The Australian Productivity Commission has been looking into the costs of immigration, in particular, the importing of parents of immigrants.

It is costing Australian taxpayers $3 billion per year for about 8700 old folk per year.

There are two schemes, apparently: 1. They wait for 30 years and pay $7,000. (How many parents of adult migrants would get in on that one!), or 2. They pay $47,000, and the family is supposed to 'contribute' to their expenses, whatever that means. If they lived long enough to gain permanent residence, wouldn't they then be eligible for full welfare rights? - more who haven't contributed in any way.

Only in extreme 'compassionate' cases should these people be granted permanent residency, says the Commission, and there should be temporary visas, with the offspring being responsible for their parents' expenses. It was also noted that there were too many loopholes in the whole system regarding skills, English language for permanent residency.

Whatchya reckon?

ttbn, given same sex marriage is the most important issue on the current agenda, I doubt anyone who can do anything cares enough to do anything.

Common sense suggests we should put an immediate halt to all immigration, but unfortunately common sense does not get a look in anymore.

Remember, as of this day we still have a car industry, tick tick tick!

"It is costing Australian taxpayers $3 billion per year for about 8700 old folk per year."

Is that correct? If a billion is 1000 million, then when I divide 3000,000,000 by 8700 I get $344,827 per person per year. That's roughly 10x the pension, so they must all be really sick to be costing that much.

Have I done the maths right, or is this figure an exaggeration?

Cossomby,

Your calculation is OK. Your $344K fits into the range of the estimated cost per immigrant of $335K to $410K, or $2.9 to $3.2 million for about 8700 old-age immigrants. Given that we are the highest per capita immigration country in the world - around 200,000 per year and climbing in the other categories, the cost of all immigration to Australian taxpayers must be gigantic. The politicians looking for more votes, and business corporations look for more money, try to tell us that immigration (including those people who are inclined to work as well as those who spend the rest of their lives on our welfare system) is of benefit to Australia, even though dempgraphers and other experts have shown time and time again, that the reverse is true. The wealth of every induvidual reduces through immigration, and the costs of infrastructure rise. The cost to the environment is also too high.

While the Commission is right to point out that this $3 billion could be saved for a better use for Australia, I would like to see it go further, and probe the 'reason' for ANY immigration other than that to fill skills we lack.

ttbn: Thanks, but perhaps more clarification would be useful.

Is that $335K to $410K PER YEAR PER PERSON, and if so, for how many years does it run? What does it cover?

Alternately, if we had a figure for what each of the rest of us 'costs' the government per year, what would that be? More or less?

I'm wondering if that figure for immigrants includes a lot of public expenses such as defence, police, education, roads etc., apart from direct welfare, that would also be spent on the rest of us but which we don't usually see tallied up as a per person rate. If so, it could also be applied to each new baby born here. Does every new person (born or immigrated) add to the per person amount (because as the population grows, more services are needed), or subtract from the per person amount (because there are more people to divide into the overall cost)?

I'm interested in the way statistics are manipulated to provide ammunition for whatever the cause is, whether by government, the productivity commission, special interest groups etc. I am inherently sceptical of any statistic quoted to support a particular argument. And this one seems quite odd, since I cannot think of how one new immigrant in one year would cost the government ca $300-400K (unless the annual salary of the immigration officer who handled the paperwork is included - though that would surely only be the case in the year of their arrival).

OK, I went to the actual report - it's over 700 pages, which is why I didn't read it earlier!

ttbn wrote in the first post: "It is costing Australian taxpayers $3 billion per year for about 8700 old folk per year."

What the report says (p.27): "Overall, the cumulated lifetime fiscal costs (in net present value terms) of a parent visa holder in 2015-16 is estimated to be between $335 000 and $410 000 per adult, which ultimately must be met by the Australian community. On this basis, the net liability to the Australian community of providing assistance to these 8700 parents over their lifetime ranges between $2.6 and $3.2 billion in present value terms. Given that there is a new inflow each year, the accumulated taxpayer liabilities become very large over time. This is a high cost for a relatively small group."

So, it's a forward estimate - a model - of the cost per adult over their estimated lifetime, from 2015-16 onwards. The 2-3 billion is not an annual cost but their lifetime cost. Presumably the modelling takes into account the fact that some older family immigrants will live for say, 2 years, while others may live for 20 or more. If we take 10 years as an average, then the per annum cost will be $33-41,000, the equivalent of the pension plus some medical expenses.

While this would add up into the billions over the long term, it is not an unrealistic or excessive amount per person per annum. The issue could be easily resolved by requiring the family of the elderly immigrant to support their parents, so they don't access the old age pension. Not so scary after all.