang told the HES all universities were likely to have urged students to get their visa applications lodged and processed before the September 1 change in immigration risk levels, which affects a host of overseas markets.

"We will also be encouraging (Department of Immigration and Citizenship) staff in offshore posts to ensure that university sector applicants are given priority," Ms Lang said.

A spokesperson from the department said "genuine applicants had nothing to fear from the changes".

According to the latest official data, there were 65,000 Indian students in Australia in the year to June, mostly in vocational education. Although they make up a smaller market than the Chinese, the Indian growth rate is much higher: student numbers from India grew by 55 per cent, compared with 19per cent from China.

The China market, however, benefits in the latest revision of immigration risk, which is based on factors such as rates of document fraud, visa overstay and asylum claims, as well as applications for non-skilled residency for a spouse, for example.

*snip*

India was not alone in moving up the risk scale. Visa applicants from Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Jordan, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Romania and Zimbabwe will have to do more to show they are genuine students.

They will have to give extra evidence of their capacity to support themselves financially, especially with savings histories.

The status of these nine countries had been changed "to combat increased levels of immigration risk", the department spokesperson said.

The risk levels are set across various sectors, including English language courses, vocational education and higher degrees.

The higher risk assessment affects all sectors of the Indian education market, which moved up by one level.

Full article

Foreign students making a mockery of immigration laws

From The Australian:

Overseas students flout work rules

Richard Kerbaj | August 11, 2008

INTERNATIONAL students are making a mockery of immigration laws by flouting visa conditions which limit them to 20-hour working weeks, with those driving taxis in Victoria clocking up to twice as many hours behind the wheel as they're allowed.

Despite a warning from Immigration Minister Chris Evans that taxi owners who employed students in breach of their visa restrictions risked up to two years' jail, cab advocacy bodies and student drivers revealed the industry was largely ignoring the law.

Student bodies have urged the Rudd Government to lift the 20-hour cap, saying overseas pupils should be entitled to juggle their academic commitments with as many hours of work as they can manage.

The Australian understands the Howard government planned to target Victorian taxi businesses as a first step in a national crackdown on students who were rorting the employment restrictions of their visas.

Victorian Taxi Drivers Association secretary Thomas Henderson, whose organisation represents the interests of both driver and owner members, admitted some holders of student visas were clocking up to 40 hours a week on the road.

"One work shift consists of 12 hours and even if they do two shifts they're already done four extra hours," Mr Henderson said. "But the moment (working hours) start to come to the notice of the authorities, it starts to become verydifficult for students because they are only allowed to work 20 hours a week."

The National Liaison Committee for International Students in Australia played down visa breaches, saying increasing living expenses were pushing overseas pupils to work beyond their limits.

NLC president Eric Pang said the federal Government should abolish the 20-hour working week limit and allow students to work at their own discretion.

"The working hours should be up to the students and the institutions," he said. "If the student can study full time and is performing well (academically) then, yes, they can work more than 20 hours. If they can't perform well in their studies, then they shouldn't work more than 20 hours.

"The new Government should be reviewing this (working) policy but the aim should be to provide more flexibility and more rights in terms of how much (students) want to work and how much they want to study."

The federal Government has given no indication it is considering relaxing the law. Senator Evans said taxi owners who employed students in breach of their visas also risked a fine of up to $13,200.

"Taxi owners, like all employers, are responsible for ensuring that overseas workers -- including students -- abide by their visa conditions," he said.

It is understood former immigration minister Kevin Andrews wanted to pursue student visa rorters working as cab drivers through the Victorian Taxi Directorate.

In the lead-up to last November's federal election, Mr Andrews was planning to demand the personal details of student taxi drivers from the VTD to determine the number of hours they had been working. Anyone found to have breached their visa conditions would have risked being deported.

Mr Henderson said student drivers, many of whom drove at night, shouldn't have to pay taxes because they had to put up with disorderly passengers. "If you ever think about what these poor guys have to put up with, then they shouldn't be taxed at all," he said.

Source

Australia's segregated universities

From The Age:

Backlash feared over uni students' cultural divide

Sushi Das
July 23, 2008

A WIDENING gulf between international and local students has prompted warnings of resentment and a backlash on Australian university campuses, as overseas student numbers continue to grow.

The warnings come amid increasing concern over "fragility" in the sector arising from its dependence on international students. On average, universities derive 15% of their funding from overseas-student fees.

One of Australia's leading higher-education experts warns that despite the atmosphere on campuses generally supporting international students, there is "informal but real segregation" that could fuel tensions.

