Migrants Are Among The Worst Hit By COVID-19 In Saudi Arabia And Gulf Countries

2020/05/07 Leave a comment

No surprise. As migrant labour everywhere:

The Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia are struggling to contain the COVID-19 outbreak among migrant worker populations on whose labor the countries rely.

Even amid stringent lockdowns, the disease has continued to spread through migrant communities, with many workers living in cramped labor camps, where they share bunk beds in tightly packed rooms.

In Saudi Arabia, non-Saudi residents comprised 76% of the more than 3,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases this week, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

Official figures in Gulf countries, where more than half of the population are foreigners, also suggest the disease is spreading fastest through migrant communities.

“This is not surprising,” said Ryszard Cholewinski, a senior migration specialist with the International Labor Organization. “You’ve got the perfect storm, where migrants live and work in conditions that are more conducive to the spread of COVID-19.”

These oil-rich countries have long attracted migrants from Southeast Asia and Africa who help in sectors including construction and energy. Some 35 million foreign migrants live in the countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as in Jordan and Lebanon, according to the United Nations labor agency.

Qatar is relying on migrant labor to help construct a gleaming stadium and other facilities for the 2022 World Cup. Rights groups say the workers’ living area compound in Doha has poor toilet facilities, little access to running water and cramped dormitories.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Qatari government locked down parts of the compound, announced it would provide better sanitation and limit the number of people sleeping together to four per room.

Bahrain is reportedly using schools as extra housing to separate workers. Charities in the United Arab Emirates say they are seeking out empty buildings where migrants can isolate. Kuwait’s government granted amnesty and resettlement funds for undocumented immigrants in the country.

Gulf governments and Saudi Arabia have also said they are providing free COVID-19 testing and treatment for foreign workers.

But Cholewinski said some migrant workers, especially those whose residency papers may have expired, may not be using this service because “they fear arrest and deportation, even if the stated objective is not to do that.”

Source: Migrants Are Among The Worst Hit By COVID-19 In Saudi Arabia And Gulf Countries

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Denmark’s immigration ministry declares it ‘wonderful’ more migrants left than entered in 2019

2020/05/06 Leave a comment

Danish candour. Almost Trumpian:

Denmark’s immigration ministry says more migrants left Denmark in 2019 than entered, with the minister in charge of the matter calling the official figures ‘wonderful’.

It was the first time since 2011 that net migration – the difference between immigration and emigration – was negative.

Mattias Tesfaye said: ‘Whenever possible, it is only natural for refugees to travel back to their homeland. I am glad that we can give people protection while it is needed. But I’m also happy every time a refugee can return home’.

Net immigration to Denmark has been falling since 2015. Last year, a net 730 people left the Scandinavian country of 5.8 million.

The figures released by the Immigration Ministry showed that the main groups of people who left last year were Somalis, Syrians, Iraqis and Bosnians – while people from Eritrea, Iran and Afghanistan sought shelter in the country.

Eva Singer of the Danish Refugee Council, a nongovernmental organisation, said the drop should not be attributed to Danish immigration policy but to the fact that fewer people have been able to reach Denmark, in part because of Turkey closing its border to the European Union.

Denmark in recent times has grabbed international attention for its strict stand toward immigrants.

The current Social Democratic minority government has taken a softer, albeit tough stance than the previous centre-right government that had the parliamentary support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (their leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl is pictured)

The current Social Democratic minority government has taken a softer, albeit tough stance than the previous centre-right government that had the parliamentary support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party.

Across Europe, the surge of more than million refugees and economic migrants that arrived in 2015 prompted a populist backlash that gave a huge boost to anti-migrant parties and drained votes from mainstream parties, particularly left-wing parties with welcoming migration policies.

Many newcomers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East headed to wealthy nations in northern Europe with generous taxpayer-supported welfare systems.

Thousands transited via Denmark to reach neighbouring Sweden, which took in 163,000 migrants that year alone – the largest number per capita of anywhere in Europe.

Source: Denmark’s immigration ministry declares it ‘wonderful’ more migrants left than entered in 2019

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Omidvar: Will Canada be as open to immigrants after COVID-19?

2020/05/05 Leave a comment

Canada will need to have a healthy debate on how fast and how quickly to resume the current immigration levels plan as we ease out of the pandemic.

Given the economic impact, it is likely that some trimming of projected levels will be required over the next few years before resuming steady annual increases.

And as I have argued before, plans need to start factoring anticipated effects of AI and automation and, equally important, consider the lessons being learned about the importance of lower-skilled but essential workers.

Going back to “business as usual” would be unrealistic as well as a missed opportunity to rethink some of the current immigration assumptions.

And the issue is not “open or closed” options but rather the degree of openness:

As Canadians continue to battle COVID-19 by staying in their homes or working on the front lines in the hospitals and clinics, my thoughts turn to a hopeful end of the crisis and a return to normalcy. But the new normal may well be different from the old.

For most of its history, Canada has been an open country. We welcome immigrants at one of the highest rates in the world and despite many challenges, we do a good job of helping newcomers be part of Canadian society. We invest in integration at all three levels of government, and the high-touch system generally delivers the policy objectives of the government of the day. We know that newcomers’ success leads to collective success economically and socially.

