The Albanese government finished 2023 by backpedalling hard on immigration. After Labor initially oversaw a post-pandemic boom, it unveiled a stricter policy in December, particularly targeting a reduction in foreign student numbers.
The Home Affairs Department now forecasts nearly 185,000 fewer people residing in Australia in five years than previously expected. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil promised to show “vigilance” to achieve this reduction.
The media mostly welcomed the news. Bernard Keane responded in Crikey that high prices were now shining a spotlight on “the impact of large volumes of immigration on housing, inflation and infrastructure”, as well as jobs and wages. He pointed to two sceptical Productivity Commission reports from 2006 and 2016, and concluded Big Australia was a relic of the neoliberal era.
The Australian’s Judith Sloan, herself a relic of the neoliberal era, similarly grumbled last week about a pro-migration KPMG report. “The supposed link between skilled migration and higher productivity, leading to broad economic benefits … there is little rigorous Australian research to back the claim,” she wrote.
Except there is such research, hot off the press. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released three landmark reports assessing Australia’s migration program in the past two months.
Despite the reports dropping shortly before and after Labor’s migration announcement, few journalists seem to have taken notice of them. They paint a less gloomy picture of our nation’s migration boom than the resurgent naysayers in politics and the media.
Migrants ‘take’ jobs, but they also create them
Let’s start with the labour market. The OECD finds that Australia’s migration program “has a lasting positive impact on native employment”, which benefits all skill and age groups. It’s a little uneven across regions, but on average, regions with higher migrant intakes tend to experience faster employment growth.
This confounds reactionary fear-mongering about migrants “taking local jobs” — something economists call the “lump of labour fallacy”. There isn’t a set amount of work to be done, with each migrant getting a job resulting in a local joining the dole queue. Migrants add to both the supply and demand for labour, by spending their wages on local goods and services. And their spending creates more jobs than they “take”.
The OECD found migration had no effect on non-migrant wages. But regions with larger shares of migrants tended to have higher regional wages, which is linked to higher labour productivity. Migrants aren’t just more productive than locals — locals are more productive with more migrants around. Higher educated migrants, particularly those in scientific occupations, also raise patent numbers — a key indicator of innovation.
These findings sit comfortably with numerous other studies showing the positive effects of migration on developed economies, though the specific contours of migration policies can make a difference.
Migrants ‘take’ houses, but we need them to build more
Turning to housing, the picture is a little more complicated. Migrants have to live somewhere, but our sluggish housing system can barely cope with local demand because we’ve choked off supply and lavished investors with incentives to fight over the scraps.
It would be preferable to build more homes, so we can enjoy the work-related and cultural benefits migrants bring to our shores — and for these mostly younger workers to help pay for our ageing domestic population’s pensions and healthcare. But migration will put pressure on rents and house prices until we unblock our building pipeline.
Thankfully, migrants can help with this too. Just like the labour market, migrants don’t have to just add to demand, they can help us increase supply — if we let them.
That’s where O’Neil’s new policy is proving controversial. It allows employers to fast-track visas for migrants earning more than $135,000, taking just seven days from application, for any occupation — that is, except tradies, who have been carved out.
“Our government feels strongly that for sectors like trades, you should have to prove that there is a skill shortage before you start to recruit overseas,” O’Neil said.
Sure, the onus should generally be on employers to prove they face a skills shortage — it’s a nebulous term often abused by frugal bosses to dilute full employment. But if there is one genuine skills shortage in Australia, it is construction.
Infrastructure Australia’s recent report on market capacity in its portfolio — infrastructure, housing and energy projects — found there are only 177,000 workers, despite there being enough demand for 405,000. A gap that size simply can’t be filled by training up locals alone.
If unions are worried about employers using migrants to undercut local wages — a legitimate concern, given how unscrupulous employers have exploited visa schemes in other industries like farming — the government should consider raising the $135,000 threshold for tradies, instead of carving them out altogether. Even better, it could expand public builds alongside tradie admissions to ensure industry expansion.
Absent this, the government’s modest moderation of inflows may be justifiable for now. But pressure is already mounting from the right to curtail migration in increasingly drastic and outright racist ways.
Any further limits risk forging a suboptimal Small Australia, with all its attendant narrow-mindedness, inertia and underachievement. Migrants built modern Australia, and pulling up the drawbridge now will only render our collective future poorer, less equitable and more boring.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like the line in our national anthem about “boundless plains to share”. While others change their tune, let’s not be afraid to sing migration’s praises.
