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Don't demonise foreign workers with spurious statistics.
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).
This economic effect helps social and cultural integration over the long term.
Further, research conducted by the Migration Council Australia has shown that three quarters of 457 visa holders help train Australian workers within firms. Last year we analysed the largest survey of 457 visa holders and their employers. It showed this effect was particularly relevant for large, multinational companies who hire the majority of 457 visa holders in Australia (migrationcouncil.org.au/assets/files/8168a3189.pdf).
Senator Michaelia Cash also recently issued a media release stating, “We must be able to have a sensible, measured and reasoned debate about skilled migration in Australia so as to avoid the demonisation of foreign workers and the vital workforce they provide to our economy.”
In addition to this report, Assistant Michaelia Cash also issued a media release last week as follows:
Contrary to the concerted campaign against Australia's skilled migration programme, here are the facts which clearly expose the fiction peddled by Labor and the unions:
- Sponsored workers on 457 visas account for less than one per cent of Australia's labour force. At this low level it is both unrealistic and naive to suggest that the 457 skilled migration program is flooding the national labour market.
- Workers on 457 visas are not a low cost option to avoid the costs of employing Australian residents. Sponsors of these workers encounter additional expenses that they do not incur when employing local workers, demonstrating a clear financial disincentive to employing an overseas worker over an Australian employee.
- Australian workers cannot be undercut by workers on 457 visas - market rates and conditions that would be paid to an Australian in the same job in the same workplace must also be provided to the foreign worker. If the market salary rate for the position that is to be sponsored does not exceed the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT), then the person will not be able to access the subclass 457 visa programme. TSMIT is currently set at $53 900.
- Allegations by the CFMEU published in today's Australian newspaper are incorrect. The recent increase in the non-approval rate of 457 visa applications is a result of the implementation of the genuineness test and greater scrutiny of applications by the department.
- The number of primary Subclass 457 visa holders in Australia as at 31 July 2014 was 107 570. This is a decrease since 30 September 2013 - twelve days after the Abbott government assumed office - when the number was at 110 280.
A business that is forced to close because it is unable to access the labour that it requires employs no-one. That is a lose - lose situation for both the employer and the employees.
We must be able to have a sensible, measured and reasoned debate about skilled migration in Australia so as to avoid the demonisation of foreign workers and the vital workforce they provide to our economy.
Comments
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Tuesday, 19 August 2014Here is what Monash says about Bob Birrell:
"Bob has a degree in economics from Melbourne University, in history from University of London (first class honours) and a PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. Most of his academic work has been at Monash University and since 1991 this work has focussed on running the CPUR. He has acted as an advisor on immigration issues to both Labor and Coalition governments and was a member of the Commonwealth Government’s National Population Council from 1987–1993. Recently he was a member of the independent Review of the General Skilled Migration Program which reported in May 2006."
Bea, maybe Bob isn't doing this on purpose maybe he is just wrong.
Sorry Bob, I think you are wrong. -
Tuesday, 19 August 2014Nah, I've experience Bob, Katherine Betts, etc., from the Centre for Population and Urban Research at a number of conferences during the past 20-odd years the early 90s as well as their papers and the thread is the same - Of course he's wrong but there is a purpose to his work =, me thinks - feeding the strategic thinkers and decision makers with the fuel to make totally arbitrary decisions based on fearmongering and populist crap, regardless of which side of the fence the powers that be are sitting on... Call me a cynic.
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Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Bea is spot on. Bob Birrell seems to lack intestinal fortitude and a commitment to back up his frivolous claims. I have challenged him to either refute or endorse various quotes attributed to him in various press reports, citing the blatant contradictions to migration legislation as he has been purported to have said. He has shirked on every occasion. His lack of knowledge of migration law and legislation or his tacit approval of misquotes clearly demonstrates that he has no principles other than to say what will serve his agenda.
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Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Reading the comments ... I'd say ... Bob Birrell is a RACIST. Full stop. See ... it was easy to use the R word, wasn't it ?? Just start getting used to 'calling a spade a spade' ... I mean 'a racist a racist' when it rears its ugly face in front of you. It's the surest way to stop any racist in the West dead in their tracks because it FORCES them to go into either DENIAL big time or ... simply admit it with a nervous twinge. Both are devastating to racists. I am a proud Asian .. and have seen and faced in my time enough of racists in this part of Asia to last me several life times (the racists call it Australia .. oh .. its Asia Pacific .. we want to have a say how Asia does .. oh .. but we're not Asia or part of it ... yawn).
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Sunday, 26 November 2017
discussion about population levels and the effect on the environment of an ever increasing population is not racist
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Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Just wrote a comment earlier .. absolutely no swear words ... unless the R word (racist; racism) are now regarded in Australia as swearing ... looks like you don't like debating THE TRUTH like I do.
