Category: Immigration

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Scott Morrison has given another exclusive, this time to news.com, on his ideas to encourage more skilled migrants to settle in the regions and smaller cities and away from the major metropolitan centres. While it’s great to have a prime minister prepared to talk about immigration and population, he again failed to explain why usage of existing visas for the regions and smaller cities has steadily declined since he first became immigration minister under Tony Abbott and why Peter Dutton took steps to strangle the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme. Will Morrison now reverse Dutton’s changes? (more…)

Most readers of “Pearls and Irritations” will be at least somewhat sympathetic to the plight (what an inadequate word) of the refugee families on Nauru. You won’t need me to remind you that those families sought asylum because they were fleeing violence, war, death. You won’t either need me to remind you that they have now been held in detention for more than five years. There is much talk that refugees on Nauru are now “free” on the island. This is nonsense. The truth is they have been systematically deprived of community, purpose, future and hope – of anything resembling a normal life.  And it is not just the adults who are suffering from extreme stress and despair, it is also – inevitably – the children. This is not just child abuse in our name and on our watch, it is torment of the worst and most unnecessary kind. (more…)

Now more than ever we need to work together as a nation to address the immigration department and the mechanisms of safe passage, and put a stop to Australia’s unacceptable practices and inhumane treatment of individuals. (more…)

The racial discrimination legislations flourished under Multicultural with NSW leading the pact.  A crack in Multiculturalism support emerged during the Howard Administration with the rise of Pauline Hanson and her racial politics.  It was the “ethnic” vote that saved the day and Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock worked to recapture the votes.  Multiculturalism continued under the Rudd-Gillard Administration its policy became controversial when the composition of appointees to the Australian Multicultural Council was question by the multicultural communities. The future Multiculturalism is briefly discussed.  (more…)

Early development of multiculturalism under PM Gough Whitlam and Immigration Minister Al Grassby and its passage through to the Hawke-Keating government;  community organisations played an important role in convincing the Hawke government to grant residency to 42,300 Chinese students.   (more…)

There is a growing consciousness in rural and regional Australia…..it  is centred in NSW and Victoria and is spreading through Queensland to Cairns and moving south through to Tasmania and South Australia and across to Albany.   It is the responsiveness of men, women and children in country Australia who support people seeking refuge and asylum on Australian shores and who are raising their voices in anger at the government’s treatment of these men, women and children. (more…)

The Chinese Australian community has been hijacked in the current public debate about the extent of Chinese influence in Australia.  Far-right elements are fanning anti-Asian feelings and there is an upsurge in racism in major cities.  Government leaders now more than ever should affirm the many contributions of the Chinese Australian community.  It is an asset in our relationship with the People’s Republic of China.  (more…)

The China Panic has an unintended consequence of shaping the minds of the Chinese Australians and taught them how to be a strategic player in Australian politics. The monopoly held by the “Milking Cows”, and “Uncle Toms” in delivering votes to a political party would soon be over and the community will insist on being consulted.  There are several policies in the last 2 years which are unpopular with the Chinese Australian community and together with the China Panic, have filtered through social media to an extend that it can influence votes.  Despite a change of leadership, PM Morrison has to demonstrate by actions to soften those previous unpalatable policies to re-capture the votes otherwise the voters would return a Labor government by default.   What applies to the Chinese Australian community also generally applies to the multicultural communities. (more…)

While Scott Morrison earlier this year publicly disagreed with Tony Abbott on immigration levels, he eventually gave way to Dutton’s ruse about ‘greater scrutiny’ leading to the migration program ‘ceiling’ not being delivered in 2017-18. Will he continue to compromise with Abbott and Dutton on immigration or has he drawn a line in the sand by appointing a moderate in David Coleman as the new immigration minister? (more…)

With the appointment of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister we will witness again the repetition of the myth that the Coalition and Operation Sovereign Borders stopped the boats. They did not.

 I expect that many in the media will also  climb aboard again to continue the myth about the stopping of the boats. Perhaps being careless in the first place the media finds it embarrassing to admit error.   (more…)

We can be proud of what we have done for refugees in the past but like many others I am ashamed that we have now had a succession of leaders who have appealed to our most selfish instincts.

When I feel discouraged about our national failure, I am reminded of Graham Greene’s challenge that ‘the only unforgivable sin is despair’. (more…)

In scrambling for solutions to the “refugee problem”, too few are contemplating the pervasively deadly “war problem” that plagues our global family. The article that follows is one of three I had published in July in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, filling in for regular columnist Elizabeth Farrelly in the Saturday editions. I find such columns more than challenging to write. How can I do justice to the subject matter? Yet I was and am also immensely grateful to have the chance to write this article in particular because Australia’s – and the world’s – indefensible spending on “defence” is something that goes too often unremarked and certainly unquestioned. 

And questions abound. Why do we spend months, years, debating trivial, self-serving tax cuts while giving so little thought as to how vast public funds are spent? Why are we willing to accept the argument that the best way to “keep the peace” is to spend more and more on readiness for war?  (more…)

A new study shows that giving migrants pathways to citizenship in European countries actually results in positive economic impacts, while asylum seekers don’t have a negative impact. (more…)

While Eryk Bagshaw’s article of 8 July 2018 screams Millionaires stream in, the Sun Herald’s editorial of the same day is a bit more sanguine about the benefits and risks of the Business Innovation and Investment Programme that facilitates entry of business migrants and investors. This Programme and its predecessors, while superficially attractive, have a chequered history as recognised by the Productivity Commission in its 2016 Report on the Migrant Intake and Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to initiate a review of the Programme. (more…)