Send us your young..... rich.... intelligent....

I have thought about this long and hard, but the development that the Higher education system (including private universities) is being transformed into a vehicle for "filtered" immigration (see previous entry is one which we should be finding positives for. It has not happened by design, but I couldn't have thought of a better way to both have a large immigration intake and have it roughly filtered - by youth, finances and intelligence. If we take a holistic approach to the higher education system, rather than pigeonholing on what form a "good" university should take, the advantages of encouraging and utilising this trend should be obvious - especially to someone with a commitment to open borders.

I feel that there is only a few tweaks required, and the Higher education system can be a model of how immigration can be regulated such that it is fully funded, reasonably inclusive of the different source nations, and allows a good amount of time for the would be immigrant to be "tested" - with University exams and the whole Australian experience being a test as to whether they really want to stay here, and whether their peers who help them with their red tape etc. really want them to stay here.

Supporting one type of people smuggler whilst frowning on another

A few years back I read about an interesting idea to tackle people smugglers. Rather than deterrence, the idea was to actively compete with them for money from the type of potential migrant/refugee that would be tempted to pay a person smuggler. A new type of entry visa would be created (undocumented economic migrant?), and it would be an industry rather than an expense for the receiving country.

It appears that Australias foreign student intake see Article, is more about this burgeoning immigration industry than it is about the higher education industry, at least for Chinese and Indian potential immigrants. I am not sure what percentage students are of our current net migration intake, but it is a very high proportion.

Democracy - a counterexample

Back a few entries where I was discussing democracy, the general assumption is that many people who are able to independently check policy before voting on it will more likely get the right decision than a particular individual or expert could.

The corollary is that the more democracy and the more direct the democracy, the better general decisions will be made.

A counter-example to this corollary is immigration and trade policy. Democracies have a notorious habit of restricting immigration and trade when the economy deteriorates. Even though the concept is that as citizens, we have the right to make bad choices, and pay for them, democracies continue to make the wrong call due to the primacy of perception over facts in the political game. The causal relationship between restricting trade/immigration and a worsening economy is ignored over a very strong human instict to blame externalities over any systemic internal cause.

Thus people continue to promote fallacies such as "reducing immigration helps our unemployment rate" and "restricting imports helps our unemployment rate".

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe democratic countries will leave tariffs and immigration quotas untouched, while autocratic countries will clamp down on trade/immigration during the current downturn. I would be surprised.

Economist.comments.marcoparigi

Still doing more Comments on Economist.com than my usual blog sphere of reading.

Subjects of interest include:

China
Iraq
green taxes
superannuation
oil
carbon footprint
Australian immigration/guest workers

Immigration Model

The immigration quota system in Australia is like a control valve. I have been violently against import quotas for goods because of the highly impractical nature of doing that and the pointlessness. However with permanent migrants, it is a form of population growth planning which if not completely admirable, does help stability. Opening the valve to double the flow will still be controlled and very desirable.

Increase Refugee and Immigrant quotas!

The 2006/07 migration program has 144,000 regular migrants and 13,000 humanitarian migrants - both rates are at record high levels - much higher than under Labor. Is it wrong to want people with skills who will make good citizens?

This rate might seem high, but Australia has a capacity for it to be much higher(1). Talk of skills and citizenship potential is a pointless diversion. Migrants and refugees select themselves quite well. Refugees from anywhere are often skilled. What is the point of a trained accountant when he becomes dispossessed because of war? Let more refugees in and let our flexible job market (and world best help programs here) sort it out. Labour moves to where it is needed in Australia, and short-term training fills many skills gaps quite nicely. It is pointless to dwell on importing skills of which there is a world-wide shortage. Rely on the flexibility and mobility of labour here to do the best we can with what we have got (and are getting). More important than new entrants showing citizenship skills, is Australia demonstrating that it is an excellent world citizen. Increasing refugee intake is a win-win in this case. Refugees bring a range of (fairly random) skill-sets which are lapped up by the businesses that require that - even if what is required is keen unskilled workers. It is the less keen that are unemployed in Australia. At the same time, on the international stage, we are shown to be model world citizens if we are progressive and generous in our quota of refugees.

(1) It appears 144k is about 10% more than the previous year. 13k refugees is about 20-30% increase. These increases were made quietly and in a bipartisan fashion. No attempt by either party has been made to advertise or attack this gradual policy shift. The public only needs to continue to give "permission" to the governments to increase these quotas, such as not to tempt them to partisanise the issue.