Federal Court rules automatic cancellations of student visas invalid
On 2 March 2010 the Federal Court of Australia handed down two decisions that have created a potential nightmare for the Department of Immigration.
The background: since 2000 the Migration Act has contained a provision (section 137J) for the "automatic" cancellation of visas held by overseas students who were reported by their colleges for unsatisfactory attendance or performance and who failed to report as directed to the Department of Immigration within 28 days to explain themselves. By a technical amendment effective 1 July 2007, the circumstances leading to cancellation were to be prescribed in Regulations (a common method of giving the executive flexibility to determine the details of the law without having to go through the complicated procedures of amending an Act of Parliament).
But the drafters got it wrong. They left out a crucial reference to a particular section of the legislation which meant that the legal mechanism just didn't work. At first, nobody noticed. I didn't pick up on it for over a year, but when I first raised it with government lawyers in about September 2008, expecting a quick amendment to correct the error, they went into denial instead. For two and half years the official position of the government was that the error everyone else could see (once it was pointed out to them) just wasn't there. In December 2009 they finally corrected it, but they still kept saying the correction wasn't really necessary until Justice Buchanan of the Federal Court put the matter to rest in two cases handed down on 2 March 2010: Hossain v MIAC [2010] FCA 161 and Mo v MIAC [2010] FCA 162.
The result: all "automatic" student visa cancellations under s 137J based on notices to students dated between 1 July 2007 and 16 December 2009 simply didn't happen. I have no idea how many cases this covers, but every one of them is someone who was told their visa had been cancelled when, as a matter of law, it hadn't. Some would have left the country, others would have been overseas and couldn't get back. Some would have given up their studies. Some would have spent thousands of dollars on appeals.
Just a technicality, you might say. Just another example of the massive unpardonable bureaucratic bungling that has characterised the 15 billion dollar cash cow that the student visa industry has become.
02 March 2010
15 February 2010
A few thoughts on parents
I lodged a Contributory Parent application for a client on 6 January. The Department receipted the fee on 19 January and sent out an acknowledgement letter on 27 January. Why rush? It's going to be well over a year before the application is processed.
For this the couple will pay in excess of $70,000 to the Australian government. If they can't afford that, they can do a Casablanca (wait.... and wait..... and wait).
But hey, they are old folks aren't they? Not much older than me, actually. The rationale is apparently that the money is intended to cover the enormous drain on the public purse of bringing in a couple of old codgers who will presumably go straight into high cost medical care.
It's certainly true that in the later part of our lives most of us will end up costing the taxpayer a lot of money. My parents worked and paid taxes all their lives and then required some expensive care before they died, but that was only a small return for what they had spent, wasn't it?
No it wasn't. That's bad economics. My parents taxes were fully expended on the government services of the day, including my education. Their health care was paid for by my taxes, and yours, and the taxes of millions of migrants working in today's economy.
So if those migrants are paying their taxes just like me, why can't their parents get the benefit of them like mine did? They paid for their children's education like my parents did, either through taxes or privately, and the Australian economy gets the benefit of that. Their children don't get a tax deduction because their parents aren't here.
Besides, $35,000 a head is only a fraction of what it costs to provide health and social security support for the elderly. As is so often the case in our spin-politics age, it's more for show than anything else.
It's just one more example of the mentality that sees migrants as commodities to be exploited for the quickest short-term gain.
I lodged a Contributory Parent application for a client on 6 January. The Department receipted the fee on 19 January and sent out an acknowledgement letter on 27 January. Why rush? It's going to be well over a year before the application is processed.
For this the couple will pay in excess of $70,000 to the Australian government. If they can't afford that, they can do a Casablanca (wait.... and wait..... and wait).
But hey, they are old folks aren't they? Not much older than me, actually. The rationale is apparently that the money is intended to cover the enormous drain on the public purse of bringing in a couple of old codgers who will presumably go straight into high cost medical care.
It's certainly true that in the later part of our lives most of us will end up costing the taxpayer a lot of money. My parents worked and paid taxes all their lives and then required some expensive care before they died, but that was only a small return for what they had spent, wasn't it?
No it wasn't. That's bad economics. My parents taxes were fully expended on the government services of the day, including my education. Their health care was paid for by my taxes, and yours, and the taxes of millions of migrants working in today's economy.
So if those migrants are paying their taxes just like me, why can't their parents get the benefit of them like mine did? They paid for their children's education like my parents did, either through taxes or privately, and the Australian economy gets the benefit of that. Their children don't get a tax deduction because their parents aren't here.
