By Lisa Macdonald
Later this month, the federal immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, is expected to announce new entry rules for immigrants under the skills category. According to media reports, the rules will require applicants to prove that they have at least $40,000 to support themselves and their families after they arrive. They will also make it harder for those with qualifications in occupations that are considered "oversupplied" to gain entry.
Less than 12 months after increasing the skilled migrant intake quota (at the expense of the family reunion migration quota), the government, strongly supported by the Labor opposition, claims that these changes will address public concerns that "untargeted" skilled immigration is contributing to unemployment.
Having already cut the total migrant intake, principally by reducing by 5000 the preferential family reunion intake for 1997-98, this "targeting" of skilled immigration is less about reducing the inflow of migrant labour than it is about more tightly controlling the type of immigrant.
Facilitated by the current resurgence of overt racism in Australia, the Howard government's immigration policy is increasingly looking like a new version of the old bipartisan white Australia policy.
To be saleable today, however, that old policy must be repackaged to fit current social and political reality.
That reality is shaped by the absorption into Australia of many people from many nations and races over the past 50 years, and the gains in public policy and mass consciousness made by the anti-racism movements of the 1960s and '70s.
The old bogy of invasion by "yellow hordes" is far less palatable to an Australian population that contains many Asians (and their neighbours, workmates and friends), and that has, over the last decade, been fed a solid diet of propaganda about Australia's need to integrate economically and politically into the Asian region.
The government's solution to this dilemma is to impose new rules that will have the effect of filtering out almost everyone in the Third World (most of whom are non-white, and almost none of whom have a spare $40,000!), but that can be publicly justified by blaming migrants for a jobs crisis that is very painful for millions of Australians.
New migrants are the victims rather than cause of unemployment. But that is irrelevant to the authors of the policy, which will serve two purposes.
One is re-winning that section of the major parties' electoral base which is being usurped by One Nation. The other is diverting attention (at least temporarily) from Australian big business and governments' mass sackings, refusal to enable existing jobs to be shared around via a 35-hour week with no loss in pay, and refusal to tax the rich sufficiently to raise the revenue necessary to create new jobs.
Any illusions that the federal government is genuinely motivated by concern about the employment prospects and well-being of new immigrants or other Australian workers are dispelled by examining the impact of its immigration policy centrepiece.
On March 4, the government legislated to require migrants who arrived in Australia or were granted permanent residence on or after that day to wait for two years before being eligible for the Newstart, sickness, youth training, parenting, partner, mature age, widow or mobility allowances, or for a carer pension or disability wage supplement from the Department of Social Security.
Also prevented from receiving a health care card or seniors' health care card for two years, new migrants consequently cannot use public dental services, cannot receive public transport concessions and have to pay the full price for prescription drugs.
Excluded from the social security system, new migrants also cannot get access to public housing. If they can find the $1500-3000 that housing organisations estimate is needed to establish themselves in private rental accommodation, they then suffer the market-driven rent increases accompanying the current housing shortage.
Only refugees and special humanitarian entrants, "innocent illegals" and "family members" (the spouse or dependent child) of an Australian citizen, permanent resident, refugee or special humanitarian entrant are exempt from the waiting period.
If migrants covered by an assurance of support (a guarantee by their sponsor that they will support the immigrant when s/he arrives) receive any social security payments during their first two years here, the amount is deducted from their sponsor's compulsory social security bond ($3500 for the principal applicant being sponsored, plus $1500 for each other applicant over 18 years old).
When this discriminatory legislation was first proposed, Ruddock used and fuelled the anti-immigration sentiment flowing from people's concerns about high unemployment by arguing that the withdrawal of benefits would "restore public confidence in the immigration program".
Expressed more crudely by social security minister Jocelyn Newman, migrants would no longer be "offered the opportunity to ride on the backs of battlers from the day they arrive".
The previous Labor government used the same "public confidence" excuse when it introduced the initial six-month waiting period.
In fact, the waiting period appears to have had little, if any, deterrent effect on the number of immigration applications — not surprising, since many applicants are not told about the new rules until they arrive in Australia.
As well, Australian Bureau of Statistics data from 1990-94 show that immigrants under-utilise social security payments. Research by the (now de-funded) Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research also reveals that the initial cost to government of immigration (for social security, health and other public services) is more than repaid in income taxes collected from immigrants, despite their higher unemployment levels. There is no two-year moratorium on new migrants' tax payments!
The unemployment rate among new migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds is higher than average. But this is not because they are unable or unwilling to work. On the contrary, when racial prejudice and discrimination do not prevent them from obtaining work, new migrants do most of the hardest, dirtiest and lowest paid jobs in Australia.
Their unemployment rate is a direct result of the fact that there are virtually no new jobs being created by either governments or business.
According to Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs figures, in April the unemployment rate of migrants who arrived between January 1996 and March this year was 17.9%; that's 12,200 people. Among non-white migrants, those from the Middle East and North Africa averaged 35.5% unemployment, and those from south-east Asia 30.9%.
Rather than assist new migrants to obtain work and escape the poverty trap created for them, the government froze funding for migrant employment training programs in July 1996, and cut funding for the Adult Migrant Education Service. Its refusal to allow unemployed new migrants the most basic of social security payments simply prolongs their unemployment, while giving credibility to the myth that immigration causes unemployment.
Dire poverty and lack of access to health and welfare services are only the most immediate consequences of the social security waiting period. With no safety net, many are forced to survive in the cash economy, with its accompanying illegality, high levels of exploitation and lack of access to occupational health and safety or workers' compensation.
This waiting period has rendered thousands of new migrants instant fodder for the sweatshops, the crime bosses and union-busting employers. Hoping for a better life in Australia, they find themselves either destitute or working long hours for low pay, subject to harassment but too scared to fight back in case they lose the only source of income available to them.
And, as noted by victim after victim visiting the welfare centres, they lack even the means to return to their country of origin when they can no longer bear this new life.
The consequences for all other Australian workers are also dire. Fierce competition for too few jobs enables employers to use new migrants as battering rams against the wages, working conditions and organisation of workers: "If you won't work for less pay, in dangerous conditions and without union coverage, there's plenty of others who would be glad to".
For new migrants deprived of social security, it's a matter of taking the job, at whatever cost to themselves or others, or starve.
Only when the most secure and organised workers actively campaign, not only to defend their own wages and conditions, but also to stop the government's attacks on new migrants' rights to social support and security can we defeat the government's efforts to pit new migrant against citizen, unemployed against worker, Asian against Anglo and thereby drive down the living conditions of all.