The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, is currently visiting Australia. His position overseeing refugee issues and debates at a global level makes him well qualified to make his assessment that “When things go wrong in a country, there are two potential targets. One is the government, the other is the foreigners.”
Governments naturally try to shift any blame for economic, social or environmental problems onto others, and people from migrant backgrounds can provide a tempting option. Standing up against veiled and not so veiled attacks on migration, migrants and refugees – rather than encouraging them – will be a big test of leadership for governments around the world.
A good sign in the Australian context is the indication that “Australia’s humanitarian intake is expected to rise by 250 people to 13,750 in 2009-10.” A small rise, but in the context of the comment by Mr Guterres, a very welcome one.
The Australian Election Study at ANU, which tracks trends in public opinion from election to election, showed that the number of people who believe the old propaganda line that “migrants take jobs away from people who are born in Australia” dropped below 30 per cent in 2007. It also showed that a majority of people supported either increasing immigration levels or keeping it the same, even though migration was then at record levels. A lesser recognised fact is that emigration – people leaving Australia long-term or permanently – has also been at record levels.
As skilled and business migration is demand driven, there will automatically be a reduction in numbers in this area, particularly in the long-term temporary visa category, as a result of reduced employment opportunities. The criteria for visas in this area are set by government to reflect the expected market situation.
The economic downturn has already led to calls for huge cutbacks in immigration – mostly from the same people who always make this call. Australia’s Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, has so far resisted these calls. But deliberately seeking to restrict migration beyond this point will cause further economic damage. There is a widespread recognition that retreating into protectionism is likely to compound the current economic difficulties, and slashing immigration for protectionist reasons is no different.
Senator Evans, has also repeated his intention to look at bringing in formal processes to enable people to claim what is known as complementary protection – that is people who are threatened with torture or death in their homelands but do not fall under the narrow definition of “refugee”. There is already an informal – and extremely inefficient and erratic – system in place which allows people to ask the Minister to personally intervene to grant protection. Changing the Migration Act to provide formal recognition of complementary protection will ensure consistency and much quicker decision making, but it will also opens up the risk of attacks being made falsely alleging that it will risk ‘opening the floodgates’ and the like.