Besides, $35,000 a head is only a fraction of what it costs to provide health and social security support for the elderly. As is so often the case in our spin-politics age, it's more for show than anything else.
It's just one more example of the mentality that sees migrants as commodities to be exploited for the quickest short-term gain.
08 February 2010
Latest unfair policy change will not go unnoticed
The Daily Telegraph said it all. The screeching headline "MIGRANTS KEPT OUT" appeared under a banner saying "Unskilled foreign workers told they're not wanted". Then the first paragraph: "Twenty thousand foreigners applying to move to Australia will have their applications ripped up to stop an army of cooks, hairdressers and accountants from swamping our immigration system."
Sensationalism and mixed metaphors aside, the Sydney tabloid captures the flavour of the latest policy change with terms like "kept out", "not wanted" and "ripped up". Whether or not the target is such an unlikely invasion force as the one described, intent on swamping the system (in which case wouldn't it be a navy rather than an army?), is a technical detail the paper no doubt thinks is too complex for its readers to grapple with.
The changes announced today cover a wide field, but the decision to "cap" (or, as the Tele puts it, rip up) all skilled migration applications lodged before 1 September 2007 seems to be the one getting all the media attention, and for good reason. It is grossly unfair and will reflect badly on Australia's reputation in the long run.
On 1 September 2007 the Department of Immigration introduced electronic lodgement for offshore skilled migration visa applications. Resources were thrown into the new system and paper-based applications lodged before that date were put to the end the queue. By the time they were coming up for consideration early last year, the first wave of "priority processing" was introduced, which threw them back further.
Who are these people? A few cooks and hairdressers no doubt, a few more accountants, quite a lot of IT professionals, specialist managers, a lot of teachers, in short the people the Australian government said it wanted. They looked up the rules, correctly calculated their points, paid their fees (including fees for skills assessments, medical and police clearances and in some cases legal or agents fees) and waited patiently. On the reasonable expectation that they would be migrating to Australia they may have made choices such as turning down job offers, not applying to migrate elsewhere, decisions about property and education, etc.
How would you feel? What would you think about the country that treated you like that? What would you think of that country's attitude towards foreigners? Would you feel inclined to buy Australian goods, come here on a holiday, do business with this country? Would you communicate your negative feelings to others?
Apparently our political leaders have learnt nothing from the handling of the attacks on Indian students. It would be interesting to know how many of the 20,000 applications being ripped up came from Indian citizens.
More on the rest of the changes in another post.
The Daily Telegraph said it all. The screeching headline "MIGRANTS KEPT OUT" appeared under a banner saying "Unskilled foreign workers told they're not wanted". Then the first paragraph: "Twenty thousand foreigners applying to move to Australia will have their applications ripped up to stop an army of cooks, hairdressers and accountants from swamping our immigration system."
Sensationalism and mixed metaphors aside, the Sydney tabloid captures the flavour of the latest policy change with terms like "kept out", "not wanted" and "ripped up". Whether or not the target is such an unlikely invasion force as the one described, intent on swamping the system (in which case wouldn't it be a navy rather than an army?), is a technical detail the paper no doubt thinks is too complex for its readers to grapple with.
The changes announced today cover a wide field, but the decision to "cap" (or, as the Tele puts it, rip up) all skilled migration applications lodged before 1 September 2007 seems to be the one getting all the media attention, and for good reason. It is grossly unfair and will reflect badly on Australia's reputation in the long run.
On 1 September 2007 the Department of Immigration introduced electronic lodgement for offshore skilled migration visa applications. Resources were thrown into the new system and paper-based applications lodged before that date were put to the end the queue. By the time they were coming up for consideration early last year, the first wave of "priority processing" was introduced, which threw them back further.
Who are these people? A few cooks and hairdressers no doubt, a few more accountants, quite a lot of IT professionals, specialist managers, a lot of teachers, in short the people the Australian government said it wanted. They looked up the rules, correctly calculated their points, paid their fees (including fees for skills assessments, medical and police clearances and in some cases legal or agents fees) and waited patiently. On the reasonable expectation that they would be migrating to Australia they may have made choices such as turning down job offers, not applying to migrate elsewhere, decisions about property and education, etc.
How would you feel? What would you think about the country that treated you like that? What would you think of that country's attitude towards foreigners? Would you feel inclined to buy Australian goods, come here on a holiday, do business with this country? Would you communicate your negative feelings to others?
Apparently our political leaders have learnt nothing from the handling of the attacks on Indian students. It would be interesting to know how many of the 20,000 applications being ripped up came from Indian citizens.
