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For the most part I have refrained from entering into the current discussions on migration and population targeting. My preferred approach to these issues – as an economist – is to recognise the potential for economic gains from migration and population increase and then to look for policies that guarantee resident Australians will be better off [...] Mark Crosby over at Core Economics has a post on population economics that created stress for me. Stress because it argues an intellectual position I (and many others) have being trying to combat for many years. Continue reading Economics of population growth An excellent article on asylum seekers by Ken Parish. I agree with the central argument that queue jumping should be prevented. John Howard was right – Australia should determine who becomes a citizen of Australia. ‘Asylum seekers brought to Christmas Island and found to be genuine refugees should not be automatically granted a visa entitling them to [...] One of the worst policies of the Hawke/Keating era in Australia was its migration policy. Bob Hawke was a garrulous cry-baby with his eye keenly on the ethnic vote. Hence he, as with many former governments, promoted ‘family-based’ rather than ‘skilled-migration’ to Australia on the basis of ‘family-reunion’ principles*. If the economy soured a little then the demand for skilled intake would slow but any ‘deficiency’ in migration intake quotas would be filled with family-based migration. The intakes included unskilled Lebanese and others who came in under ‘family’ migration entry and who would vote Labor – as would the ethnic lobbies supporting such migration – so it seemed like a smart political move to Hawke. Of course Australia was left with a underclass of largely uneducated, near-unemployables. Continue reading Rudd Labor migration policy There is no doubt that Labor policy ending the Pacific Solution on queue-jumping migrants has encouraged illegal migration to Australia. Labor is seen as ‘softer’ on border control than was the previous Howard Government despite the stench of hypocrisy amid talk of ‘toughness’ from the Labor faithful. Whatever people may claim about the Howard policy it did stop illegal migration to Australia at the same time that the humanitarian component of the immigration intake and the immigration intake as a whole were liberalised substantially. Prior to these initiatives illegal immigrants numbered in their thousands. Continue reading Illegal migration demands surge with Rudd Government policy failure |
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Copyright © 2010 Harry Clarke - All Rights Reserved |
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