Its quite alright .... I shall NOT be reading or contributing here further .... hahaha .. and you and Australia want to "lecture" Asia and thousands of years of civilisation ... on FREE SPEECH ????!!!! You must be out of your mind. It must now be Asia's turn and time to lecture Australia, the little sheriff of the West, on how to behave unpretentiously politely and genuinely courteously towards the nuclear-armed billions to the north. LOL -
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Both Nan Ker Li and Bea Leoncini play the race card, eh?
In my view to call Bob Birrell is racist is ridiculous and an insult to those who have experienced racism in Australia and elsewhere.
Bob Birrell is entitled to raise the population issue and the impact it has on local jobs without being abused and called racist. I also do not agree that Mr Birrell wants to keep Australia predominantly Western, Christian, white and English speaking.
Where in any of the things he wrote has he said this or been racist? No-where.
Bea Leoncini also uses the "bigot" weapon against Bob Birrell, Andrew Bolt, and the union movement. Of these only the Liberal Party agitator, Andrew Bolt, should be called a racist, for that is what a court of law found. Other notable bigots and defenders of bigots can be found in the Cabinet in the form of George Brandis and the series of Liberal Party Ministers who devised Liberal Party policy towards asylum seekers as a way of dividing and conquering the ALP.
You can't detect any racism or bigotry in these policies?
But what really annoys me is that Bea calls the union movement bigoted and racists for defending the jobs of Australian citizens. Where is the racism in the reasonable the call to limit the supply of overseas guest workers into Australia? No-where.
I would think the union movement has every right to raise concerns about a pool of workers who do not have the full set of industrial rights.
What do Nan Ker Li and Bea Leoncini think racism and bigotry is?
They should be more careful with their concepts and their words. -
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Christopher,
What is not widely known is that Birrell's PhD was about. It was:
Birrell, R. J. (1970). THE STRUCTURE OF THE CHINESE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNES: 1960-1966. (Ph.D. 7023600), Princeton University, United States -- New Jersey. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/302529085?accountid=12001 ProQuest
Many of Birrell's papers have been sharply criticised for drawing incorrect conclusions, often based on flawed statistical datasets. -
Sunday, 24 August 2014
To the Editor
Faith restored.
All's well that ends well I guess.
And as to Nicholas Houston .. his comments suggest the question of political or association or union affiliations and patronage and other 'baggage'. I meant "suggest" ... and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it can only be that.
I will leave Bea to capably I think speak for herself ... as for me, I do not "play the race card" ... every time I find a racist, I simply pick up "the race card" and point it SQUARELY toward the face of the racist. Representationally no more than that. It can't be more truthfully and honestly expressed. This simplistic truthfulness about how to confront racists anywhere in Australia is why Australia cannot and will not solve its RACISM .... until more people do this, and ESPECIALLY those who suffer in any way whatsoever the conduct, acts and omissions of active or passive, overt or covert RACISTS in the country. -
Monday, 27 November 2017
To the Editor
I agree with Nan Ker Li that racism should be confronted, and the case of Yassmin Abdel-Magied is an appalling example of a veiled racist attack by the Liberal Party and the free speech crowd on an advocate of multiculturalism and tolerance that should have been named for what it was. On the other hand, the elephant in the chat is the funding sources of the Migration Council of Australia. As far as I am aware, they are funded by corporate donations and big government, and of course, their suggestion that Bob Birrell is incompetent and wrong is motivated by wanting to keep the stream of cooks, hairdressers, and restaurant managers, dodgy marketing specialists, and other low skilled occupations flowing in on the 457 program to undercut wages and training options for young Australians. Race is completely irrelevant to this proposition, either on the part of Mr Birrell or the AMC.
Immigration blog
My take on this is that Bob Birrell and the mob in his unit based at Monash have a vested interest in keeping Australia predominantly Western, Christian (oops), white and English speaking, forgetting that the White Australia Policy was formally dumped in 1967 and that in order for us to survive as a nation, we must have a planned and strategic migration intake, including temporary workers, in order to maintain our growth instead of focussing on protectionism and feeding the fear of the boogey men and women who 'take our jobs'. That is quite irresponsible.
In fact, our great dichotomy is about how we maintian the balance between who we want to come to Australia and who is likely to come to Australia - not all white westerners, English speaking christians (oops again) want to come to, or have the particular skills required by Australia and we know that in times of uncertaingly, non-standard Migrants (AKA Third World and developing country migrants) are demonised and scapegoated big time, because they can be.
'Dumping' on this particular cohort is easier than finding a congruent and workable solution to living in Harmony and addressing bigger and more important policy questions which can move Australia forward, like some of the one Carla Wilshire poses in the article.
Besides, it currently pays to be racist and biggoted - look at the publicity that the Birrells, the Bolts, and the protectionist unions get by using stats and irrational commentary to convince the masses that our unemployment rate would be fixed if we stopped 'importing' workers...
Not happy , Bob.