The logic of continuing population growth is of course it can’t go on forever. Perhaps it is time to reign it in when we still have an environment left. Better to face the consequences of low population growth or even diminishing population rather than wait when we have maybe 70 or 80 million living in an environmental wasteland.
Those curious about how awful life in a country with declining population would be can look to Japan, whose population peaked in 2010.
Litotes? Not a lot of that about these days.
And yours isn’t a bad example either.
Apart from natural disasters, life in Japan seems pretty good.
“Life in Japan seems pretty good.” Life in Australia is pretty good. The Tokyo metropolitan area has a population of over 40 million people. From what I can see, Australia’s arable land per capita is fifty times greater than Japan’s. I have no view on whether Japan’s situation is preferable to Australia’s, but this gives some perspective on the whingeing about overcrowded, too full Australia. These adjectives express preferences, not facts.
FOWF is becoming a common response in the EU as the billion plus from Africa float northwards to reverse 19thC colonisations.
Interestingly our distant common ancestors probably all came from Africa. Everyone’s terrified of being swamped by the wrong sort, as defined. Not terrified by immigration per se given that most Australians and Americans are the descendants of still relatively recent economic migrants.
Arable land is not the point (although Japan is a net importer of food, and Australia a net exporter). When people complain about population growth in Australia, it is often the pressure on services and infrastructure they mind, not the overall per capita amount of land.
Given Australia is a net exporter of food, we’re probably not overcrowded… Imagine the pressure on services and infrastructure in almost any other country compared to Australia…
Some countries must remain net exporters of food, or the rest would starve.
A workable definition of “overcrowded” would be “dependent on food imports”. We’re not.
We’re a net exporter of food now thanks to still cheap(ish) oil and a climate that hasn’t completely turned against us.
One would argue that is what the RW MSM encourages ‘it is often the pressure on services and infrastructure they mind’
This is really missing the point.
The whinging for most is less about the total number, and more about the rate of growth.
Dumping, say, five million more people into Australia in a year would obviously be catastrophic. Whereas doing it over the last fifteen years has merely been poor, and maybe doing over 25-30 years instead (approximately pre-2000s growth rate) would not have culminated in the housing crisis we have now.
No, you use hyperbole or an exaggeration, 5 million in one year, but partly correct, 5.5+ million oldies/boomers popping their clogs over the next 20 years, should free up some space for lots more immigrants.
It’s not really a quantitative issues (most Australians are numerically, data & financially illiterate), but deeply qualitative around character of post 1970s immigrants; see comments of the now QLD LNP’s leader on modern day immigrants?
Very astute.
Current rates will more than replace them (never mind natural growth), so… nope.
Can you elaborate on how to ‘replace’; when the NOM is a variable (record highs now due to Covid catch up but can also drop fast to low), includes non skilled workers and fertility is well below replacement?
20 * current NOM > 5.5m
ABS agrees:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/population-projections-australia/latest-release
Even the low (LOL) population estimate for 2044 is 31.5m.
The low (LOL again) NOM component of that is 4.6m.
That’s not elaboration on replacement, that’s simply dropping a headline data link of population projection avoiding details on factor and trends; not Statistics 101.
Since you never explain what you actually mean, we have to guess. Apparently I guessed wrong. Feel free to “elaborate” on what you’re actually asking, because from reading the above exchange, I have answered the question as asked.
Because we’ve run out of space? LOL
Housing crisis causes: negative gearing, capital gains tax discount, handing money to rich people to tart up their houses, airbnb, lack of medium density development in major cities, lack of real help for new home buyers, the parasites of the real estate industry creaming off too much whilst whinging about Stamp Duty and lack of supply, Local councils stacked with developers
Yes murgatroyd52, people sticking their heads in the sand and pretending infinite growth is somehow physically possible, while proclaiming their holier than thou willingness to take in all comers is precisely the problem. The question that they and our august representatives will never answer is “what is the number that you would allow Australia’s population to rise to, and how many migrants per year do you think we should take to get there?” Armed with that info, we could plan for the future. The shrug “yeah whatever” approach is not working. “Build it, and they will come” might work, but I tell you what, “Let them come and then we’ll see if we can build it”, certainly does not.
Perhaps you would be good enough to explain what you think is the maximum number that Australia’s population should have been allowed to rise to. And, just for fun, why it’s that number.