But will “open Canada” still exist once the crisis is averted and the borders are reopened? That is a choice we as a nation will have to make.

Certainly this question will be a big one for Canadians and for governments to grapple with. The uproar over medical supplies we sent to China (which has since been repaid by the Chinese government) might be indicative of a “battening down the hatches” mentality. Many will want to keep our borders closed or extremely tightened as US President Trump did recently, temporarily banning immigration to the US. They will argue that the spread of pandemics has roots in the movement of people. Travel will become more restricted, health screenings will be enhanced and there will be a growing push to limit newcomers out of fear of spreading disease.

As someone who was an immigrant, and has worked on immigration issues my entire adult life, I am worried this perspective will prevail. I can understand if it does. But can we afford less immigration?

Before the pandemic, most of the economic models said that Canada needs large numbers of newcomers to help deal with an aging population. Let me make this real for you. In the 1970s, there were roughly 13 seniors per 100 working age people, according to the Century Initiative. But by 2036, there will be close to 40 seniors per 100 workers. Our birth rate is simply not high enough to meet that demand. Many have said we will need workers at all ends of the spectrum – from scientists and professors, to trade workers and caregivers. Immigration and immigrants will need to continue to be part of the solution for Canada to thrive, grow and prosper.

On top of that demographic problem, all Canadian governments, municipalities, provinces and the federal government, are spending billions of dollars to help people struggling with job loss, to help charities provide much needed services on the front lines and support businesses that have limited or no demand for their services. Depending on how long the COVID crisis lasts, we could add over $100 billion to the national debt. How are we going to pay for that down the line? One way would be to continue to welcome newcomers so we can expand our economy to pay our debt, fill essential jobs and generate a constantly growing tax base to pay for our severely stressed social programs.

The pandemic also shows that coordinated global action is needed more than ever. Yes, countries should focus on their own people during this time of crisis, but what is becoming painfully clear is that we need a united global response. What affects one country will affect another. We need global action to deal with such large and ever present threats to humanity. No system of closed borders will stop the spread of viruses like this one. We need international cooperation and international preparedness to truly deal with the next pandemic. It is not whether this will happen again but when. We need to be prepared.

But these arguments are tough to accept when fear is ever present. This pandemic will change the national psyche, and how we respond is an open ended question. We will have a choice to make. Open or closed? This will be the defining issue of our time.

Source: Will Canada be as open to immigrants after COVID-19?

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Singapore Was A Shining Star In COVID-19 Control — Until It Wasn’t

2020/05/05 Leave a comment

Another example how socioeconomic and immigrant status affects COVID-19 infection rates:

Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, Singapore was praised as a shining example of how to handle the new virus. The World Health Organization pointed out that Singapore’s aggressive contact tracing allowed the city-state to quickly identify and isolate any new cases. It quickly shut down clusters of cases and kept most of its economy — and its schools — open. Through the beginning of April, Singapore had recorded fewer than 600 cases.

By the end of April, however, the case count exceeded 17,000. And not only is all of Singapore now under a strict lockdown, but it has the most coronavirus cases in Southeast Asia.

The vast majority of these cases are in the overcrowded dormitories that house more than 300,000 of Singapore’s roughly 1 million foreign workers — and the number of cases is expected to continue to rise in the coming weeks.

“We have started our testing with the dormitories where there were a high number of cases detected,” Singapore’s health minister, Gan Kim Yong, said in a virtual press briefing this week.

Singapore ordered a lockdown on April 7 in response to an uptick in cases in the general population — and then began to find a significant number of cases in the dorms.

Gan says Singapore is now testing more than 3,000 migrant workers a day but hopes to expand that number. The virus is spreading so rapidly in the dormitories, however, that the Health Ministry hasn’t been able to test all of the suspected cases.

“For dormitories where the assessed risk of infection is extremely high, our efforts are focused on isolating those who are symptomatic even without a confirmed COVID-19 test,” Gan says. “This allows us to quickly provide medical care to these patients.”

Singapore is a small city-state with a population of just under 6 million inhabitants. On a per capita basis, it’s the second-richest country in Asia.

But its economy relies heavily on young men from Bangladesh, India and other countries who work jobs in construction and manufacturing. Singapore has no minimum wage for foreign or domestic employees. The foreign workers’ salaries can be as low as US$250 per month, but a typical salary is $500 to $600 a month.

Speaking to the media, Gan credited extensive screening in the dorms with finding many workers who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but who didn’t appear sick.

“So far, the majority of the cases here have had relatively mild disease or no symptoms. And they do not require extensive medical intervention,” Gan said. “About 30% require closer medical observation due to the underlying health conditions or because of old age.”

As of this week, only a handful of the migrant workers — fewer than two dozen — were in intensive care units.

The city-state is setting up thousands of what it calls “community care beds” in convention centers and other public buildings to isolate and treat coronavirus patients. The hope is that most of the cases can be managed by medical staff in these temporary wards, rather than in hospitals. So far the city has 10,000 community care beds and plans to expand to 20,000 by mid-June.