More on the rest of the changes in another post.
24 January 2010
Tony Abbott's Australia Day Speech
When I first read about Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's speech to an Australia Day dinner, my impression was he must have inherited John Howard's famous dog whistle. But before writing this blog entry, I thought it might be a good idea to read what he actually said.
News reports like one in the SMH quoting the Green Party spokesperson Senator Hanson-Young seemed to imply that Abbott had resurrected the worst of the Howard era "wedge politics" rhetoric by surreptitiously giving comfort and permission to racism and xenophobia. After reading the actual text, I do not agree.
Considering the temptations the occasion must have offered to an opposition leader with nothing to lose (his chances of winning this year's election are pretty dismal), I thought Abbott showed considerable restraint. The statement that "the inescapable minimum that we insist upon is obedience to the law" is hardly dog-whistling, and I think it is unfair to accuse Abbott of targetting specific ethnic groups by mentioning the off-beam comments of Sheikh Hilaly when seen in the context of what he said next: drawing a parallel with the anti-British views of Cardinal Mannix in the early 20th century, Abbott noted, "There has hardly been a time when there were not some reservations about the loyalty of particular ethnic or religious groups. A generation or two on, all of them have eventually become as Australian as everyone else."
Pointing out that "it's no reflection on boat people that they want to come to Australia", Abbott seemed to be cautioning the crypto-racists in the hardline border protection camp rather than giving them comfort. He very rightly observed that the most important reason for trying to discourage boat arrivals is the serious danger that is posed to the lives of the people attempting the crossing.
One thing that I'm sure upset the Greens was Abbott's rejection of the neo-Malthusian paranoia that dominates their anti-immigration policy. Forty years ago, a doubling of the Australian population would have appeared to these people to be unsustainable. Abbott claims that, while we are now twice as many, we are four times richer. I don't really trust that sort of bald statistics, but I certainly agree that more long-term damage is done by the politics of neglecting infrastructure development in order to discourage migration, as championed by the misanthropic NSW government of Bob Carr, than by planning for growth in a sustainable and environmentally intelligent way.
As an opposition leader whose best hope is that he will at least still have that job after the next election, Abbott is in the enviable position of being able to criticise without having to come up with any real solutions, and that would be my main criticism of his speech. While deploring the inhumanity of mandatory detention, he offers no alternative. At a time when the government of the country has no coherent policy on how to deal with this problem, it would have been refreshing to hear something different from somebody with nothing much to lose.
When I first read about Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's speech to an Australia Day dinner, my impression was he must have inherited John Howard's famous dog whistle. But before writing this blog entry, I thought it might be a good idea to read what he actually said.
News reports like one in the SMH quoting the Green Party spokesperson Senator Hanson-Young seemed to imply that Abbott had resurrected the worst of the Howard era "wedge politics" rhetoric by surreptitiously giving comfort and permission to racism and xenophobia. After reading the actual text, I do not agree.
Considering the temptations the occasion must have offered to an opposition leader with nothing to lose (his chances of winning this year's election are pretty dismal), I thought Abbott showed considerable restraint. The statement that "the inescapable minimum that we insist upon is obedience to the law" is hardly dog-whistling, and I think it is unfair to accuse Abbott of targetting specific ethnic groups by mentioning the off-beam comments of Sheikh Hilaly when seen in the context of what he said next: drawing a parallel with the anti-British views of Cardinal Mannix in the early 20th century, Abbott noted, "There has hardly been a time when there were not some reservations about the loyalty of particular ethnic or religious groups. A generation or two on, all of them have eventually become as Australian as everyone else."
Pointing out that "it's no reflection on boat people that they want to come to Australia", Abbott seemed to be cautioning the crypto-racists in the hardline border protection camp rather than giving them comfort. He very rightly observed that the most important reason for trying to discourage boat arrivals is the serious danger that is posed to the lives of the people attempting the crossing.
One thing that I'm sure upset the Greens was Abbott's rejection of the neo-Malthusian paranoia that dominates their anti-immigration policy. Forty years ago, a doubling of the Australian population would have appeared to these people to be unsustainable. Abbott claims that, while we are now twice as many, we are four times richer. I don't really trust that sort of bald statistics, but I certainly agree that more long-term damage is done by the politics of neglecting infrastructure development in order to discourage migration, as championed by the misanthropic NSW government of Bob Carr, than by planning for growth in a sustainable and environmentally intelligent way.