I’m not an expert Halley, but Tim Flannery put the number Australia could sustain at 6 million. Way back in 2010 The Australian Academy of Science put the number at 23 million, and I seem to remember the number 18 million being bandied around when I was at uni in the 70’s. Anyhow, i think we’re past the maximum population we should ideally be to sustain the environment and the livability of our major cities, so I’d like to see growth kept to a minimum. Especially until incomes catch up to the price of housing. But if you have a plan to increase Australia’s population while making housing more affordable, sustaining the environment and maintains our lifestyle, I’m sure we are all ears.
You would like to population growth kept to a minimum. An honestly expressed preference, not one masquerading as a factual statement. I can respect that, easy.
Trouble I have is that whatever the figure, tens of millions elsewhere are managing perfectly OK at far higher levels of population density, import dependency, demographic inversion, whatever. We should all feel free to prefer differently, but we are seriously lucky with what we have.
”We are seriously lucky with what we have” is a point we’re can agree upon. I’ve been lucky enough to stay with friends for a couple of weeks a number of times on Manhattan. Great place to visit, but I just don’t want to live that densely. And we’ve all been to Europe and visited the cities where everything is built 4-6 stories right to the footpath and cheek by jowl. And the streets are parked out 24/7. Sure people get by, and they’re perfectly happy, and I do get it that some people like you might prefer that, but our suburbs of single detatched dwellings with back and front yards are more desirable to me and I reckon worth preserving.
I prefer single detached dwellings, even gone to the extreme of living in one. The point I’m trying to make is that “overcrowded Sydney” or whatever is a statement of preference, not a statement of fact.
On the other hand we’ve all been to the average Australian town. Comes 5.30, 6pm and the only places open are the pub and Chinese or Thai restaurant. Town planning isn’t exactly one of our fortes.
“tens of millions elsewhere are managing perfectly OK at far higher levels of population density,” It depends upon what you call OK. Look at the streets in the US and Canada and say all the people living on them are OK. Good people as I have been amoungst them. We are moving in that direction with similar policies.
The neocon dream is creating this monster of social disruption and disadvantage.
That takes us back to basics of education, health, and shelter. Until we get that right there is no benefit in adding to our problems.
Bringing in the educated to replace the people we failed to educate only leads to disruption US -v- THEM. Sound familiar?
PS And we could not even give our indigenous population a voice to be heard!!!!
Proudly the only nation in the World that could not reach an agreement with its own original people.
Flannery is a Patron for the Tanton linked SPA; no further comment.
Flannery is not an expert anyway, he was critic of climate inaction, inc. of Howard in mid noughties, but then….?
‘And environmentalists such as Tim Flannery, a former Australian of the Year, have claimed that the country is overpopulated. Yet Peter McDonald, the Australian government’s top advisor of demographic issues, says hostility to Asian migrants is potentially damaging to Australia.
‘In the next 20 years, immigration is the only means available to meet aggregate labour demand in Australia’ (as boomers retire but short sighted politics, dog whistling etc. etc.)
Pearce (2010) ‘The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet’s Surprising Future’ (p. 164).
LOL. Not often you’re so blatant about how you define “expert” as “agrees with my political views”.
No you are gaslighting and putting words into people’s mouths as SPA does, and right wing MSM, to avoid that phenomenon that is kept in the background, deceased white nationalist, white Oz admirer, visitor and hosted by SPA, John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton:
‘John Tanton became infamous for a memo, which he wrote to members of another organization he founded, that stated “As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”’
https://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/Nativism_Environmental_Movement.pdf
Irony meters everywhere asplode.
In his book Collapse Jared Diamond estimated that the sustainable population of Australia would be about 8 million. Well worth a read.
well I guess we really screwed the pooch 80 odd years ago didn’t we? What do you suggest we do with the surplus?
It’s already taken care of. The surplus are mostly in urban sprawl that has made commute times long and chewed into family time. More recently, surplus had been put into urban infill without any commensurate increase in infrastructure. The result? The destruction of suburban character; Loss of trees and green space on private land; Lots of shoddily built dog’s boxes; Every trip on the road or attempt to park becoming an exercise in irritation and frustration; People not being as nice to each other as they used to be. Sorry to hear about your dog.
The first step is to stop making the problem worse. Flatten the rate of growth so that it naturally starts to decline.
Decline back to 8mil? Jesus.