It’s no surprise that the migrant workers are now being infected, says Mohan Dutta, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand who has done research on these migrant laborers. He says conditions in the dorms put the workers at significant risk of catching a respiratory disease like COVID-19. There are 12 to 20 bunk beds per room.

And even though some of the workers are deemed “essential,” most are no longer allowed to leave the dormitories. “There is little room to move around. They have little room to store their things, which really contributes to this sense of the rooms being unhygienic,” says Dutta.

Dutta, who founded CARE, the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, at the National University of Singapore in 2012, with a focus on marginalized communities, has just published a paper on migrant workers in Singapore during this pandemic.

He says many of them told him they are concerned about whether they’ll get paid during the lockdown (Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower insists they will) and about the overcrowding and lack of sanitation facilities in the dormitories.

Dutta says that in many dormitories, 100 workers share a block of five toilets and five shower stalls.

“There is this sense of panic and fear, and part of that is related to this sense of not being able to move outside of the room,” he says. “Everyone is pretty much stuck in the room at such close proximity.”

Singapore’s Health Ministry has moved aggressively to try to address the coronavirus outbreaks in the housing blocks. The government is trying to find alternative accommodations for people in the hardest-hit dorms, but Dutta says it’s impossible to come up with safe, short-term lodging for more than 300,000 workers.

But he does believe there could be long-term changes that would help the workers. And Dutta hopes this outbreak will force Singapore to examine how it treats this often overlooked population, bringing major changes in how foreign workers are housed and treated.

Meanwhile, the explosion of cases in Singapore over the last three weeks has remained primarily among foreign workers. For example, on May 1 there were 11 new cases reported among Singapore’s permanent residents and 905 new infections among the workers residing in the dorms.

Michael Merson, the head of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute in Singapore, says it’s unlikely the outbreaks in the dormitories will spill over to the rest of the city.

“There’s very little mixing between the foreign workers and the rest of the population,” Merson says. He’s confident that Singapore’s health officials will be able to isolate the infected workers and give them, in his words, “the best medical care possible.”

Nonetheless, the Singaporean government has extended the lockdown for the entire city-state until at least June 1.

Source: Singapore Was A Shining Star In COVID-19 Control — Until It Wasn’t

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Canadians with foreign national spouses face obstacles at border

2020/05/05 Leave a comment

Seems a bit pig-headed and contrary to the intent of the measures:

When Canada closed its border mid-March due to the pandemic, John Alan Aucoin and other Canadians were unequivocally assured their spouses from abroad would be allowed into the country despite the travel bans.

Little did they know it would come with a catch. Canada Border Services Agency actually had its own rules when applying the government order.

Aucoin didn’t expect his American wife, Adrienne Berg Yorinks, to have trouble coming home to Cape Breton. The couple’s only concern returning from Florida was being able to drive through Maine and New York with those states in lockdown.

But like many foreigner nationals married to Canadians but yet to become permanent residents, Yorinks was refused entry at the border. The couple have been separated for weeks now, one in Florida, the other in Nova Scotia, not knowing when the border will reopen.

“Adrienne was not on a shopping trip. It was not an optional travel. She’s travelling to our primary home with me, a Canadian,” said Aucoin, who met his now wife in 2014. They wed in 2018.

“The fact is Canadian families are being separated notwithstanding of our prime minister’s assertions.”

On March 16, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the border would be closed to non-Canadians, he made exceptions for immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. The travel ban, as stated in the government’s orders, was to curtail the spread of COVID-19.

However, since April, a growing number of foreign spouses and children of Canadians have been refused admission into Canada because their travels are deemed “non-essential and optional” by Canadian border agents at airports and land border crossings, said lawyers.

“The Order-in-Council is very clear that immediate family members of a Canadian citizen or permanent resident are exempted from the travel restrictions,” said Barbara Jo Caruso, a former chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration division.

“It appeared the border was open for a period of time, and then they started tightening it in early April. And now nobody gets in except if (the travel) is of essential nature.”

On Good Friday, after being on the road for hours driving back from Juno Beach, Fla., Aucoin, a retired lawyer, and Yorinks, an artist and author, arrived at the border crossing between Calais, Maine and Saint Stephen, N.B. at 5:30 a.m. A border agent refused to let Yorinks in because her travel was deemed non-essential.

When the couple returned to the United States border entry, American officials refused to let Aucoin in because Washington’s COVID-19 travel ban doesn’t have provisions to exempt foreign spouses accompanying Americans.

“It’s been a roller-coaster for us, and we have tried to keep our spirits up,” said Aucoin, who had consulted a lawyer, obtained a notarized statement from the Justice of Peace who married them in Cape Breton and drafted a quarantine plan upon arrival. Yorinks ended up having to drive home to their winter home in Florida by herself.

Immigration lawyer Rafeena Rashid, who used to represent the federal Justice Department and now has her own practice, said her clients — a British and Canadian couple — boarded a government repatriation flight to Toronto Pearson airport April 13 after Global Affairs Canada cleared them.

However, the border agency seized the British husband’s passport and sent him back to the U.K. the next day. The couple are still separated.

“It is very clear that one thing is said to the public while something else is done behind the scenes by CBSA,” said Rashid. “CBSA absolutely has no oversight. Zero. Who’s CBSA to come up with its own criteria that’s not based on the law?”