As an opposition leader whose best hope is that he will at least still have that job after the next election, Abbott is in the enviable position of being able to criticise without having to come up with any real solutions, and that would be my main criticism of his speech. While deploring the inhumanity of mandatory detention, he offers no alternative. At a time when the government of the country has no coherent policy on how to deal with this problem, it would have been refreshing to hear something different from somebody with nothing much to lose.
13 January 2010
More havoc wrought by the bean counters
If 2009 was the year when all the contradictions of the visa (sorry, education) export industry bubbled to the surface, 2010 looks like being the year of inept attempts to [make it look like the government has a plan to] do something to fix it.
Reading this article in the Australian, I noticed the following piece of bean-counter-speak from a DIAC spokesperson: "migration policy is responsive to economic conditions and labour market needs". The thinking is reactive, short-term, spin-driven. The resulting policy "responses" have been predictably chaotic and, as we are gradually coming to realise, damaging to the country's image internationally. Some examples can be found in a petition being launched one by one migration agency.
I don't want to enter into the debate on whether the brutal murder of Mr Garg and the other attacks on Indian students were motivated by racism or opportunism, though I don't see why the two would be mutually exclusive. I have suggested in the past, however, that there is more to the anger and frustration being shown by overseas students in their response to these events. We are constantly reminded of the $15 billion or so that the industry is worth to the Australian economy, to the point where if I were an overseas student I would be thinking that Australia only sees me as a cash cow, not a person. This is where the responses of the government to the attacks and the way they have implemented the recent policy changes come together.
In both cases, there is a distinct lack of empathy -- if not a blaming of the victims then at least an attitude that they have no right to expect anything better. The murder rate is higher in India, one commentator points out, and the Immigration Minister's attitude to the complaints of people disadvantaged by policy changes has been commented on previously in this blog. "Beggars can't be choosers", a former PM once said about asylum seekers. A similar philosophy underlies the disingenuous claims of the present government that they have never fostered expectations of a "pathway" from student visas to permanent residence. In the recently-stated view of the Senate Education, Employment Workplace Relations Committee, it is all the fault of "some education agents and advisers" that such a perception should exist at all. Before the same Committee, DIAC referred to its Visa Wizard website as a source of information for prospective visa applicants. Try it: tell it that you are interested in a student visa and your intention is to remain in Australia permanently, and you will get a whole list of ways to go about it.
When it comes to the reason for the anger over both the attacks and the policy changes, Senator Evans, Julia Gilliard and the government as a whole just don't get it.
If 2009 was the year when all the contradictions of the visa (sorry, education) export industry bubbled to the surface, 2010 looks like being the year of inept attempts to [make it look like the government has a plan to] do something to fix it.
Reading this article in the Australian, I noticed the following piece of bean-counter-speak from a DIAC spokesperson: "migration policy is responsive to economic conditions and labour market needs". The thinking is reactive, short-term, spin-driven. The resulting policy "responses" have been predictably chaotic and, as we are gradually coming to realise, damaging to the country's image internationally. Some examples can be found in a petition being launched one by one migration agency.
I don't want to enter into the debate on whether the brutal murder of Mr Garg and the other attacks on Indian students were motivated by racism or opportunism, though I don't see why the two would be mutually exclusive. I have suggested in the past, however, that there is more to the anger and frustration being shown by overseas students in their response to these events. We are constantly reminded of the $15 billion or so that the industry is worth to the Australian economy, to the point where if I were an overseas student I would be thinking that Australia only sees me as a cash cow, not a person. This is where the responses of the government to the attacks and the way they have implemented the recent policy changes come together.
In both cases, there is a distinct lack of empathy -- if not a blaming of the victims then at least an attitude that they have no right to expect anything better. The murder rate is higher in India, one commentator points out, and the Immigration Minister's attitude to the complaints of people disadvantaged by policy changes has been commented on previously in this blog. "Beggars can't be choosers", a former PM once said about asylum seekers. A similar philosophy underlies the disingenuous claims of the present government that they have never fostered expectations of a "pathway" from student visas to permanent residence. In the recently-stated view of the Senate Education, Employment Workplace Relations Committee, it is all the fault of "some education agents and advisers" that such a perception should exist at all. Before the same Committee, DIAC referred to its Visa Wizard website as a source of information for prospective visa applicants. Try it: tell it that you are interested in a student visa and your intention is to remain in Australia permanently, and you will get a whole list of ways to go about it.
When it comes to the reason for the anger over both the attacks and the policy changes, Senator Evans, Julia Gilliard and the government as a whole just don't get it.
