There has never been a debate on immigration. Politicians just do as they please, and keep filling the country with unnecessary, unsuitable people. Half a million of them this year! Plus 650,000 foreign students. In contradiction to Australian's objections! Over a million people a year!

The neo-Communists are replacing the population with people more to their liking.

Gary Becker died in 2014 at the age of 84, so leave him out of it.

Fees? What, more money for the government, and more reason for them to drag more people in?

“Having paid the fee, the immigrants would be committed to their adopted country and keen to make a go of it.” Yeah. Father Christmas is real, and it snows in Oodnadatta.

And “bona fide refugees” fleeing across several other countries to impose themselves on us have nothing to do with deliberate, Big Australia mass immigration by politicians, who can take their Big Pensions somewhere nice like Switzerland when rooted Australia is choc-a-block.

As for deporting people unable to work: sure, the real rulers, the High Court, wouldn't interfere with that - much!

This is the biggest load of tosh ever to be written on immigration. Immigration just needs to be stopped, and Australians have to get off their backsides and demand that it is stopped.

Along with all these extra people being put upon us, Australia's unemployment is rising: up to 3.7% last month. Another 55,000 jobless in one month.

Australia is definitely a lunatic asylum, run by the lunatics.

I question whether we need more immigrants at all. Robots can pick fruit, run nursing homes etc. In a sense foreign student fees are a prepayment on intending permanent settlement. Mum and Dad pay those fees hoping to get family reunion down the track so that price is modest. $2m house prices in Sydney cut out the under achievers.

A month or two ago a Treasury official said Australia needed high migration to replace retiring baby boomers then provide them with care. Maybe but Japan seems to be coping. What happens when the baby boomers are gone? The present Anglo Celtic civility could be replaced by Arab vs Jew, Hindu vs Muslim and so on.

I broadly disagree! Those industries wanting migrant labour should be required to sponsor them. And for an employment contract of up to 10 years.

This is how a market system would operate and make the user pay full value for the worker, whose skills could be thoroughly transferred to local talent.

This would ensure migrants came as and when truly needed. And not to fulfil a highly flawed economic model.

The future will see factories rolling day and night with few human hands involved in the production process. Using highly energy dependant Automation.

Humans involved will be highly skilled technicians assisted by techbots and AI.

If we would do any of the above, we need to get the price of energy down! For mine that's either MSR thorium or MSR nuclear waste burners burn nuclear waste we are paid annual millions to accept! And a true market system as well!

Nuclear waste is mostly uranium, with a few nasty transuranics included. The latter can be separated and used to kick start MSR thorium. And convert it to fissile U233.TBC.
Alan B.

What Taswegian says!
Alan B.

"The government does not have an immigration policy." Here we go again - the old Abul Rizvi fib. The government DOES have a clear immigration and population policy, published every year, in Budget Paper 3.

Only problem, Albanese Labor overshot last year's immigration target by a massive 130% (265,000). Bad luck for voters, eh? Tough break, for renters and the homeless. But great news for party donors.

Also, David, we already have a $5 million visa, for "Significant Investors". Put 'em all on that rate, I'd say. Anything would be better than the ideological madness of Albanese Labor. Which you don't even seem to see.

We have sectors, such as aged and disability care, that native born Australians mostly will not work in. We are reliant on our migrants to fill these positions and mighty grateful for them doing so. Robots can’t do it. And no, the Japanese families look after their elders which is why they live so long.

Most of Asia do not have social security or aged pensions. And family is much more important there than in the dog-eat-dog west.

The elderly are treasured for the wisdom only years can bestow. Moreover, they come as cost-free babysitters when the parents go to work. It's simply a very different mindset.

And as the family prospers, they buy a house they all live in. Then a business, and as the money flows in another house and business.

This is repeated until all the family have homes and independent businesses. Then it's Invesment real estate, market gardens and farms etc. They come as dirt poor migrants and in time become very well off.

If western families went so spoiled and demanding, pooled their resources and worked for each other until they were all well off. We would be a different people and poverty would be virtually non-existent. As would the welfare state.

The billions wasted every year on no hopers and able minded old folk could be used elsewhere to grow the economy and universal wealth creating opportunities.

Let's get back to a country that makes stuff. And emulate the Celtic economic miracle with niche market manufacturing all over the joint. As opposed to exporting our best ideas and best minds!

The above is a market economy with the pedal to the metal. To make it work we need less welfare and energy all can afford, i.e., MSR thorium.

We need instruments, low-cost loans and grants, that allow folk to become independently employed. Funded and facilitated co-ops would be the very best place to start!

Nothing should leave these shores without a modicum of value adding!

Moreover, MSR thorium would allow our arc furnaces to run day and night making steel and aluminium with an exportable and growing surplus.

What can you make using steel or aluminium. Boats, planes, car and truck bodies, engines, window frames, house frames. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!
Alan B.

Lucid, Logical, Libertarian, Leyonhjelm -- one L-of-a piece with a consistent application of principle that's lacking in all our current politicians. Still, immigration policy for a welfare state is a huge challenge. Without a consistent framework it won't improve.

A Demographic that views responsibility as too much of a sacrifice has forfeited its soul !

Robots can pick fruit,
Taswegian,
So can the young unemployed in their Gap Year National Service.

.. that native born Australians mostly will not work in.
estelles,
Ever since the mainly academic based, common sense devoid social engineering brigade infiltrated politics, the entitlement mentality snow-balled to unsustainable levels. The time has now come to oppose this insanity & make merit the only criteria in any employment.
Nepotism has become the enemy of the economy.