Immigration policies (as distinct from political refugee policies) must always be in our national interest and accordingly must be aligned with our needs as a country and our capacity to accommodate them.
The question of what is in our national interest, requires an understanding of our current needs as a nation, what the future holds for us and what we’ll need to thrive in that environment.
Who do we want that will improve our lives – be a net positive contribution to human flourishing here in Australia? For example, if we are concerned about our low birth rate, do we want young working age men and women as immigrants. If the future is likely to be one of high Ai and humanoid robotic use, do we need to reduce the size of our population – because there may not be enough employment opportunities for everyone? Do we want young entrepreneurial people who can take advantage of the opportunities Ai and humanoid robotics will present?
What we don’t need are political parties targeting those who are more likely to support them at the voting booth. Nor do we need immigrants to increase the customer base for large corporates (banks and supermarkets), making it far easier for their senior executives to collect handsome salaries and performance bonuses. We also don’t need more immigrants attracted by our generous social security.
In grappling with this issue of immigration, it is important that we (as a nation) are cognisant of ideological blinders. Immigration may have been beneficial in our country’s past, but it doesn’t transpose that it will in the future and nor does it transpose that high levels of immigration will be beneficial because some immigration was beneficial. Also, beneficial immigration from one part of the world does not mean that immigration from other parts of the world will also be positive.
It is also wrong to “Refuse entry to migrants from nations known to foster extremist ideologies that are incompatible with Australian values and way of life”. Just as not everyone in Australia supports our current Labor government, many people living in countries whose government have extremist views, don’t support their government and don’t hold similar extremist views or share similar extremist ideologies. Some may even be seeking refuge from such regimes. That recognised, it is also wrong to “ignore the elephant in the room” – that is that some immigrants have posed and still are posing a threat to our wellbeing. ASIO has for example stated that it has 18,000 people on its terror watch list. If that figure is even remotely accurate, our governments have failed abysmally in their core function of keeping us safe.
A CLA government will have a low tolerance of those who wish us harm, are a threat to our safety or our way of life or our values. CLA will refuse them entry and will cancel any (temporary or permanent) residency visas they hold. The same will apply to those who commit serious crimes – their visas will be cancelled after spending considerable time in jail.
A migrant’s eligibility to citizenship under an CLA government will include a minimum of 10 years (lawful) residency and include a commitment to adhere to our laws and values. Under CLA, eligibility for social welfare and NDIS will be restricted to citizens.
Given the rapid development of Ai and humanoid robotics and the staggering amounts of money being spent on their development, our future could be very different to our past and our current position. We could be faced with mass unemployment – in both the white- and blue-collar workforce, with white-collar jobs lost to Ai and blue-collar to humanoid robots. So, we don’t need hundreds of thousands of new prospective employees or even tens of thousands of them.
We as a nation do however need to be proactive in retaining and attracting entrepreneurs who are intent on establishing businesses that will create more job opportunities for us and (through Ai and humanoid robotics) either significantly reduce the cost of the products we need or significantly improve their quality. The more of those people, those entrepreneurs, we can attract to our shores the better for us – and no immigration threshold should prevent them setting up businesses on our shores.