26 December 2009
Remember Liu Xiaobo
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been sentenced to 11 years in prison in China for the crime of expressing an opinion that the authorities did not like. He was one of the authors of a document called Charter 08, which dared to suggest that Chinese citizens should not be locked up for criticising their government.
Since weblogs are a form of free expression, I think all bloggers should express their support for Liu and their disgust with the Chinese government.
Australia will soon join China and a few other select nations such as Iran and Myanmar in censoring the internet. We are told it is all about child pornography, and other stuff that is "refused classification". Interestingly, our Prime Minister has publicly declared "people smugglers" to be the scum of the earth, presumably putting them in the same basket as pedophiles and terrorists, so perhaps it won't be long before any discussion of the free movement of people around the world will join the new index urlorum prohibitorum.
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been sentenced to 11 years in prison in China for the crime of expressing an opinion that the authorities did not like. He was one of the authors of a document called Charter 08, which dared to suggest that Chinese citizens should not be locked up for criticising their government.
Since weblogs are a form of free expression, I think all bloggers should express their support for Liu and their disgust with the Chinese government.
Australia will soon join China and a few other select nations such as Iran and Myanmar in censoring the internet. We are told it is all about child pornography, and other stuff that is "refused classification". Interestingly, our Prime Minister has publicly declared "people smugglers" to be the scum of the earth, presumably putting them in the same basket as pedophiles and terrorists, so perhaps it won't be long before any discussion of the free movement of people around the world will join the new index urlorum prohibitorum.
13 December 2009
You may qualify for a visa, but will you get it?
The papers this weekend are telling us that a new government proposal may "spark panic". The idea seems to be to alter "the relationship between the lodgement of an application and the legal obligation to grant a visa".
The legal obligation refers to s 65 of the Migration Act 1958, which obliges the Minister to grant a visa to a person if they satisfy all of the criteria for that visa. Of course, those criteria include some pretty discretionary "public interest" tests which give the Minister lots of scope for refusing a visa to anyone he or she doesn't really want to let in, but the idea now being kicked around seems to have something to do with changing the rules after a person has applied.
Actually, there is plenty of scope for that already. The current law allows the government to impose a numerical cap on certain visa classes and then declare void all outstanding applications once that cap is reached (s 39). The points test pass marks can also be hiked up or down at any time, and the new mark made applicable to any existing application (s 93). Even more generally, changes to the "time of decision criteria" for any visa subclass can operate retrospectively.
The media quickly understood that the likely target of any new changes would be the student visa industry. Not surprisingly, they sought comment from the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, which represents the education providers at the heart (for want of a better word) of that $16 billion dollar cash cow. And not surprisingly, their response was along the lines of "we'll all be rooned!".
There appear to be two different ideologies at work here. On one side, there are the national sovereignty supporters (remember "We will decide who comes to this country, blah blah blah"?). Migrants are foreigners, we owe them nothing, they should be grateful if we let them in, and whether they are or not nobody can claim a right to a visa. We control the tap, and we can turn it on or off as we please.
The other side of the argument starts from the proposition that immigration is a long-term society-building program that has worked astonishingly well in this country and, most recently, probably saved us from the worst effects of the Global Financial Crisis. Rather than being about foreigners, it is actually about Australians -- the Australians that the migrants become once they get here.
I have previously blamed the bean counters of the 90s for replacing long-term planning with short-term accounting. It looks like their offspring are carrying on the same tradition.
The papers this weekend are telling us that a new government proposal may "spark panic". The idea seems to be to alter "the relationship between the lodgement of an application and the legal obligation to grant a visa".
The legal obligation refers to s 65 of the Migration Act 1958, which obliges the Minister to grant a visa to a person if they satisfy all of the criteria for that visa. Of course, those criteria include some pretty discretionary "public interest" tests which give the Minister lots of scope for refusing a visa to anyone he or she doesn't really want to let in, but the idea now being kicked around seems to have something to do with changing the rules after a person has applied.
Actually, there is plenty of scope for that already. The current law allows the government to impose a numerical cap on certain visa classes and then declare void all outstanding applications once that cap is reached (s 39). The points test pass marks can also be hiked up or down at any time, and the new mark made applicable to any existing application (s 93). Even more generally, changes to the "time of decision criteria" for any visa subclass can operate retrospectively.
The media quickly understood that the likely target of any new changes would be the student visa industry. Not surprisingly, they sought comment from the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, which represents the education providers at the heart (for want of a better word) of that $16 billion dollar cash cow. And not surprisingly, their response was along the lines of "we'll all be rooned!".