In response to the Star’s inquiry, the border agency referred to a provision in the government’s COVID travel orders that says: A foreign national, including a Canadian’s immediate family member, is banned from entry if they seek to enter for an optional or discretionary purpose, such as tourism, recreation or entertainment.

However, an internal instruction for front-line border agents obtained by the Star revealed that Canada Border Services Agency actually has set criteria beyond that.

The guidelines include, among other criteria, a ban against a “foreign national coming to Canada to temporarily reside with spouse or immediate family during the pandemic.”

The immigration department last week also posted on its website examples of what are deemed discretionary: visit family on vacation; spend time at a secondary residence; attend a funeral; and birth of a grandchild.

What is not discretionary, it says, is for people to spend the pandemic period with their Canadian family member to ensure each other’s health, safety and well-being. “It would be beneficial to all parties, as the reunification of family members is a key point of the Order in Council,” it notes. “This allows for families to be together during this difficult time.”

Lawyers said the border agency’s own rules go against the spirit of the government order.

“There’s a consistent reference to essential travels, and they don’t see keeping a family together in crisis as essential,” said lawyer Erin Simpson, who has filed a court challenge against a border agency decision to deny one of her client’s entry to Canada.

Nadia Drost of Toronto said her Italian journalist husband, Bruno Federico, was denied entry at Pearson airport on April 22 and sent back to New York City, where he had travelled for an assignment for a documentary about COVID-19. The two had already booked an Airbnb for his 14-day quarantine.

“It’s wrong that border officers are following secret guidelines that are different from what the public is privy to,” said the 42-year-old Toronto woman, also a journalist. “We need oversight of CBSA in the way they interpret the government order. They’ve got to square up.”

Source: Canadians with foreign national spouses face obstacles at border

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Before Covid-19, Trump Aide Sought to Use Disease to Close Borders

2020/05/05 Leave a comment

Stephen Miller’s zealotry is impressive and depressing on a whole range of immigration issues, with this showing the depth of his anti-immigration ideology:

From the early days of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller, the president’s chief adviser on immigration, has repeatedly tried to use an obscure law designed to protect the nation from diseases overseas as a way to tighten the borders.

The question was, which disease?

Mr. Miller pushed for invoking the president’s broad public health powers in 2019, when an outbreak of mumps spread through immigration detention facilities in six states. He tried again that year when Border Patrol stations were hit with the flu.

When vast caravans of migrants surged toward the border in 2018, Mr. Miller looked for evidence that they carried illnesses. He asked for updates on American communities that received migrants to see if new disease was spreading there.

In 2018, dozens of migrants became seriously ill in federal custody, and two under the age of 10 died within three weeks of each other. While many viewed the incidents as resulting from negligence on the part of the border authorities, Mr. Miller instead argued that they supported his argument that President Trump should use his public health powers to justify sealing the borders.

On some occasions, Mr. Miller and the president, who also embraced these ideas, were talked down by cabinet secretaries and lawyers who argued that the public health situation at the time did not provide sufficient legal basis for such a proclamation.

That changed with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic.

Within days of the confirmation of the first case in the United States, the White House shut American land borders to nonessential travel, closing the door to almost all migrants, including children and teenagers who arrived at the border with no parent or other adult guardian. Other international travel restrictions were introduced, as well as a pause on green card processing at American consular offices, which Mr. Miller told conservative allies in a recent private phone call was only the first step in a broader plan to restrict legal immigration.

But what has been billed by the White House as an urgent response to the coronavirus pandemic was in large part repurposed from old draft executive orders and policy discussions that have taken place repeatedly since Mr. Trump took office and have now gained new legitimacy, three former officials who were involved in the earlier deliberations said.

One official said the ideas about invoking public health and other emergency powers had been on a “wish list” of about 50 ideas to curtail immigration that Mr. Miller crafted within the first six months of the administration.

He had come up with the proposals, the official said, by poring through not just existing immigration laws, but the entire federal code to look for provisions that would allow the president to halt the flow of migrants into the United States.

Administration officials have repeatedly said the latest measures are needed to prevent new cases of infection from entering the country.

“This is a public health order that we’re operating under right now,” Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters earlier this month. “This is not about immigration. What’s transpiring right now is purely about infectious disease and public health.”

The White House declined to comment on the matter, but a senior administration official confirmed details of the past discussions.

The architect of the president’s assault on immigration and one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers inside the White House, Mr. Miller has relentlessly pushed for tough restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, including policies that sought to separate families crossing the southwest border, force migrants seeking asylum to wait in squalid camps in Mexico and deny green cards to poor immigrants.

Mr. Miller argues that reducing immigration will protect jobs for American workers and keep communities safe from criminals. But critics accuse him of targeting nonwhite immigrants, pointing in part to leaked emails from his time before entering the White House in which he cited white nationalist websites and magazines and promoted theories popular with white nationalist groups.

The idea that immigrants carry infections into the country echoes a racist notion with a long history in the United States that associates minorities with disease.

The federal law on public health that Mr. Miller has long wanted to use grants power to the surgeon general and president to block people from entering the United States when it is necessary to avert a “serious danger” posed by the presence of a communicable disease in foreign countries.

