Australia is slowly but surely waking up to the reality of “Asianization”. Some 84% of the population now accept that “multiculturalism is a good thing and benefitted Australia”. (Source: Scanlon Foundation Survey 2013).

The fear and resistance seen in the 1960s and 1970s with resurrections attempted by failed political parties of the recent past, seem to have all but faded as futile popularity exercises with only an occasional whimper emerging now and again in the form of the ‘big Australia’ question.

Dr Tim Soutphommasane, Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner writes that, “Debates about Asian immigration reflect a contest over Australian national identity. For some, immigration has meant a repudiation of Australia’s British cultural heritage — a rejection of all that was, in their eyes, traditionally Australian. For such people, Asia — to be more precise, immigration from Asia in significant numbers — was a source of cultural corruption or degradation.

“And yet, for all of its pungency, the rhetoric about multiculturalism’s imminent failure hasn’t been proven correct. Australian multiculturalism has endured. In last year’s Scanlon Foundation survey on social cohesion, 84 percent of respondents agreed that multiculturalism is a good thing and benefited Australia.”

According to the Commissioner, nearly 50 percent of our population were either born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. It is estimated that close to 10 percent of the Australian population have Asian cultural origins or ancestry. Of the top 10 overseas birthplaces of Australians, five are countries in Asia: China, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. China and India now represent the two largest source countries for immigrants to Australia.

Of the 4 million people who speak a language other than English at home, close to 1.3 million speak an Asian language — including more than 650,000 who speak Chinese.

Despite being voted the fifth best city in the world, and the second best in Australia after mighty Melbourne, by an international survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit recently, the migration numbers to Adelaide are considered relatively low compared to the bigger cities and mining states. Compared to these other states, the population growth in South Australia is relatively stable with little change in the number of people coming to and leaving the state.

To turn this around and potentially boost the economy and population numbers, Immigration South Australia has introduced a new nomination pathway, chain migration*, which allows applicants with an immediate family member permanently residing in South Australia to apply for a state nominated visa.

Chain migration enables applicants to access occupations on the South Australian Graduate List and occupations listed as special conditions apply. 

Requirements

To qualify for the chain migration pathway, applicants must:

The Fair Work Ombudsman has ordered a poultry farm in Newcastle to pay $20,000 in back-pay to sc417 workers but says that it is powerless to deal with many of the other abuses of the company. Perhaps DIBP and the Federal Police will be among the relevant authorities that will investigate these abuses. And chances are, DIBP may be faced with the issue of unregistered practice lurking in this complex chain which seem to involve several layers of subcontracting in order to bring young workers from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the poultry farms.

The Fair Work Ombudsman issued a statement saying that it is concerned about the sub-contracting arrangements it identified during the course of its investigations which it believes contributed to poor record-keeping practices and underpayment of minimum entitlements.

The ombudsman, “found connections between companies in the contracting line beneath the principal sub-contractor whereby they shared the same accountant, interchanged directors, listed individuals as signatories on bank accounts and transferred supervisors from one company to another as labour hire contracts were signed.”

The ABC reports that the Newcastle branch of the Australasian Meat Workers Union identified the labour hire company as Pham Poultry, which is providing employees for the Baiada plant, near Newcastle.

Craig Bildstein, from Fair Work, says his officers are sometimes quite shocked by the poor safety standards people are working in.

Carla Wilshire, CEO of the Migration Council of Australia has accused Monash University professor Dr Bob Birrell of misguiding the Australian public on the immigration debate by touting “incomplete and mistaken’ analysis based on “spurious numbers”

Bob Birrell, who unfortunately is regularly quoted as an expert on immigration policy by the tabloids has in effect made simplistic assertions based on wrong numbers which in effect misguides the immigration debate by pointing to migrants as a key cause of Australia’s unemployment woes.

‘Work such as Dr Birrell’s – a rejection of immigration based on spurious numbers – crowds out space for the questions we should be asking on immigration policy. How does this global agenda relate to Australia? How does immigration and inequality interact here in Australia? What role can Australian immigration play in global development? These questions will define Australia’s immigration policies of the 21st century. It’s time to start thinking seriously about them,” Carla Wilshre wrote in The Age.

“Birrell’s analysis ignores the effect of migrants and Australians who leave the labour market. By taking apples from oranges, Birrell’s research overestimates the number of new migrants in new jobs. Indeed at a rough estimate, around 50 per cent of new arrivals will end up in newly created jobs, not the 95 per cent he claims.” writes Carla Wilshire in The Age.

“More troubling, Birrell chooses to ignore the dynamic effects of the labour market. The assumption that there are only so many jobs to go around has been roundly rejected. Labour economists have long known the number of jobs is not fixed. According to Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, this lump of labour fallacy “encourages fatalism” and “feeds protectionism”. The trouble with promoting such notions is that policy-makers stop thinking about ways to create jobs. Australia’s immigration system is one of the few programs in the developed world that accounts for this. Our skilled migration program is increasingly driven by employers and not hand-picked by government.” writes Ms Wilshire.

Ms Wilshire notes that the OECD research suggests migrants to Australia raise the wages of low-skilled jobs (nber.org/papers/w16646). At the margins, this helps mitigate the pernicious effects of income inequality. Today, as shown by ANU economics professor Bob Gregory, non-English speaking migrants begin their interaction in the labour market via part-time work instead of unemployment, as occurred in the 1980s (iza.org/en/webcontent/publications/papers/viewAbstract?dp_id=8061).

The Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that that blacklists of immigration lawyers and agents compiled by the Department of Immigration are still being used, despite government promises they had been removed.

“Documents dated late May show the lists are still being used to rate applicants for partner visas according to which lawyer or agent they have acting on their behalf. The document shows the lists remain part of a "risk tiering tool" that adds three points to an application and may affect the outcome. (The more points, the higher risk rating the application receives.)” reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

However, DIBP has again denied the lists are still in use. A DIBP Spokesperson said, “Consistent with previous statements, the agents-of-concern lists were removed from use last year as the information was out of date.”

The department had previously said the lists were created in 2010 and were supposed to have been destroyed. The discovery of the blacklists prompted a departmental audit.

The discovery of the lists also prompted calls for the Commonwealth Ombudsman to investigate.