Palme McGuinness: Australia not immune to immigration anxiety, but we have no need to worry

The review won’t build the new houses, roads or hospitals we already needed yesterday. But it might just be able to help us agree on how we can become a better nation, with the help of the people that business and the care sector need today.

That is perhaps the most important part of this review. It starts out by stating the purpose of our immigration system. Because, as the review panel writes, “clear objectives are part of the story Australians tell about why the country is taking certain action” and “when that story is lost sight of or stops being told, trust and confidence is weakened”.

The purpose laid out in the review might be expressed in modern language, but goes back to the core principles of what makes nations strong and citizens confident of their collective sovereignty.

The first principle is that immigration should build Australia’s prosperity. This should be a no-brainer, but as usual somehow partisan politics from the left and the right got in the way. So let’s say it straight: bringing in clever people adds bodies, yes, but it also raises the national IQ. Smart people generate ideas, create businesses, or win overseas business for Australian companies, which creates more jobs right here onshore. Keeping an eye on national prosperity doesn’t mean forgoing humanitarian intake (sometimes doing the right thing is just the right thing to do), but it means evaluating the overall effect of the combined intake against one very important objective: that we all benefit. This is why recent migrants are sometimes not wild about untargeted new intakes. They want to know that the country they’ve invested themselves in is going to get richer and better.

The next is enabling fair labour markets. This principle has had some less than savoury incarnations, including the White Australia policy, which limited immigration from non-European countries. Along with a large dollop of racism, the purpose of the Restricted Immigration Act of 1901 was to keep out people who would work for lower wages. It is a considerable improvement that we can now say our immigration system is designed to protect people in our society who need lower paid jobs as a step into the labour market and dispense with the racist excuse.

The review also, refreshingly, prioritises “building a community of Australians”. It recognises the importance of giving migrants the ability to set down roots and become Australian. One of the most corrosive ideas in immigration here and abroad has been the notion that a country is acting in its best interests when it treats migrants who want to stay as temporary, or guest workers. If decency doesn’t tell you people who spend their productive years in a country might find that they and their children have built a life there, not just a career, then international experience can.

Guest worker programs, like the Turkish workers Germany brought in after WWII to rebuild bombed out cities, lead to parallel societies. The children of the guest workers still wanted to stay, but spoke poor German and felt no sense of belonging. Guests don’t, to return to the housing shortage, build new accommodation for themselves and their kin. Terms like “assimilation” have gone out of style, but the review emphasises the importance of “democratic resilience and social cohesion” – a nation in which nationality is a bond is stronger and happier.