It’s three times that now. I’m ecstatically happy living here. We have big housing affordability problems, but I see other bigger countries with worse issues. I’ll skip the book.
That Jared Diamond sounds like a real problem solver….
It’s about right but is completely dependent on government action on climate change and channeling ill gained profit from corporates back ito training , environment, services and infrastructure.
I suspect there is some desire to have a large enough defence to repel potential conquerors with a standing army…70 to 80 million population. This is the sort of logic that helps most of our politicians to get out of bed each day,..fear driven by the industrial military complex.
Ah so we agree then. The problem is with governments failing to build and maintain sufficient infrastructure. Not with migration.
Right?
We don’t agree. Just one generation ago housing was affordable in this country. What changed? The rate of migration.
You clearly want a Big Australia. I want a small smart Australia. Let’s see what happens at the ballot box.
What’s changed is where wealth is held. It is held increasingly by landed gentry, and greedy wealth hording political sycophants. What’s changed is any semblance of a progressive party in the country willing to put breaks on the private sector. What’s changed is the richest 3 Australians DOUBLING their horded wealth in the 3 years since the onset of the pandemic.
I want a welcoming Australia that is well constructed and has the infrastructure and services required for the 21st century.
Mass immigration is a tool that is used to defeat the labour movement and weaken unions. The labour market never saw any real wage increase for ~15 until we closed the borders due to COVID. Progressive parties historically were the ones calling for a stable migration intake that allowed us to get skills required, but didn’t diminish workers bargaining power. However that all changed in the 90s and in 2005 John Howard set us on the Big Australia path.
The biggest issue progressive politics needs to grapple is with a stable population that forces employers back to the bargaining table.
“In 2024 why do we need “mass immigration” to “defeat the labour movement and weaken unions” when we can simply offshore or automate jobs???
And the rest, perverse lazy state tax incentives for property investment, zoning restrictions, oversized houses, FIRE PR, real estate market opacity etc.
Australia’s population was 6 million in 1923 and 13 million in 1973. 27 million or so in 2023. The rate of growth averages out as doubling every fifty years. We have historically managed, probably by not leaving matters to “the market”. Yes, eventually the island will become overcrowded, probably long after almost everyone else.
The global population is expected to start declining by mid-century.
What happens to the population of each country will largely be determined by climate change.
Given how people are already freaking out by current numbers I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.
It should be plainly obvious that people can arrive far faster than we can build infrastructure to support them, even if we dedicated a substantial fraction of our output to doing so.
It should, therefore, be similarly obvious that moderating intake to align with what is actually built is the key.
Given that in the bad old years of the Abbott there were ~60k dwellings commenced per quarter I’m not sure it is plainly obvious.
I doubt the Abbot years were bad from the perspective of developers and builders.
Completions are more important than commencements.
And the highest number of dwellings ever completed in a year was about 220k. Typical numbers are more like 150-180k/yr.
500k+ NOM completely swallows that before even considering the needs of new households from natural growth, renovations, repairs, etc.
And people could be arriving at a much higher rate than 500k/yr.
If it’s ‘plainly obvious’, maybe you can produce credible and relevant research; precludes your SPA talking points and ‘research’…..
Just to be clear, you want “research” to show you that the number of people that can arrive into Australia is far higher than the number of houses that can be built in the same time period ?
I would suggest you start here:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-transport/overseas-arrivals-and-departures-australia/latest-release
Hate to be the one to break it to you, but our environment is already toast. It’s perhaps not*completely* obvious due to the fact that most of us live a life that’s rather separate from it already, and the inertia of a large system running down.
But the mass fish kills, the coral bleaching and the hyper bushfire season that people are hoping isn’t the new normal isn’t the new normal – all those nightmares are just milestones on the road to hell we’ve turned onto quite a ways back.
No, see examples now of what happens, see small towns, villages and hamlets which have disappeared from regional Australia and like elsewhere increasing urbanisation and opportunities for youth and working age.
Good example of population decline (see Central Eastern European nations) consequences, while trying to keep nativist policies, while even Japan now has immigration inc. international students, backpackers, skilled migrants and special programs with more populous Asia nations.
Good example, Hungary has fertility/population decline & ageing, MSM dog whistles Muslim migrants & Soros conspiracy, with serious working age decline (vs. more pensioners) but locals emigrate to western EU for better pay/conditions, hence, labour shortages and significant (unpublicised) immigration from Asia, Mid East and Africa.
