Australia measures migrant success through jobs, income and settlement. It rarely counts the financial obligations migrants carry across borders, or the development those private sacrifices sustain.
Australia keeps an official ledger of migrant success. It records employment, income, English proficiency, citizenship, qualifications, benefit use and home ownership. These measures are important. They show whether migrants are contributing and building secure lives in the country they now call home.
Many migrants keep another ledger, usually in their heads. It records school fees paid for a niece, a hospital bill settled for an uncle, a funeral contribution, a roof repaired, a small business supported and a young relative helped towards further education.
Recently, an old friend in Ghana asked for help buying a taxi. We could not meet the full request, but offered a modest amount for a smaller income-generating venture, to be repaid gradually and eventually used to help someone else. The aim was to make one act of giving travel further.
The official ledger records what migrants contribute to Australia. The private ledger records how far that contribution travels, and how many lives it is expected to carry. If both describe the same migrant life, why does public policy read only one?
Abul Rizvi is right to challenge the claim that migrants are a burden on Australia. Drawing on new Australian Bureau of Statistics data, he shows that 82 per cent of skilled permanent migrants aged 15 to 64 were employed in 2021, compared with 74 per cent of Australia’s population in that age group. In 2023–24, skilled migrants had a median income of $83,466, well above the national median of $64,897.
Their reliance on unemployment benefits was considerably lower. Skilled migrants were also more likely to hold post-school qualifications, while 96 per cent spoke English well or very well. These figures show that migrants are contributing. They do not tell us how widely the fruits, and pressures, of that contribution travel.
Migration does more than move a worker between countries. It reorganises responsibility across borders. The person who leaves may gradually become the family’s emergency fund, scholarship scheme, employment service and development agency.
There is much to celebrate in this. Money sent home can keep a child at school, pay for urgent medical treatment, repair a leaking roof or provide capital for a small enterprise. One opportunity abroad can widen the possibilities available to an extended family and sometimes an entire community.
But requests seldom arrive according to a shared plan. One person needs school fees, another faces a health emergency, a third needs help finding work, and a fourth has an investment idea. Each request may be reasonable. Together, they can exceed what any household can sustain.
The challenge is to distinguish among relief, investment and dependency. Relief responds to emergencies. Investment helps people build the means to support themselves and, ideally, others. Dependency can deepen when repeated assistance leaves the conditions creating the need unchanged, or substitutes for public responsibility.
Those boundaries are rarely clear. Saying yes may relieve today’s difficulty without changing tomorrow’s conditions. Saying no may protect one household while leaving another in real distress. Migration creates opportunity, but also the expectation that distance has somehow made resources limitless.
Together, these transfers form a largely hidden development system. The World Bank estimates that global remittance flows reached US$856 billion in 2024, with US$653 billion going to low- and middle-income countries.
The Pacific makes this especially relevant to Australia. Through the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, workers from Pacific countries and Timor-Leste fill labour shortages here while earning income, developing skills and supporting families and communities at home.
Yet ‘remittance’ makes the process sound mechanical: money sent, money received. Missing are the extra hours worked, savings postponed, family separation and quiet calculation of which request can be met.
Governments celebrate diaspora communities as sources of trade, investment, knowledge and diplomatic influence. But diaspora contribution is not free infrastructure. It rests on private labour, emotional negotiation and household sacrifice. Nor can it indefinitely replace functioning health, education and social-protection systems. When school fees, medical emergencies and employment crises routinely generate requests overseas, global inequality is being managed inside migrant households.
Australian policy need not assume responsibility for every private request. But it can help migrants manage these obligations more safely and productively. Three steps would help: recognise, protect and partner.
First, recognise. Culturally appropriate financial-wellbeing and retirement-planning services should acknowledge that many migrants budget for responsibilities both here and abroad. Support should extend beyond initial settlement because expectations often grow as migrants become established.
Second, protect. Australia can build on initiatives such as Send Money Pacific to make remittances safer and less costly through accessible fee comparisons, financial education and stronger protection from scams. Transfer costs absorb money intended for families.
Third, partner. Governments and development agencies should work with credible diaspora-led organisations to turn fragmented giving into locally accountable education, enterprise and community-development initiatives. Carefully designed matching funds could support collective projects with clear governance, local participation and transparent reporting. These would offer another pathway when shared investment can achieve more than isolated requests.
The result is a simple policy test: does Australia recognise the responsibilities migrants carry? Does it protect the money they send? Does it partner with them when private generosity could become lasting community capability?
Australia should continue measuring migrant employment, income and settlement. Those figures rebut damaging myths and demonstrate how strongly migrants contribute to their adopted country.
But Australia should also recognise the relationships extending beyond its borders. The migrant who appears in Australia’s accounts as one successful taxpayer may appear in another country’s accounts as a scholarship fund, emergency service and development program, all carried in one human life.
Komla Tsey
Komla Tsey is a Ghanaian–Australian writer, retired Professor of Education for Social Sustainability, and part-time Professorial Research Fellow at the Jawun Research Institute, Central Queensland University. His writing explores education, democratic culture, identity, Indigenous empowerment, colonial legacies and the moral certainties that shape public life. His forthcoming memoir, Botoku Child, traces a journey from a small village in Ghana to universities and communities across the world, examining how inherited beliefs, curiosity and lived experience shape both personal lives and democratic societies.