There appear to be two different ideologies at work here. On one side, there are the national sovereignty supporters (remember "We will decide who comes to this country, blah blah blah"?). Migrants are foreigners, we owe them nothing, they should be grateful if we let them in, and whether they are or not nobody can claim a right to a visa. We control the tap, and we can turn it on or off as we please.
The other side of the argument starts from the proposition that immigration is a long-term society-building program that has worked astonishingly well in this country and, most recently, probably saved us from the worst effects of the Global Financial Crisis. Rather than being about foreigners, it is actually about Australians -- the Australians that the migrants become once they get here.
I have previously blamed the bean counters of the 90s for replacing long-term planning with short-term accounting. It looks like their offspring are carrying on the same tradition.
08 December 2009
When is a punishment not a punishment?
Is visa cancellation a punishment? Most people would think so. It can have pretty devastating effects. For one thing you can be arrested (sorry, "detained") and locked up in a jail (sorry, "detention centre"). Then you can be deported (sorry, "removed").
The official view is that all of this is "administrative", not "punitive". An interesting view from the other side can be found in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Royal Abbott.
Is visa cancellation a punishment? Most people would think so. It can have pretty devastating effects. For one thing you can be arrested (sorry, "detained") and locked up in a jail (sorry, "detention centre"). Then you can be deported (sorry, "removed").
The official view is that all of this is "administrative", not "punitive". An interesting view from the other side can be found in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Royal Abbott.
30 November 2009
The student visa industry
We are told time and time again that international education is our third largest export industry. I saw recently that for NSW is it in fact the second largest.
Isn't that amazing? All those foreigners queueing up to pay money to study at our world-class institutions: doctors, lawyers, physicists, engineers, the odd musicologist perhaps, undergraduate degrees, masters degrees, a smattering of PhDs.
Not really. The occasional PhD there may be, but we all know what this "industry" is about. It's such a big export earner because it's about selling visas. In my practice, I see these poor kids every day. They started out doing a community welfare diploma (kids from the Punjab with a burning desire to study the lives of drunks and single mums in Cabramatta), then the assessing authority tightened up the requirements so they all suddenly switched to graphics pre-press - whatever that is.
I certainly don't blame them. They had no illusions about what Mum and Dad were paying all that money for. In fact I admire them. It must be pretty scary to leave home and go to a strange country where you have to deal with everything from opening a bank account to finding a place to live, getting a part-time job, enrolling in a course, complying with visa requirements, without any of the support mechanisms of home and family. They are also very much aware of the investment that the folks back home have made in them, and how disastrous it would be if they failed in their quest, which is to get permanent residence here.
Why not just sell them the visas and be done with it? They pay around $20,000 to $30,000 each in fees, so why not have them pay it into consolidated revenue instead of the pockets of the private businesses whose only reason for existing is to service the visa trade? It seems to me that most of them would make pretty good migrants, with or without a trade certificate in hairdressing.
Not likely, I suppose. On the other hand, we do charge a whopping big fee for parent visas, so there is a precedent. More about that another time.
We are told time and time again that international education is our third largest export industry. I saw recently that for NSW is it in fact the second largest.
Isn't that amazing? All those foreigners queueing up to pay money to study at our world-class institutions: doctors, lawyers, physicists, engineers, the odd musicologist perhaps, undergraduate degrees, masters degrees, a smattering of PhDs.
Not really. The occasional PhD there may be, but we all know what this "industry" is about. It's such a big export earner because it's about selling visas. In my practice, I see these poor kids every day. They started out doing a community welfare diploma (kids from the Punjab with a burning desire to study the lives of drunks and single mums in Cabramatta), then the assessing authority tightened up the requirements so they all suddenly switched to graphics pre-press - whatever that is.
I certainly don't blame them. They had no illusions about what Mum and Dad were paying all that money for. In fact I admire them. It must be pretty scary to leave home and go to a strange country where you have to deal with everything from opening a bank account to finding a place to live, getting a part-time job, enrolling in a course, complying with visa requirements, without any of the support mechanisms of home and family. They are also very much aware of the investment that the folks back home have made in them, and how disastrous it would be if they failed in their quest, which is to get permanent residence here.
Why not just sell them the visas and be done with it? They pay around $20,000 to $30,000 each in fees, so why not have them pay it into consolidated revenue instead of the pockets of the private businesses whose only reason for existing is to service the visa trade? It seems to me that most of them would make pretty good migrants, with or without a trade certificate in hairdressing.
Not likely, I suppose. On the other hand, we do charge a whopping big fee for parent visas, so there is a precedent. More about that another time.