The administration in adopting the latest restrictions on immigration has relied not only on that public health authority, but also on another provision of federal law that allows the president to deny entry to foreigners whose presence “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The provision, section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, grants broad power to the president, but sets a high legal bar for its use. The Reagan administration invoked it to block large numbers of Haitians traveling by sea to seek asylum in the United States, and during the Obama administration, it was used to enforce sanctions against Iran.

The Trump administration has made use of the authority on occasion, including the sanctions imposed on Iran and a travel bandirected at six predominantly Muslim countries in 2017 as a purported defense against terrorism. But the president has often expressed frustration at being discouraged from using the authority more often and in policies that are more sweeping in scope, including when record numbers of migrant families surged across the southern border.

He seemed to discount the stringent standards required to invoke it, often referring to it as his “magical authority” to restrict immigration, one of the former officials who was present for the discussions said.

Mr. Miller also frequently expressed interest in using the 212(f) authority. On more than one occasion, the official said, he discussed it as a backup option in case the courts blocked a policy such as the administration’s public charge rule, which prevents people who have used public benefits from obtaining green cards.

The use of section 212(f) and the public health authority during the pandemic is in keeping with a defining characteristic of Mr. Miller, as described by the three former officials who worked in proximity to him: His refusal to let things go. When advised that a proposed policy is not legal, they said, he works steadily to find an alternative justification and continues to raise the issue.

The former officials who were present for the discussions said Mr. Miller suggested using the president’s public health authority to seal the border so frequently that it was difficult to recall specific scenarios.

In repeated meetings in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room and during late-night phone diatribes that gave few opportunities for his colleagues to chime in, they said, Mr. Miller pushed the idea as a legal silver bullet.

He and others in the administration frequently talked about migrants as potential vectors of disease, they said. Mr. Miller cited historical precedent for invoking the president’s public health powers, pointing out that many immigrants were refused entry at Ellis Island in the late 19th century amid concerns that contagious diseases could be brought in to overcrowded cities.

During the mumps outbreak in 2019, after other White House advisers disagreed with the use of the public health authority to halt immigration, Mr. Miller ordered federal immigration officials to begin generating reports on the level of infection among detained migrants for White House review.

In the meantime, he encouraged the State Department to step up medical screenings of migrants, and crafted a presidential proclamation barring entry for immigrants who could not afford to purchase health insurance, a measure that was blocked by a federal judge.

The coronavirus pandemic has created an opening for some of Mr. Miller’s other longstanding policy goals, such as finding a way to quickly deport children who travel to the United States without a parent or other adult. Mr. Miller considered that category of migrants among the most difficult to stop, said one official who had discussed it with him, because the young people are protected legally by substantial due process requirements designed to ensure that deportation would not place them in harm’s way.

Since border crossings were scaled back under the coronavirus restrictions, even unaccompanied children and teenagers have been turned away.

While the administration succeeded in invoking the public health authority to impose the new border restrictions, that is only one of a number of aggressive legal strategies Mr. Miller has proposed, some of which have not been adopted.

At one point in the first year of the administration, Mr. Miller proposed designating smugglers, who are often paid to help migrants across the rugged and cartel-controlled terrain of the southwest border, as terrorists, one of the former officials said. Mr. Miller, the official said, argued that this would allow U.S. authorities to deny entry to asylum seekers on the grounds that they had aided a foreign terrorist organization during their journeys.

Mr. Miller has also drawn up plans to expand security on the southern border.

Over the years, some national guard and military officers have been deployed there, but they have been relegated mostly to stringing up concertina wire because of legal restrictions on their ability to operate in the United States.

To overcome those hurdles, Mr. Miller has proposed invoking the Insurrection Act, a law written in the 1800s, that allows for the military to be deployed in the face of civil unrest. Under that law, he said, military officers would gain the authority to prevent migrants from crossing the border.

The law has not yet been invoked.

Source: Before Covid-19, Trump Aide Sought to Use Disease to Close BordersStephen Miller, President Trump’s immigration adviser, has long tried to use public health to halt migration. The virus gave him an opening.

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Australia’s dependence on immigration faces its biggest economic test

2020/05/04 Leave a comment

Canada will face a similar test with respect to its multi-immigration plan that planned on 340,000 new permanent residents in 2020 and further annual increases in subsequent years, with immigration being responsible for virtually all population growth and thus a major contributor to economic growth:

Australia’s dependence on immigration to grow the economy is about to be sorely tested.

One of the secret ingredients to Australia’s unparalleled run of economic growth since the country’s last recession has been strong population growth.

While local mums have played their part in swelling the number of locals, the heavy lifting has been done by people from nations such as China, India, Britain, New Zealand and the Philippines who have decided to call Australia home.

Over the past decade, the nation’s permanent population has grown by 3.7 million to more than 25 million. Of that increase, 60 per cent was due to net migration.

That extra 2.2 million people have been an economic powerhouse, requiring homes, cars, food and every day goods and services while also contributing fresh skills to the jobs market.

But it has come at a price, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. Be it via higher house prices or over-crowded schools, all levels of government have struggled to keep up with the demands of a growing population while reaping the economic benefits of that population.