Claims of a divide have been backed up by student representatives.

Local students tended to work off campus and were not active in student life, while international students spent most of their time on campus, generally in the library, Professor Simon Marginson, of Melbourne University's Centre for Higher Education, told The Age.

"So you've got this odd situation with the local students half disengaged in a way I've never really seen before," he said.

"The international-student industry runs off the back of a reasonably strong local system which presumes a healthy relationship with the local students … all of that has become the marketing pitch.

"That's the flashpoint that worries me more than any other - that it could spring back into resentment."

National Union of Students president Angus McFarland said students were concerned about a lack of interaction.

Vice-chancellors had discussed with him how "cultural cliques" and "religious ghettos" could be overcome, Mr McFarland said.

Segregation was apparent in classrooms, with group discussions and teamwork being affected by the two camps tending to stick within their familiar groups, he said.

Mixing between groups in the classroom sometimes prompted complaints from both sides: international students complained they were being marginalised, while domestic students said poor language skills were adversely affecting group progress, he said.

Student associations - underfunded because of voluntary student unionism - could no longer afford to organise sufficient events to encourage social and cultural mixing.

Professor Marginson said local disengagement was not being tackled and international students were not being made use of as a bridge to Asia.

"We're not helping local students become more Asia-focused and more competent culturally. I think it's a real tension … there's no sign that backlash or resentment is occurring, but I think there's potential for that. It's a bit scary."

Professor Marginson said internationalisation of higher education was supposed to enrich universities by helping staff, students and institutions create strong cultural and intellectual links with other countries, as well as bring in much-needed revenue. But it did not appear to be meeting its aim.

Cuts in federal funding have forced universities to seek revenue from other sources, including international students. Meanwhile, growth in domestic students has slowed, while international student numbers have rocketed to 370,000.

International education is a $12.5 billion industry. In 2006, 65% of overseas students were from Asia.

Eric Pang, president of the National Liaison Committee for International Students in Australia, said international students were not provided with a strong welfare system and were forced to rely on their peers for help and support, yet at the same time they were being accused of failing to integrate.

He said many overseas students had told the committee: "There's not much international students can learn from Australia in terms of culture or … English. After all, the standard of English of Australian students isn't high."

Professor Richard Larkins, chairman of the peak universities body Universities Australia, said despite a recent slowdown in the growth of foreign enrolment, "there is fragility about our sector in relation to its high dependence on income from international students".

Source

Foreign student influx adversely affecting overall workforce conditions

From The Age:

Foreign students being exploited

Tom Arup
June 12, 2008

NEARLY 60% of international students in Victoria could be receiving below minimum wage rates, a study by Monash and Melbourne university academics has revealed.

Interviews with 200 international students drawn from nine universities across Victoria revealed that up to 58.1% of students surveyed were paid below $15 an hour, with 33.9% receiving less than $10 an hour.

The results from a $3 million Australian Research Council-funded study come just a month after hundreds of taxi drivers, many of whom were students from India, protested against conditions in their industry outside Flinders Street station.

The study also found:

■ International students are often pressured to take jobs not wanted by domestic workers.

■ At least a third work more than the 20 hours allowed under study visas, forcing them to take jobs "off the books" with no industrial relations protection.

■ The influx of international students working outside industrial relations controls adversely affects overall conditions in the workforce.

■ The problems started in 1991 when international students rights in the workplace were narrowly defined as the "right to work" by the federal government.

One of the academics involved in the study, Professor Chris Nyland, yesterday told The Age he was happy there were signs the Victorian Government was developing policy options. But he hit out at the Federal Government for its "protracted" reply.

"The Rudd Government has shown no sign of recognising this as an issue," Professor Nyland said. "There was a 94-page higher education discussion document (from the Rudd Government) that was issued. I have gone through that and there is lots of references to international education, lots of references to international student fees, nothing in there about international student welfare."

The office of acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard — who is also Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Education — did not return The Age's request for comment yesterday.

Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate Tony Lawrence said a number of complaints about exploitation had been made to his office by international students. He also said he was aware of some employers asking $200 for certificates verifying employment which is often needed as part of immigration conditions.

It is believed the Victorian Government is now considering a cross-departmental taskforce into international student welfare among other options. However, a spokesman for Skills and Workforce Participation Minister Jacinta Allan was tight-lipped yesterday on any future plans.