26 November 2009
Immigration, population and climate
It's the big thing to be talking about now. The buzz words are "footprint" and "carrying capacity".
Both are based on wrong assumptions. My footprint has been a nine and a half since I was a teenager. It doesn't change. Carrying capacity also implies a fixed limit. Human society isn't like that.
There is only one way a cow can be a cow. It eats a certain amount of feed, blows out a certain amount of methane, tramples a certain amount of pasture, etc. What goes for cows goes for all other species, except us. Humans can be humans, and can interact with the rest of the planet, in an endless variety of ways.
Before the middle of the 19th Century, any city with more than a couple of hundred thousand people was a stinking, disease-ridden hole with raw sewage running down the streets and pouring into the nearest waterway. Unchecked pollution of the atmosphere continued a bit longer, leading to incidents like the Great London Smog of 1952.
But blaming everything on numbers is stupid. One person = x amount of environmental damage, so more people means more environmental damage, less means less. The overall success of the international effort to get rid of ODCs (Ozone Depleting Chemicals) shows that, just as humans are capable of doing vast damage to the planet, we are also capable (unlike any other species) of seeing what we are doing and doing something about it.
The various "ecologists against population increase" or "environmentalists against immigration" or such groups are actually a cop out. Funny thing, they usually come to the conclusion that we (that is, us rich white folks, apologies to any less exalted races who might be reading this) aren't really to blame. After all, we take our contraception and keep our birth rates below replacement level. Apparently the real culprits are all those other people out there, breeding like rabbits. Point out that we have much higher levels of resource consumption and carbon production per capita than the rest of the world, and the argument switches from population to immigration. Whatever you do, don't let any more of those people move from their countries to ours! They might start living like us! Heaven forbid.
Am I crazy, or is there something very wrong with this argument?
I heard it put very strongly by Prof. Tim Flannery and others during one of the IQ2 debates a couple of months ago. By the end, I was expecting Prof. Flannery to announce his imminent emigration to Bangladesh. He didn't, but that seemed to be the logic of his position. The debate took place in Sydney. I wonder what the audience response would have been if they had staged it in Karachi?
I suspect it may well turn out in the end that it won't be our decision anyway. If we carbon-munching Australians don't take responsibility for the impact of our lifestyles on the rest of the planet, the day may soon come when others decide that they will not stay poor, will not stay put, will not take their contraception, and instead will get into their boats and come over here whether we like it or not. I guess you could call it Pemelwuy's last laugh.
It's the big thing to be talking about now. The buzz words are "footprint" and "carrying capacity".
Both are based on wrong assumptions. My footprint has been a nine and a half since I was a teenager. It doesn't change. Carrying capacity also implies a fixed limit. Human society isn't like that.
There is only one way a cow can be a cow. It eats a certain amount of feed, blows out a certain amount of methane, tramples a certain amount of pasture, etc. What goes for cows goes for all other species, except us. Humans can be humans, and can interact with the rest of the planet, in an endless variety of ways.
Before the middle of the 19th Century, any city with more than a couple of hundred thousand people was a stinking, disease-ridden hole with raw sewage running down the streets and pouring into the nearest waterway. Unchecked pollution of the atmosphere continued a bit longer, leading to incidents like the Great London Smog of 1952.
But blaming everything on numbers is stupid. One person = x amount of environmental damage, so more people means more environmental damage, less means less. The overall success of the international effort to get rid of ODCs (Ozone Depleting Chemicals) shows that, just as humans are capable of doing vast damage to the planet, we are also capable (unlike any other species) of seeing what we are doing and doing something about it.
The various "ecologists against population increase" or "environmentalists against immigration" or such groups are actually a cop out. Funny thing, they usually come to the conclusion that we (that is, us rich white folks, apologies to any less exalted races who might be reading this) aren't really to blame. After all, we take our contraception and keep our birth rates below replacement level. Apparently the real culprits are all those other people out there, breeding like rabbits. Point out that we have much higher levels of resource consumption and carbon production per capita than the rest of the world, and the argument switches from population to immigration. Whatever you do, don't let any more of those people move from their countries to ours! They might start living like us! Heaven forbid.
Am I crazy, or is there something very wrong with this argument?
I heard it put very strongly by Prof. Tim Flannery and others during one of the IQ2 debates a couple of months ago. By the end, I was expecting Prof. Flannery to announce his imminent emigration to Bangladesh. He didn't, but that seemed to be the logic of his position. The debate took place in Sydney. I wonder what the audience response would have been if they had staged it in Karachi?
