Unsustainable net immigration will see Australia’s standard of living continue to slip. Future generations will not thank us for failing to openly address this issue.
Many commentators in politics and the mainstream media would have Australians believe that the latest figures of 162,417 immigrants in a year is quite low. It certainly is lower than the crazy rates we have had over the last 15 years or so, where we averaged more than 200,000 per year. That’s an extra 3 million added to our population by net migration in just 25 years. That represents 12.5% of our current population, without adding any children these migrants produced.
It is interesting to compare our rate of immigration to another Western country where the levels of immigration have been considered too high by many pundits for a number of years. The latest headline net migration figure for the UK was 244,000, which represents 0.372% of the total current UK population of 65.6 million.
By comparison, Australia’s current ‘low’ net immigration of 162,400, represents 0.657% of our current population of 24.7 million. This puts Australia’s net immigration rate at 1.77 times the UK immigration rate. If UK immigration is considered problematic by many, at double their rate, Australia’s net immigration must be disastrous.
US net immigration, which has been in the news a great deal recently, was 1,111,283 a year in the most recent data. This represents just 0.34% of the total population of 326.8 million. Again, about half Australia’s net migration rate.
Absorbing immigrants is much harder for a smaller country like Australia, because we do not have the same economies of scale. It is doubly hard for such a young country because we don’t have roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructure which has been built up and developed over many centuries.
The only developed economy with a higher rate of net immigration over the last 20 years is New Zealand, which was making up for negative and very low rates of immigration in the 1970’s and 1980’s. In recent years many Kiwis have returned home.
Australia’s massive rate of net immigration has created huge problems in Australia. It is young, often well meaning people, who regularly promote greater acceptance of unlimited immigration. These same young people complain that the price of housing in our cities is out of their reach. They are also concerned that youth unemployment at nearly 12%, is double the rate of the general population. Young people also complain that entry level employment opportunities are limited for them. They are right on all counts, yet they do not realize the blame for both these troubling problems, which diminish social cohesion, can be laid at the feet of the high net immigration which they enthusiastically support.
So too can the many other problems Australia is struggling with, including an unprecedented level of government debt, trying to fund overburdened welfare, health and education systems, longer commutes to work, and traffic congestion. These are all manifestations of Australia’s high net immigration rate.
It is remarkable that the Australian people have been incredibly burdened by high immigration, yet we haven’t had a proper public or parliamentary discussion on the issue. No political party has indicated what our ideal rate of immigration should be.
Whenever a politician suggests reducing the rate of immigration, they are labelled racists or isolationists by our generally left leaning media commentators. Such is the lack of proper debate, most Australians would be unaware that we have such a relatively high net immigration rate compared to the rest of the world.
Until Australians are mature enough to have a considered discussion on immigration, we will continue on this path of unsustainable population growth to the detriment of current and future generations of Australians.