Francesca Davis
The release of Pauline Hanson's "zero net immigration" policy has sparked criticism from other establishment parties for its factual inaccuracies, its targeting of Asian migrants and its harsh treatment of refugees. Yet there has been silence on One Nation's central assertion, that limits to immigration are needed.
The "need" for limits is accepted across the parliamentary political spectrum. Yet a closer look reveals that limiting immigration will solve none of the problems its proponents claim it will.
On the contrary, any limits are discriminatory and, since the majority of people wanting to migrate to Australia are people of colour, they are racist. Hanson's extreme position distracts attention from this fact.
The reasoning behind the various parties' positions is different.
One Nation has proposed zero net immigration until the unemployment problem is solved — which it will never be while capitalism lasts. Its real agenda is revealed in its position that non-Asian migrants be selected for entry.
It has been proven time and again, most recently in Bruce Chapman's report The Impact of Immigration on the Employment Prospects of Unemployed Residents (1997), that migrants, through their demand for goods and services, create as many (if not more) jobs as they take. Migrants are also less likely to use social services.
As the parties of government, the ALP and Coalition need scapegoats for unemployment, insecurity and other social problems — and immigrants provide one.
Blaming migrants for social problems distracts attention from government lay-offs and spending cuts, and cutting immigration quotas allows the government to appear to be "doing something".
In the last two years, the Coalition has cut the intake by around 20%, mainly in the family reunion category (skilled migrant quotas have been increased).
The government has also substantially reduced its responsibility for new migrants by denying them access to welfare payments for two years. Application fees and English-language course fees have increased substantially, and the English tuition available to new migrants has been cut.
This follows intake cuts, tightening of entry requirements and the introduction of a six-month wait for welfare payments by the ALP government in the early 1990s.
Now the ALP platform indicates agreement with the Coalition's attacks: "The size of the annual intake ... will be determined subject to the population policy framework. Within this, Labor will insist that skilled migration is linked to labour market needs. The untargeted independent visa class will be scaled back. Labor will maintain programs to encourage the transfer of resources and technology to Australia through business migration", and so on.
All of the parties' policies "honour" Australia's international obligation to refugees, except One Nation, which advocates sending refugees back once their "troubles" have settled.
Between 1986 and 1996, the number of refugees fleeing war, famines and poverty around the world doubled to 19 million. Around 99% are technically "illegal"; if they don't achieve refugee status, they must apply to migrate.
Are these people likely to come up with the $40,000 bond the Coalition is asking for entry? Will their English be good enough to get them the points needed under the new, tighter rules?
Australia's requirements exclude the vast majority of these people. Cutting the intake further will exclude even more needy people from one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
The major parties claim that, unlike One Nation's immigration policies, theirs are non-discriminatory. But emphasising ability to pay, English skills and education clearly discriminates against people from the Third World.
Underlying support for limiting immigration is the idea that too many immigrants will bring "our" standard of living down, either by taking "our" jobs or destroying "our" environment. Implicit is the view either that non-Australian residents are less deserving of quality of life and environment, or that it's their bad luck they weren't born here.
These arguments ignore the fact that the conditions Third World migrants seek to escape are a direct or indirect consequence of First World countries' exploitation of the rest of the world.
Colonisation and the ensuing expropriation of resources led to the incredible disparity of wealth between the First and Third worlds. Continuing exploitation of Third World resources and cheap labour by multinationals maintains this division.
Australian business in south-east Asia exploits workers in partnership with repressive governments, making people leave their homes in search of a better life. The Australian government supported the Suharto dictatorship for years in exchange for Timorese oil for Australian companies, condoning the occupation of East Timor. It's happy to accept East Timorese oil, but not the refugees it has helped to produce.
Countries in the Third World take hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants, but governments in the wealthiest and least populated countries lack such generosity. They use nationalism, angled at workers' fear of ending up on the scrap heap of economic rationalism, to garner support. They encourage claims that immigration causes unemployment, environmental destruction and cultural disharmony.
Ideology aside, some immigration is considered useful. Business argues for higher immigration of skilled labour, whose costs of education have been paid overseas.
Ironically, since the release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics projections for Australia's population next century, there have been a plethora of media comment pieces on the need to increase our population — for the wrong reasons. Fears of the "burden" of an ageing population, of slowed economic growth and of less impact in the region have led business to begin rebuilding the case for greater immigration.
The Greens and the Democrats support limiting immigration with the argument that increased population means increased consumption and hence environmental destruction. However, recent ABS figures suggest that even at the present rate of immigration, Australia's population will fall by the middle of the next century.
The Democrats' overtly nationalist policy echoes Pauline Hanson's zero immigration policy: "Until a sustainable population is achieved, a low level of immigration will be continued with the annual number of immigrants (including refugees) set so as to not exceed the number of permanent departures of the previous year".
Environmentally destructive production is not driven primarily by consumption, but by the profit-seeking of business. Increasing or decreasing population would do little to alter these production processes.
Nor would stabilising Australia's population help stop global population growth. It won't save us from environmental problems that are mostly international in nature, like global warming. The Democrats' immigration policy bolsters the Hansonites while achieving nothing.
Even the Australian Greens have succumbed to the "fortress Australia" position, relying on the same arguments as the Democrats.
The Greens argue that a migration program should be predominantly based on humanitarian and family reunion criteria. However, their short-term targets still include reduction of immigration "as a part of a strategy to achieve eventual stabilisation of the Australian population".
Their policy recognises that the population an area can support is dependent on how technology is used and developed, and it acknowledges the need to direct aid to the Third World, but they still believe that immigration levels must be reduced.
To deny prospective immigrants entry is to say that the majority of Third World people are less deserving of our quality of life and environment than we are. Immigration cuts contribute to an isolationist, chauvinist position of "Australians before anyone else", strengthening the right wing.
Commitment to meeting humanitarian needs means an open door policy. Defending national borders does nothing to solve environmental or social problems. Rather, it strengthens the right-wing forces that are attempting to provoke racial and ethnic animosities to weaken working people's resistance to attacks on their living standards.
All migrants must be welcome here. This will help to break down national chauvinism and racism. Concerns about being able to support migrants need to be directed into real solutions — like increasing corporate tax and stopping business subsidies so that we can create jobs and fund schools and hospitals and establish environmentally sound production.