The Morrison government made much of its decision in last year’s budget to cap permanent migration at 160,000 for four consecutive years as dealing with the congestion pressures on our big cities.

That cap didn’t include the hundreds of thousands of temporary migrants – be it students or workers – who help run the economy and add to demand.

But with the borders shut, international students stuck in their home countries and immigration all-but impossible, the issues around migration and Australia’s dependence on it cannot be ignored.

The government is now expecting net overseas migration – which was forecast to reach 271,000 in 2019-20 – to be 30 per cent lower. Next year, the drop is tipped to be 85 per cent.

Combined, that’s close to 300,000 missing shoppers, students, family members and skilled workers from the economy.

With temporary workers leaving the country and others unable to get in, population growth is likely to stall. Sydney could shrink while Melbourne’s stellar growth of recent years will be muted, with serious economic repercussions.

Australia will, post-virus, remain a desirable destination for permanent migrants, temporary ones and international students.

The Morrison government’s economic rebuilding plan will have to include a discussion around the nation’s dependence of immigration.

Source: Australia’s dependence on immigration faces its biggest economic test

Internal debates in the Australian Labour Party:

Kristina Keneally’s call to give Australians “first go” at jobs by cutting temporary migration has won cautious support from unions but divided Labor MPs who are worried the home affairs spokeswoman was freelancing with policy aimed at more conservative voters.

Several of Senator Keneally’s colleagues privately voiced frustrations on Sunday about her decision to write an opinion piece arguing against the “lazy approach” used by governments to prop up economic growth through immigration and suggested that the overall migrant intake could be less under Labor. Other MPs publicly defended Senator Keneally, arguing that Australia’s use of temporary migrants was a debate that needed to happen as the nation recovered from the coronavirus crisis.

In an opinion piece for The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age on Sunday, Senator Keneally said Australian workers must “get a fair go and a first go at jobs”, and the country had an unprecedented chance to overhaul the immigration system, particularly the temporary worker intake which was not capped. It was not the first time Senator Keneally has called for the government to look at temporary migration, but it was her strongest suggestion yet that the overall number of migrants would be lower under Labor.

“The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this: when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis? Our answer should be no,” she wrote.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said on Twitter that too many employers had used the temporary visa system to avoid hiring local workers and were exploiting people whose visa status and security depended on their employer. Ms McManus argued this had led to systematic wage theft. Victorian Labor MP Ged Kearney, former president of the ACTU, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age she welcomed the debate on whether to overhaul the immigration system.

“I think we really do need to have the conversation and get the balance right – and it may need to be a lower overall intake, but the focus should be on temporary migration and increasing permanent migration,” she said.

Immigration is a vexed issue for Labor with the party occasionally being accused of over-compensating in response to Coalition attack campaigns over border security. Bill Shorten, when he was leader in 2016, caused controversy with an “Australia First” television advertisement which featured almost all white people and pledged that Labor would “build Australian first, buy Australian first and employ Australians first”.

Multiple senior Labor sources confirmed the issue of whether to restart a debate on the size and composition of Australia’s immigration program had been discussed at shadow cabinet level but no decision had been made on a change of policy. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese did not respond to a request for comment.

“This is still just Kristina’s view at this stage, not the party’s,” one shadow cabinet source said.

Senator Keneally, who emigrated to Australia from the US, also caused frustration among senior Labor MPs because they were blindsided by her opinion piece. It wasn’t featured in the original talking points circulated by Mr Albanese’s office to MPs on Sunday morning. A second round of talking points – the party’s message on the topical issues of the day – was sent out later in the day which included Labor’s position on immigration.

One Labor MP from the Left faction, which tends to support a more-open approach to migrants and refugees, said they were concerned about being accused of “dog-whistling”.

“We don’t have a problem with the call to look at temporary migration, but we don’t have to sound like Peter Dutton while doing it,” he said.

Another Labor MP said: “This is a very sensitive issue. The ALP has torn itself apart over this issue in the past. This is an issue that needs to be handled very sensitively.”

Labor’s education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, said immigration was an important part of Australia’s multicultural make-up, but Labor’s view had always been that the number and composition of the intake should be in the national interest.

“Immigration is a really important part of our economic success story. One of the reasons the Australian economy has been growing at all, frankly, in recent times is because of strong immigration numbers,” she said.

Victorian Labor MP Julian Hill said the COVID-19 crisis had exposed the Morrison government’s failure in migration policy, “and in particular the massive explosion in temporary migration”.

“Morrison has tried an enormous con job trumpeting a fake cut to migration, which is really just sleight of hand cutting valuable permanent migration while lower skilled permanent migration explodes,” he said.

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge accused Senator Keneally of not having a consistent position on temporary migrants.

“She wants to give temporary migrants welfare payments so they can stay in Australia, but now says she doesn’t want temporary migrants,” he said.

Senator Keneally said in her piece that although migration would be a key element to the way the Australian economy recovered from the pandemic, changes had to be made to the current system which had resulted in an over-reliance on temporary workers.

The setting of limits on the migrant intake may be moot point for years with Australia’s immigration to take a serious hit coming out of the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week revealed Australia’s net overseas migration numbers would drop by 85 per cent in the 2020-21 financial year, compared to 2018-19 numbers.