Source

Australia importing a new overclass

From VDARE.com:

Enter the Dragon: Australia Imports a New Elite

By R. J. Stove
November 26, 2007

As you have probably heard by now, Australia’s general election of November 24 swept from power Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard, who had held the office since 1996. It proved a triumph for his opponent, the Australian Labor Party’s new and largely untested leader Kevin Rudd, who has a 27-seat majority in the federal parliament.

Among the election’s issues: Iraq (to a very limited extent), the economy, tax cuts, national security, climate change, and quasi-generational change (Rudd is a youthful-looking 50 years old, Howard an increasingly tired-looking 68). Almost everything, in fact—except mass immigration, on which both candidates were locked in a bipartisan embrace.

Sound familiar?

Don’t expect the average Australian newspaper editor to notice, let alone to challenge, this state of affairs. There is a reason why VDARE.COM has a disproportionately high number of Australian readers.

But, happily, one Australian noticed it—and not only noticed it but published a whole book devoted to it before the election campaign started.

Peter Wilkinson, editor of the quarterly Independent Australian, brought out The Howard Legacy: Displacement of Traditional Australia from the Professional and Managerial Classes (Independent Australian Publications, Post Office Box 8, Essendon 3040, Victoria, Australia, 2007, 170 pp). A past president of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute , Dr. Wilkinson comprehensively knows whereof he speaks.

The Howard Legacy is entirely unmarred by the crank-pamphlet Gestalt. Its author has concentrated severely upon number-crunching (Steve Sailer will enjoy reading this study). It bears no personal rancor towards the Chinese immigrants whose invasion he chronicles. When a government is foolish enough and short-sighted enough to roll out the welcome mat regardless of the possibilities for long-term assimilation, then, as Dr. Wilkinson says, "Who can blame people for taking advantage of these policies if they can?"

In table after table, diagram after diagram, Dr. Wilkinson explains the trends. Once John Howard first obtained office in 1996, he immediately cut back on immigration from all sources. In the 1995-96 fiscal year 99,139 immigrants were admitted; the annual total fell to 85,732 in 1996-97 and then to 77,327 in 1997-98.

But then it crept up after Howard’s narrow victory in the 1998 election to a postwar peak of 107,366 in 2000-01. Another cutback followed this peak—the totals for 2001-02 and 2002-03 were respectively 88,900 and 93,914 immigrants. But by 2003-04 the total was ballooning again: in 2005-06 we had another postwar peak of 131,593. (A much more detailed statistical breakdown of immigrants’ arrival patterns over the last decade can be found here. [Settler arrivals 1996-97 to 2006-07 Australia States and territories (PDF)])

To give Howard credit, he remained tough on illegal immigration, ever since his deeds in 2001. It was legal immigration that he encouraged and increased to record levels. But his 2001 success meant that his opponent declared his own opposition to illegal immigration, too. [Rudd to turn back boatpeople, By Paul Kelly and Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, November 23, 2007]

Australia is famously "girt by sea," and is a luckier country than the US with no shallow, fordable Rio Grande River for immigrants to cross. Illegal immigrants are thus a minor element in Australian demographics. The real problem will always be those immigrants the Government allows and encourages to immigrate.

Whence come these immigrants?

One thing for which we can be (slightly) grateful: in Australia, the U.S.-style family-reunification racket is no longer the juggernaut it was. Skilled migration has become much more prominent. There are even, mirabile dictu, attempts made to demand from skilled-migration candidates a certain proficiency in English. So far, so good.

But note how theory breaks down against the seemingly irresistible onrush of open-borders practice. Theoretically, as Dr. Wilkinson explains, overseas applicants for university study in Australia need to have passed Band 6 of the International English Language Test System (IELTS), which declares them to be "competent" in the tongue. But if a migrant is already here and wants the so-called Subclass 880 skilled-migrant visa, he need only pass IELTS Band 5. Two-thirds of those migrants who qualify for Subclass 880 are, in fact, stuck at the Band 5 stage. How very reassuring if you are forced to depend on them for preparing your tax return, or removing your brain tumor.

And yes, naturellement, however far behind the eight-ball the ethnic lobbyists might be at actually writing or uttering grammatical English, there is one word which they have perfectly mastered the art of pronouncing, to good careerist effect. That word is, of course, "racist".

Dr. Wilkinson takes us on a guided tour of the giggle-house now euphemistically known in Australia as "university education", with its zeal for handing out degrees to even the most inept foreign students. He quotes the surreptitious—and, necessarily, anonymous—confessions of the academics faced with such students: such as "I give them 51% to get them out of my hair", and "An audit demonstrated that it was almost exclusively international students who appealed against penalties."

