'Enough, enough, enough': Scott Morrison says he will cut Australia's migration intake

I find that article is lacking in consistency, first it states 70% of migrants are not skilled and yet later claims: "Rather, those in the ‘skilled’ stream at least, which makes up the overwhelming majority of permanent migrants, are expected to be working at high capacity".

Which is it ? Is it the skilled ones are overwhelming majority or just 30% of permanent migrants ? You can't argue both sides without appearing like an idiot.

If I take the article stats, they actually show that skilled migrants (which includes both primary & their family members) have better median income. Look at the figure 2, selected labour market outcomes for immigrants, graph b, median income by age. The very top line is skilled migrants.

Well, I suppose we should ban AU citizens bringing over their spouses aka family stream, right ? As well as cut down entirely refugee stream and leave skilled migrants alone. At least your sources seem to support that.

 

They're not the one looking like an idiot. For a start by using inverted commas they are really saying the so called skilled stream, which as they point out includes their non skilled dependents and spouses. Also the 'skilled' stream is promoted as an economic benefit, boosting participation, productivity, filling skills shortages etc. and they are questioning that as well.

Also it's only the primary skilled immigrants that have (slightly) better labour market outcomes than the Australian born population in terms of median incomes, labour force participation, and unemployment rates. Secondary skilled visas and all other forms of migrants, have worse outcomes:

No need to cut the refugee intake. It is tiny compared to the so called skilled stream and we have an obligation to help. If we cut back the primary skilled stream then it will follow that there will be fewer dependents.

 

Migration to Australia: a quick guide to the statistics – Parliament of Australia

Here are the numbers, refugees are about 1/8th of the skilled stream. Second the figure 2 from PC report includes all of skilled migrants not just primary applicants. You should read your own sources. And clearly their economic output is better than native born population. Are you going to dismiss your own sources now ?

 

The graph just calls them skilled. But they also plot family, permanent and humanitarian which would imply that they mean primary skilled (and these other three have lower incomes).

 

This is a touchy subject. Having a forum like this is dangerous because tone and expression can be lost in writing, as opposed to a conversation.

Australians tend to look at migration as a net good, and I think this is basically true. I like immigration.

Immigration to me is like cooking with salt: you need some seasoning; a little can bring out all of the flavours of the meal; too much ruins the meal; and way to much is lethal.

Earlier waves of migration tended to be very successful because there was no welfare available. So migrants self-selected accordingly, and governments didn't need to bother with points systems etc.

Milton Friedman said that "you can have a welfare state, or open borders, but not both". This is quite an insight. And I think this is the key to understanding that later waves of migration has had mixed success.

What you want in an immigration system is for people not to come for the riches, but rather people to come for the values that created the riches.

I think westerners, Europeans in particular, are concerned that their countries are being seen by their leaders as simply a postcode, rather than a cradle of a peoples's shared values, identity and experiences.

So I would argue that we need welfare reform, and then immigration would fix itself.

Thoughts?

 

Yeah, so you're actually trying to pretend that there isn't a vast body of economic literature supporting the benefits of immigration?

Really you've just confirmed for me you're just here to push your own agenda rather than engage in actual reasoned discussion.

 

No they don't imply primary, because when they mean primary they clearly spell it out on the rest of the graphs, for example graphs c & d in the same figure. Seriously are you going to argue that they are changing the convention from graph to graph on the same figure ?

 

Any analysis looking at the economic benefits of immigration is disingenuous if not looking at growth on a per capita basis.

A majority of Australia's income is derived from resources, how will immigration serve to increase this? A big portion of Australia's current 'economic pie' will never grow, only deplete at a faster or slower rate and be divided among more or fewer people.



Running high levels of immigration to support an ageing workforce / increasing retirees just pushes the problem further down the road. How do we then support the larger workforce when they retire in 30 years? Increase immigration rates again?

 

Completely agree. I worked in few major regional areas in NSW and I struggled to get a good mobile signal or buy a landline though I lived 5 min drive from the main city.
The schools are overcrowded and there are no leisure activities unless I kept climbing the only mountain in the town on weekends or watch the same movie again and again. The next big city is 4 hours one way. The internal Qantaslink return flight to Sydney is more expensive than an International flight.
It is hard to make friends due to various reasons and simply life is isolated.
I think, many migrants don’t realise that Australia is a vast country with a less population with limited economy in regions and soon they want to move away.

 

The other graphs are from different years. 2b includes a permanent category which is not in the other graphs. Most of our permanent intake is in fact the skilled stream and is widely touted as such. The others split the skilled stream into primary and secondary but don't have a permanent category.

PS: Macrobusiness thinks it refers to primary as they discuss it at length.

 

What do you think I have been doing if not discussing the merits of such research in depth (of which your contribution has been zero)? You are projecting your own ineptitude onto me. I take it you are quite young?

 

I don't think I'd take what MB thinks as truth. I much prefer to read the source and the source clearly uses primary for subset of skilled migrants and just uses skilled for aggregate. To imply otherwise is grasping at straws. This shows people are not willing to accept the facts from their own sources that run contrary to the own bias.

 

BTW, the permanent category = skill + family + humanitarian, link to numbers with definitions I provided before from Parlament web site, so it's very obvious why it's not on c&d, it's the total column in the graphs c&d.

 

You haven't provided a source. It's also not MB's fault that one set of graphs splits skilled into primary and secondary and the other doesn't. In any case median wages are just part of the story. What about the higher unemployment and lower participation rates for skilled migrants?

 

It's not MB's graphs, these are PC graphs. It's from PC report that MB post referenced by you, I thought I don't have to follow up on your own links. Anyway since you obviously failed to follow up on MB's pontifications w/o reading the source, here it is:

https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/migrant-intake/report/migrant-intake-report.pdf

 

Graph's c on page 615 is the partial answer to your questions. As you can see from the graphs both primary & secondary skilled applicants have lower UR than native borns 18 months after arrival. Spouses aka secondary applicants seem to have a bit higher UR 6 months in but they do outperform native population after 18 months in the country.

It's obvious to me that if you actually read all the links that MB cherry picks data from you will find your answers. Read your own sources. I didn't have to search for anything, I just clicked and followed up on the sources from your own links. It's all there in plain English.

 

What MB cleverly does with the obfuscation is mixing up refugees, family migrants and skilled migrants. The actual sources clearly show that skilled stream has higher income, lower UR and so on.

 

I know they are not MB's graphs. PS: you have bypassed my point that the other two graphs also show lacklustre outcomes for skilled migrants. Remember that we are comparing the skilled migrants with the Australian median and like MB said we are not running a skilled intake to stack shelves or do cleaning.

 

Well, medium income for all skilled is higher than for Australian born, and I did address UR and it does show better numbers too.

 

They discuss the skilled category without mixing them up with refugees etc. It's still very mediocre when we are lead to believe they are meeting a need. Ie you would expect them to do at better than the local population median which includes cooks, shelf stackers etc. Also how is an overall benefit when we could just better utilise our existing workforce?