If not, their economy, budgets and services would decline (further & 27% GST….); careful what you wish for….
Environmental health is not about immigrants and/or population, but robust central government regulation of carbon and the environment….. yet Australians seem keener on doing the bidding of fossil fuels?
Migration is the easy solution to changing demographics and the changing nature of work. It plugs gaps that would require long term thinking and strategic vision otherwise.
Business are big migration cheerleaders – they were allowed to abdicate responsibility for training and now don’t know how to train their staff. But backing out of that deadend would take a decade or even decades and exactly what skills will be required in 10 years?
We have a bulge of old boomers heading through the aged care / health care sector – somewhere very open to migrant labour. Society will change shape over the next 2 decades – are we planning for that shape?
TBH I have no problem with the cultural diversity immigration brings but the economic benefits are overstated – more immigration requires more immigration requires more immigration in an endless Ponzi scheme.
There are many things that need addressing to fix our absurdly spread out over populated capitals – more people aren’t helping.
We have no politicians of vision and business is mostly given free reign as immigration mostly solves state government problems (the politician / developer corruption vector is almost totally state based)
Solves state problems ?
Immigration solves *federal* problems (how do we get GDP higher and other macro stats) but leaves the consequences and burden for providing services to residents (eg: education, transport, healthcare, utilities) entirely on the states, who have limited means of raising funds to do so and no way of moderating the movement of people.
No, you suggest just GDP PR, while essential services or infrastructure are burdened by ‘immigrants’ without any insight into the same i.e. dynamics.
MSM and commentariat focus upon supposedly high immigration, when it’s high temporary churn, esp students, over caught under the NOM, expanded in 2006 to 12/16+ residency test, and missed by all, still…..
The NOM (not use widely) spikes temporary resident numbers, then the ERP estimated resident population then RW MSM headlines; main long term population growth driver is ageing and longevity in the permanent population, staying in data longer, which is good news?
With more retirees needing budget support, but not paying taxes vs. relatively fewer working age, the temporary churn are ‘net financial (budget) contributors’ who depart and are replaced vs. need for increased taxes and/or decline in services and infrastructure.
Infrastructure is not permanent everlasting and static e.g. schools, hospitals, public transport, roads, bridges etc. require funding from budgets for construction, then personnel, systems, maintenance and upgrades; this is implicitly opposed by those demanding fewer temporary ‘immigrants’ or residents while the ‘big die off’ of the oldies and boomers next two decades will also rebalance population.
Too easy to blame ‘immigrants’, but effective to reinforce old white Australia attitudes.
Nonsense.
And it’s used as ‘libertarian trap’ by RW oligarch funded think tanks under the purview of US fossil fuel Koch Network (share donors in US with Tanton’s mob), to blame ‘immigrants’.
However, that also masks denying citizens upgraded infrastructure and services, while rewarding corporates or <1% with tax cuts…. and citizens with privatisation and/or catering to external providers, who often happen to be donors…..
Thankfully we have indigenous and/or ‘immigrants’ to blame for everything….
You’re just plain wrong NT. Research after research over the last 70 years shows the immense benefits of immigration. The 50s and 60s with huge immigration (and very high tax rates and wages, by the way) we’re absolute boom periods in this country. Don’t take my word for it, most of the info is available online. Most often you hear, oh we’re full and we’re all dessert anyway. What a load of BS. If you took all the arable areas we’d still have an extremely low population density.
The source of Australia’s deep seated antipathy is Tanton Network:
‘While transiting an Australian airport in early 1990, not long before our Federal Election, Dr. John Tanton picked up a discarded newspaper left on a nearby transit lounge seat. …. John invited me to keep him informed about our doings Down Under and to tell him what we tried to popularize resistance to high levels of immigration-fueled population growth.’
Fond Memories of John Tanton: The ‘Grand Master of Life’
By Denis McCormack Published in The Social Contract Volume 30, Number 1 (Fall 2019)
Issue theme: “John Tanton: His Life and Legacy (1934-2019)”
https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_30_1/tsc-30-1-mccormack.shtml
In the 50s and 60s even thought the amount of people who immigrated were the same percentage of of the population (~2%) because of the smaller base it was still a smaller amount of people and the country was able to absorb them with jobs, infrastructure, water, etc. However that is not the case now.