The little darlings are impressively gifted in plagiarism also. Encouraged, no doubt, by the plagiarism-mania already flourishing locally at the highest levels, thanks to the likes of David Robinson, former boss of Melbourne’s Monash University, who resigned after the third time he was caught committing plagiarism.

On and on it goes, with a particularly valuable rogues’ gallery of modern Chinese-Australian legislators, few of whom could be trusted on any topic more controversial than tomorrow’s sunrise. Most of them have nuisance value rather than anything more sinister. Some are downright amusing, such as one Peter Wong. Mr. Wong served in New South Wales’ parliament (from the 1999 state election to the 2007 state election) as representative for an anti-Pauline-Hanson operation, only to fall out with the party’s Jewish executive director by denouncing Israel.

The sole gallery member to make a national name for himself has been Melbourne’s mayor John So, subject of a reverential rap ditty called "John So He’s My Bro."

Mr. So’s more or less total inability to speak English, despite having lived in Australia since 1964, is the stuff of Internet legend. It briefly threatened to derail his chances of obtaining the mayoralty, when that office was thrown open to popular election for the first time.

An opposing candidate, Peter Shepperd, bravely raised the matter of Mr. So’s difficulties with the English language. Then, in Dr. Wilkinson’s words, "The dreaded cry of ‘racism’ was raised and Shepperd withdrew from the contest."

Clearly, no one has dared tell Mr. So about Tom Lehrer’s deathless epigram: "If a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is shut up."

VDARE.COM readers will already have encountered the saga of Australian law professor Andrew Fraser, suspended from Sydney’s Macquarie University after he dared to question the prevailing utopian dreams of multiracialism. These ludicrous proceedings The Howard Legacy discusses at some length.

Dr. Wilkinson makes it clear—without actually saying outright—that the single most tragic element in modern Australian society is not the "racist" culture in which we are supposedly marinated, but rather, our complete lack of a First Amendment or anything like it. The anti-Fraser campaign was, after all, doing nothing more obscure than imitating the success of the lynching bee that 20 years earlier had forced the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey out of his job.

Dr. Wilkinson’s interests are not confined to the Australian scene. One book to which he repeatedly refers is Amy Chua’s World On Fire, with its first-hand accounts of successful but locally detested Chinese in the Philippines, and its surveys of economically dominant but politically hounded market minorities (whether Chinese or other) elsewhere.

Malaysia has famously addressed the problems resulting from its own Chinese market minority by two methods:

1. mass murder, such as Kuala Lumpur’s May 1969 anti-Chinese rioting, which remains off-limits for public discussion in Malaysia;

2. a racial quota system, which Prime Minister Abdul Razak formulated in 1971 to give preference to Malays in education and bureaucratic employment.

Dr. Wilkinson is not, need one say, advocating such anti-Chinese maneuvers by Australian rulers. But one does wonder how far Australian administrative Caucasophobia has to continue before alienated and marginalized whites start pining for a Malaysian-type solution.

Thus far, The Howard Legacy has been totally ignored by Australia’s predominantly dopey Mainstream Media. Meanwhile, said media are happy enough to report with slavering enthusiasm such fatuous schemes as former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie’s demand that the country’s population be raised from 20 million to 50 million. And no, this is not an official bulletin from the Lyndon LaRouche brigade. This is reality, or what passes in Australia for same. ['We need 50 million Aussies', The Courier-Mail, September 04, 2007]

As for the November 24 election, its outcome combines with Dr. Wilkinson’s text to inspire the hope that the Liberal Party will be euthanized altogether. (Already the Liberal Party has proved unable to control any state or territorial legislature since 2001.)

A good precedent exists for this collapse: the annihilation during the 1940s of the United Australia Party. Since this movement was little more than a shill for Big Business at its stupidest—and had forced from office Sir Robert Menzies, its one leader of stature—there was no point in trying to revive it after it had been clobbered at the 1943 general election .

Instead, Menzies had the insight (even before that election) to start a genuine conservative movement from scratch. The movement which he envisaged—and which, after 1943, he very largely effected—would avoid the UAP’s dim-witted class warfare, and would focus on those whom Menzies himself called "The Forgotten People." In this respect, Pauline Hanson may prove to have been a harbinger.

Merely to read Menzies’ remarks is to realize anew how unthinkable they would be, from any large Australian political organization’s head, today. To find out exactly why they are unthinkable, we need look no further than Dr. Wilkinson’s painstakingly assembled statistics.

R. J. Stove lives in Melbourne and is a Contributing Editor of The American Conservative. The views he expresses are his own.

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