Source: Labor internal angst at Kristina Keneally’s call to lower immigration

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Coronavirus has halted immigration to Australia and that could have dire consequences for our economic recovery

2020/05/02 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to watch Canadian numbers and plans over the coming few years, although Canada, unlike Australia, had been planning annual increases:

Australia’s migration intake this year is expected to plummet due to coronavirus-induced travel restrictions and shutdowns, creating a raft of economic and social headaches set to prolong its recovery from the pandemic.

Australia’s immigration program has played a key role in nearly three decades of essentially uninterrupted economic growth.

Due to border closures around the world, the total number of migrants who will make Australia home this financial year, both temporary and permanent, will be far lower than it has been in a long time.

Nearly 300,000 temporary visa holders have left Australia since the start of the year according to the federal government and there are predictions the country will miss out on another 240,000 would-be migrants by the end of the year.

Researchers say that could cause a “demographic ripple effect” to last for some time because Australia will be relying heavily on migrants to rebuild once the pandemic has passed.

“We need immigration to survive this next stage of our future,” Australian National University demographer Liz Allen told SBS News.

“We have an ageing population with more people retiring from the workforce than people entering the workforce. That means we have fewer people contributing to our tax base, which pays for our vital services: our roads, our infrastructure, our hospitals, our schools – everything.

“Our migrant intake will help fill the gaps.”

Intake ‘lower than envisaged’

Australia’s 2019-20 permanent migration program will now fall well short of the cap of 160,000 places set by the federal government.

Projections by sharemarket broker CommSec suggest around 240,000 fewer people could migrate to Australia over the next 12 months.

A spokesperson for acting immigration minister Alan Tudge said while COVID-19 will clearly have an impact on the 2019-20 program, it was still too early to say what the final outcome would be.

“It will be lower than we envisaged given our borders are closed to all but Australian citizens and permanent residents,” the spokesperson said.

Permanent residency visa invitations have fallen dramatically in the past month, Department of Home Affairs data shows.

Just 50 invitations for skilled independent subclass 189 visas – which allow holders to live anywhere in Australia – were issued in April, compared to 1,750 in March.

Invitations for the subclass 491 visa, which requires migrants to live in regional Australia, fell from 300 to 50.

There were 2.43 million temporary migrants in Australia in December 2019, a number which according to the federal government fell to 2.17 million – a drop of 260,000 – in early April.

That number is expected to fall even further, with many temporary visa holders excluded from the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told them to instead return to their home countries if they were not able to support themselves in Australia.

With chief medical officer Brendan Murphy flagging last week that restrictions on international travel would not be lifted for at least three to four months, it could be at least that long until Australia starts welcoming migrants again.

University of Sydney migration expert Anna Boucher said the coronavirus crisis has laid bare how reliant Australia is on migrants, noting the 2019 federal budget papers showed the government’s much-touted surplus was predicated upon higher levels of net overseas migration.

“Without very high net overseas migration we would not have had a budget surplus,” associate professor Boucher said.

“There’s no way achieve that sort of net overseas migration this year with border closures and COVID-19.”

The pandemic-induced freeze on immigration comes after a record 298,200 migrants left Australia in the year to 30 June 2019 – seven months before Australia recorded its first coronavirus case on 25 January 2020.

Associate professor Boucher said the pandemic could trigger a rethink of how heavily Australia relies on its migrants to fill gaps in the workforce.

“We have caps on permanent migration, and they’ve become more stringent in recent years, but we don’t have caps on temporary migration. It’s possible in future years the government will look at that. A lot of it depends on how we redeploy Australians.”

“We are in competition with other countries for migration, so if other countries have closures for as long as we do and we are still seen as providing opportunities, we might be able to bounce back to pre-COVID-19 levels.”

Economy to bounce back slower

Economists say the drop in migration will have significant economic consequences for Australia’s coronavirus recovery.

Migrants are workers, taxpayers, consumers and big players in the housing market. Many economists believe they also play a role in driving long-term innovation and productivity.

Population growth and economic growth exist side-by-side and migrants have “historically played quite a big role” in both, Grattan Institute CEO John Daley said.

“Real economic growth in Australia over the last couple of years has been around 2 to 2.5 per cent. Of that, almost one per cent has simply been the effect of migration,” he said.

“Every year on average there’s one per cent more people born overseas living in Australia than there were last year, [causing] a one per cent increase in the total Australian population. When you have a one per cent increase in the population, you get a one per cent increase in GDP, more or less.

“In many quarters over the past couple of years Australia has had almost no economic growth apart from the growth in population, and of that growth, about two-thirds have been migrants.”

Mr Daley said economic recoveries were always slow and a shock “of this kind” means it’s likely to take the economy “several years” to completely bounce back.

“Absolutely that will be accentuated in Australia by the fact there will be fewer migrants,” he said.

Commsec senior economist Ryan Felsman said even just a 10 per cent reduction in overall migration numbers would remove a “significant tailwind” from the Australian economy.

“The longer our borders are closed, the more likely it is Australia will have a slower economic rebound than other countries,” Mr Felsman said.