I suspect it may well turn out in the end that it won't be our decision anyway. If we carbon-munching Australians don't take responsibility for the impact of our lifestyles on the rest of the planet, the day may soon come when others decide that they will not stay poor, will not stay put, will not take their contraception, and instead will get into their boats and come over here whether we like it or not. I guess you could call it Pemelwuy's last laugh.
25 November 2009
Priority processing - not fair
One of the Rudd government's first responses to the 2008 credit crunch was to announce that it would "do something" about immigration. Governments always have to "do something". Imagine if they announced they were going to do nothing?
First, despite the rest of their policies being all about stimulus, they decided to cut the overall intake. Oh well, that was to be expected.
Next, maybe because the general tone of the new regime is micromanagement, they came up with a bright "new" idea (the quotation marks are because it isn't a new idea at all, just one that most people have forgotten we used to have). Thus we now have priority processing of GSM (General Skilled Migration) applications, based on the CSL (Critical Skills List).
In an interview with rhe ABC program The National Interest on 13 November, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, was unmoved: "Quite frankly," he said, "if we decide [the immigration intake is] going to be 10,000 people next year, they might be waiting for 20 or 30 years". This ignores the main complaint, that people who met the requirements when they applied, and still do, are being forced to the back of the queue to make way for the so-called "priority" cases. See also the earlier interview with Mark Webster of MIA and Dr Zuleika Arashiro of ANU.
The underlying assumption is that immigration is like some sort of feeding tube going straight into the veins of the economy. By regulating the flow, and changing the mix of nutrients, the immigration technicians respond to the day-to-day needs of the nation. This is bolstered by a second assumption: that those same immigration technicians have developed an accurate set of tools for determining just which migrants are needed when, and how many, and what their impact on Australian society will be.
My view is that this is nonsense. Australia has had the most successful postwar immigration program of any country in the world. About 15 years ago, however, someone in Canberra decided that what wasn't broke neverthless needed to be fixed. One of the offshoots of this coup of the bean counters was the "migration industry", but that is another story.
We must never forget that migration is about people, and what has been done to thousands of real people waiting their turn and expecting to be treated fairly by Australia's immigration system is that they have been shabbily treated so that politicians can say they are "doing something".
One of the Rudd government's first responses to the 2008 credit crunch was to announce that it would "do something" about immigration. Governments always have to "do something". Imagine if they announced they were going to do nothing?
First, despite the rest of their policies being all about stimulus, they decided to cut the overall intake. Oh well, that was to be expected.
Next, maybe because the general tone of the new regime is micromanagement, they came up with a bright "new" idea (the quotation marks are because it isn't a new idea at all, just one that most people have forgotten we used to have). Thus we now have priority processing of GSM (General Skilled Migration) applications, based on the CSL (Critical Skills List).
- DIAC explanation of the priority processing system (PDF)
- CSL - Critical Skills List (PDF)
- MODL - Migration Occupations in Demand List
- Application processing times
In an interview with rhe ABC program The National Interest on 13 November, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, was unmoved: "Quite frankly," he said, "if we decide [the immigration intake is] going to be 10,000 people next year, they might be waiting for 20 or 30 years". This ignores the main complaint, that people who met the requirements when they applied, and still do, are being forced to the back of the queue to make way for the so-called "priority" cases. See also the earlier interview with Mark Webster of MIA and Dr Zuleika Arashiro of ANU.
The underlying assumption is that immigration is like some sort of feeding tube going straight into the veins of the economy. By regulating the flow, and changing the mix of nutrients, the immigration technicians respond to the day-to-day needs of the nation. This is bolstered by a second assumption: that those same immigration technicians have developed an accurate set of tools for determining just which migrants are needed when, and how many, and what their impact on Australian society will be.
My view is that this is nonsense. Australia has had the most successful postwar immigration program of any country in the world. About 15 years ago, however, someone in Canberra decided that what wasn't broke neverthless needed to be fixed. One of the offshoots of this coup of the bean counters was the "migration industry", but that is another story.
We must never forget that migration is about people, and what has been done to thousands of real people waiting their turn and expecting to be treated fairly by Australia's immigration system is that they have been shabbily treated so that politicians can say they are "doing something".
I am restarting this blog after a long time, because I think there is a need to reopen the immigration debate in Australia following the defeat of the Howard government and the "new world" we now live in with the GFC and the climate debate.
Comments are welcome, but will be moderated for legal/professional purposes.
Comments are welcome, but will be moderated for legal/professional purposes.
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