For years we had a stable permanent migrant intake of around 80,000 -90,000 including about 13,000 refugees, and well-conceived and well -regulated temporary entry programs for workers with skills not readily available in Australia. They could stay for up to 4 years and then either their employer sponsored them to stay permanently or they went home.
Ever since Howard got into power and messed around with migration programs including encouraging low-skilled workers as a way If undercutting Australian wages, the migration and temporary entry programs have been a mess; not to mention the roughly 50,000 bogus refugee applicants who entered Australia on Dutton’s watch.
Perhaps -since Australia’s population has grown so much with the number of dodgy entry programs that have been operated for all those years – the permanent migration program should rise to about 100,00 a year. That seems a level that can be coped with in terms of public acceptance and impact on services.
Something also needs to be done about the vast floating populations of refugee applicants who aren’t refugees and the very large pool of those on working visas who’ve been here for years but don’t meet the skill levels/ job market demand to become permanent residents.
It’s a mess.
Good old JHW, a trailblazer for every subsequent LNP filthbucket; he really demonstrated how to comprehensively salt the earth.
JWH, dammit. And damn him, and his foul legacy.
Disagree, the word ‘multiculturalism’ was disappeared from the PM’s Office, strong antipathy towards post 1970s ‘immigration’ and had to be persuaded to support modest permanent migration, while many of the right including think tanks like immigration, but not permanent when they can become citizens, have rights and vote….. then using GOP RW nativist agitprop; disturbingly popular with many older ALP types….
Multiple choice:
And the manner in which multiculturalism was disappeared from the PM’s office was:
a) with extreme predjudice
b) in a sack and via the back door
c) piggy-backed to the roof by GOP RW agitprop then choppered to Guantanamo Bay
d) tricked by an older ALP type into a think tank like immigration and dissolved in hydrofloric acid
e) all of the above
Sorry – that should have been “hydrofluoric”.
He brought in the 457 visa as soon as he got elected and this enabled employers to bring in lots of semi-skilled workers and the aim was to undercut wages. There is still a large pool of temporary workers who’ve been here for years and are hoping.to stay permanently.
I agree, he hated the idea of multiculturalism.
The large pool of temps, esp students, was due to slowing down processing under the previous LNP regime, post grad visas and then Covid with closed borders…..
Very political and in background, ideological, but science journalist Fred Pearce in (2010) ‘The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet’s Surprising Future’ (who was familiar with Australia’s best and internationally renowned demographer Jack Caldwell who was ignored locally):
‘There is an intellectual thread that runs from Malthus through Darwin to modern thinking on the environment and the ‘population bomb’. It passes through some dark places, like dreams of racial supremacy, forced sterilisation of the ‘unfit’, and the gas chambers of 1930-40s Germany. This is the world of eugenics…..’
‘
I hope you haven’t passed this brief of evidence on to Geoffrey Robertson. He’ll make mince meat of me at the European Court of Human Rights for sure. I just didn’t realise advocating for a return to a sensible immigration policy would take me to such a “dark place”.
Sure he’d know, as those informing RW MSM and the Tories in the UK are linked to the same anti-refugee and anti-immigrant mob, Tanton Network; Monbiot has just published a related article.
>a relic of the neoliberal era
This implies the neoliberal era is behind us. I never got the memo; I’d have thrown a bloc party.
Crikey contributing to the lack of any constructive discussion on immigration by continuing the myth that the choice is between ‘as many people as can fit onto the planes’ and ‘no immigration’.
Poor form.
Exactly. High immigration disguises the fact that we’re in a per capita recession, but it brings other problems. I wish there could be a mature debate about the best level and makeup of immigration, rather than debate being shut down by “Pull up the drawbridge? You’re a racist!”
We’re barely outside the peanut gallery with this shallow swill. Half an unsubstantiated brain fart, padded out to the tune of 65% with a bunch of blathering words describing some figures the Guardian could fit into an interactive graph the size of a paragraph.
Like Woopwoop says, ‘exactly’. This is another of those infernal articles in which the author thinks he must defend immigration per se, when most of the non-racist criticism is of the mass-rapid immigration of the last twenty years.
As opposed to what?
Blathering and blustering via RW MSM using imported US fossil fuel talking points for the GOP and to split the centre and left, using faux research to denigrate the ‘other’?
Some number that is balanced against the economy’s ability to build housing and infrastructure to support them ?
Indeed. Most of the “data” supporting this article seem to lead back to debunked ideas from Steven Hamilton.