Source: Coronavirus has halted immigration to Australia and that could have dire consequences for our economic recovery

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UK: The Guardian view on immigration and Covid-19: old myths are exposed

2020/05/01 Leave a comment

Good editorial:

Covid-19 has accomplished in weeks something that UK governments spent a decade failing to do. It has drastically cut labour migration. Lockdown prevents the gathering of real-time data, but it is a reasonable assumption when international travel has stopped that net migration is currently happening at a rate well below 100,000 per year.

That was the target adopted by David Cameron in 2010 and pursued aggressively by Theresa May at the Home Office and in Downing Street. It was never met before being abandoned last year. What happens next is uncertain. This week would have seen the government’s post-Brexit immigration bill return to the Commons, but the timetable has been discarded, not least because parliament’s digital systems are not yet ready for remote voting.

There is no indication that ministers are reconsidering the new regime, which is based on a points system designed to select “skilled” workers over “unskilled” labour. The distinction is meant to favour what ministers call “the best and brightest” while deterring those whom decades of political rhetoric have cast as undesirable. The charges against that latter group are various: poaching jobs from British-born citizens, depressing wages, failing to observe cultural norms and generally upsetting people with conspicuous otherness.

The vilification reached its apogee in the campaign to take Britain out of the EU. The promise to “take back control” of borders had strong emotional appeal, but was never rooted in the reality of modern Britain, where migrants of all skill levels and income brackets keep the economic and social wheels turning. That awkward fact was always bound to emerge over time, but it has been revealed abruptly by the pandemic.

Farmers are already warning that fruit will rot in the fields without seasonal labour normally provided by EU citizens. Attempts to entice UK workers to fill the gap are failing. Immigrants have kept public transport running, delivered goods and, most poignantly, kept the NHS and social care services operational. They have put their lives at risk for a country that has been, at best, ambivalent about their entitlement to live here at all.

Source: The Guardian view on immigration and Covid-19: old myths are exposed

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Australia’s coronavirus re-boot needs to consider population as well as the economy

2020/04/29 Leave a comment

Similar to some of the commentary in Canadian media, although Australia has had more restrictive immigration for a number of years:

We all know our coronavirus isolation has had a marked effect on our ability to produce GDP income and tax revenue, both so necessary for the proper running of our economy.

But it is also at times like this that we tend to forget that our greatest resource is not our significant mineral wealth or our world-class agricultural produce. It is our people.

And we are a migrant nation, built on the sweat and tears of many successful people, who, on the whole, maintain our exceptional standard of living with their hard work, good education and the burning aspiration of always wanting to do better.

But we are also an ageing country, with our largest demographic now approaching retirement and fewer people in the 20-60 demographic — the age group that produces the clear majority of tax revenue.

Population is on the decline

Last week Acting Minister for Immigration, Alan Tudge, confirmed what we knew to be true since the virus took hold — coronavirus is driving the biggest population decline in Australian history.

Since the beginning of the year, we have lost almost two years of population growth in just three months.

More than 300,000 tourists, students and itinerant workers have fled our shores in an exodus that is certain to deepen our consumer spending slump and put those industries who heavily rely on a migrant workforce.

Some are also predicting that a further 300,000 are set to leave before the end of the year — another blow to our GDP.

This severely impacts our country’s productive tax-generating capacity.

In times of crisis when public spending is at fever pitch, we need to be thinking about how we are going to foot the bill, to help expediate our recovery and get the economy working hard for us again.

How do we turn it around?

This is not a uniquely Australian problem, but a problem we share with many other developed economies including Japan, Britain and Germany.

So, what might be the remedies?

We could simply have more children.

In Australia, we are only averaging 1.7 children per couple, so we are not even replacing mum and dad. This is unlikely to change in the short to medium term.

We can also increase taxation on a smaller and smaller number of people, which is probably electorally unpalatable, not to mention the real possibility of reducing GDP and tax revenue as a result.

Or we can go into austerity and cut spending, also a hugely problematic solution socially and, quite possibly, financially.

Alternatively we can simply import more people in the productive cohort.

A young migrant who goes to school here for four years, then does the HSC, studies at our universities, gets a part time job, starts paying tax, then goes on to full employment some and stays in the tax base for over 40 years, is an ideal candidate.

At a time like this when our economic prosperity is so deeply threated by disease and debt, it might not be altogether intuitive, but it is indeed our best remedy to increase our intake of foreign students, agricultural, nursing and hospitality workers.

Migrants can help us rebuild

Each of these categories are vital to fill for our recovery and continued economic success.

We need the foreign students to rescue our top universities and as for the hundreds of jobs in hospitality, agriculture and nursing, well of course they should be available to our residents first.

But if 30 years of experience is anything to go by, these are not jobs that we have ever been able to fill locally.

And with the new infrastructure boom that will hopefully ensue following COVID-19, we will also need new migrant skills to assist our small but resourceful workforce in creating new economic growth, so vital in re-igniting our economy.

Australia, prior to COVID-19, had 29 years of continuous economic growth.

Perhaps with a bit of vision and new skill base, powered by local and migrant minds and hands, we can make it 30 years.

Source: Australia’s coronavirus re-boot needs to consider population as well as the economy

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