Should The Rate of Immigration in Australia Be Reduced?

This essay discusses the history of immigration in Australia, its impact on the economy and society, and the ongoing debate on whether to reduce the level of immigration or not.

Running head: SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE
REDUCED?
Should The Rate of Immigration in Australia Be Reduced?
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1SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE REDUCED?
Introduction
Australia is often referred to as one of the most classical nations of immigrations in
the world. It is also to note that the concept of beings a country full of immigrants is at the
core of the Australian identity. However, Australia is a very unique nation and at the same
time, it has a very long history of growing population because of immigration. Although
Australia still has not completely developed, it is commonly known as the land full of
opportunities. Notwithstanding this, immigration has gradually become an issue in the
Australian economy over time and several scholars and politicians are in continuous debate
on whether to reduce the level of immigration in Australia or not. This essay will elaborate on
the same, providing a short brief on the history of immigration and various policies, the
socio-cultural and economic impact and the impact of population on this nation.
Body
In the year 1788, when the European settlement started, the aboriginal population of
Australia was nearly 390,000. In present days, more than 20 million individuals live in this
country and migration has always remained the major driver for this change (Foged & Peri,
2016). In the New South Wales, it is to note that every four out of ten people are either
migrants or the children of them. The very migrants in Australia were the involuntary the
convicts who transported from the Great Britain, Ireland and to some extent, the other British
colonies as well. All total about 80,000 migrants had arrived in the New South Wales in
between the year 1788 to 1840. Later, they were joined by the voluntary migrants from
Ireland and Britain. Gradually, with the discovery of the “gold” outside of the Bathurst in the
year 1851, the nature of migration in Australia changed entirely and people from different
backgrounds started to enter in Australia in far greater numbers.

2SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE REDUCED?
Very recently, immigration has become a topic of much debates and tensions among
the politicians and the country men of Australia. Bob Carr, the former foreign affairs minister
too has declared his decision to cut the level of immigration to half as the experiment of
running the fastest level of immigration in the world is seem to be failing in recent years.
Argument 1: Dewaele and Stavans (2014) have claimed that there are some effects of
migration that are much more amenable to the estimation and measurement than the rest
others. They, in this context have argued that immigration also has some positive impact on
the Australian economy. The positive influences from the additional skilled immigrants take
place from the higher rates of participation, which is slightly higher hours worked per the
worker and the up-skilling of the total workforce (Immigration, 2018). Andersson and
Hammarstedt (2015) has highlighted the fact that Sweden too has accepted about 138,200
permanent immigrants in the year 2016 but still it has managed to ranked the best nation to be
an economic immigrant in the very year.
Argument 2: Again, as per Castles and Ozkul (2014), temporary migration could give a way
for alleviating an unanticipated short term increases in the demand for labour in Australia.
This short term increase in the supply of labour might not be forthcoming from the national
labour market. In such a situation, the short term migration can help in generating a benefit to
the economy like bringing forward the expansion of industry in the response of unforeseen
increases in the demand for export. Also, Noll (2018) have highlighted that Spain has
strengthened its reception system and asylum for handling the influx of high immigration
effectively by means of increasing the funding and facilities and then reforming its system for
handling the associated foreign minors and this could also be utilised by Australia.
Counter argument: Hainmueller, Hiscox and Margalit (2015) have stated that although
these factors cannot be denied but still, the overall positive economic impact of immigration

3SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE REDUCED?
is small and consistent along with the earlier overseas and Australian studies. As per the
survey conducted by the Davies (2018), majority of the common public in Australia has
raised their concerns regarding the traffic congestion, the pressure on the schools and other
services and overdevelopment. These three has remained the primary reason why the public
in Australia started giving their voice and are supporting this decision. According to Doherty
and Evershed (2018), the population of Sydney is now approaching to four million and the
government there is under the pressure over infrastructure and transport. It is to note that
Sydney is one of the huge melting pots in the world and also 37% of the total population in
Sydney is born overseas. Again, Dimant, Krieger and Redlin (2015) have stated that although
short term migration could help in benefitting the domestic labour market but the issue has no
longer been with the short term immigration, instead the immigration that has a long history
and the rate of which is rapidly increasing further. Foged and Peri (2016) in this context has
also stated his view point on the issue of immigration in Australia and the way it is effecting
the Australian economy. As per him, immigration has the potential to attract the criminal
elements right from trafficking in the drugs and the people to other forms of corruption and
crime. It is also to note that the level of criminal activities in Australia, too has increased with
time. Although it cannot be said that it is due to the high level of immigration or is the actions
of the owners here. With the same, Chomsky (2018) has claimed that the government
expenditures is one of the other negative influence of growing immigration. The
undocumented workers, which is in very high level in Australia generally do not pay the
income taxes as well. Further, around 60 billion dollars are been earned by the illegal
migrants in the United States every year.
Conclusion
Hence, from the above analysis it is clear than Australia has a very rich history in
context of migration but the attitudes towards the immigration issue and especially towards

4SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE REDUCED?
the source of migrations have been changed significantly over time. This is because of the
several negative impacts that high rate of immigration is laying upon the country and the
issues that the common public and Australian is facing in recent years. Hence, it is suggested
to cut off the level or rate of immigration to some significant extent.

5SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE REDUCED?
References:
Andersson, L., & Hammarstedt, M. (2015). Ethnic Enclaves, Networks and Self‐Employment
among Middle Eastern Immigrants in Sweden. International Migration, 53(6), 27-40.
Castles, S., & Ozkul, D. (2014). Circular Migration: Triple win, or a new label for temporary
migration?. In Global and Asian perspectives on international migration (pp. 27-49).
Springer, Cham.
Chomsky, A. (2018). " They take our jobs!": and 20 other myths about immigration. Beacon
Press.
Davies, A. (2018). Q&A: Australia's immigration rate should be cut in half, Bob Carr says.
Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/13/qa-australias-
immigration-rate-should-be-cut-in-half-bob-carr-says
Dewaele, J. M., & Stavans, A. (2014). The effect of immigration, acculturation and
multicompetence on personality profiles of Israeli multilinguals. International
Journal of Bilingualism, 18(3), 203-221.
Dimant, E., Krieger, T., & Redlin, M. (2015). A Crook is a Crook… But is He Still a Crook
Abroad? On the Effect of Immigration on Destination‐Country Corruption. German
Economic Review, 16(4), 464-489.
Doherty, B., & Evershed, N. (2018). The changing shape of Australia's immigration policy.
Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/24/australias-fierce-
immigration-debate-is-about-to-get-louder
Foged, M., & Peri, G. (2016). Immigrants' effect on native workers: New analysis on
longitudinal data. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 8(2), 1-34.

6SHOULD THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION IN AUSTRALIA BE REDUCED?
Hainmueller, J., Hiscox, M. J., & Margalit, Y. (2015). Do concerns about labor market
competition shape attitudes toward immigration? New evidence. Journal of
International Economics, 97(1), 193-207.
Immigration: Australia’s migration ceiling to remain unchanged in 2018-19. (2018).
Retrieved from
https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/hindi/en/article/2018/05/09/immigration-no-cut-
australias-migrant-intake-2018-19
Noll, G. (2018). Security in a Liberal Union: EU Asylum and Migration Control
Policies. The European Union: Facing the Challenge of Multiple Security Threats,
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