Professor Fethi Mansouri: Dismantling immigration myths

360info

A so-called Australian immigration crisis is a central election issue but it's based on misconceptions easily debunked by any examination of the evidence.   Professor Fethi Mansouri, a Deakin Distinguished Professor and founding Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, sat down wth 360info Commissioning Editor Tom Wharton to discuss the myths that surround immigration in Australia.

Transcript

00:00What are the myths that surround the immigration debate?

00:02There's always myths about immigration, so that migrants are taking jobs away from Australians.

00:08And let's look at one of the biggest, which is housing, and the housing crisis that we

00:12have.

00:13And just to look at really the perhaps the critical period of 21, 23, when we did not

00:19have a lot of migrants arrivals in Australia, because we had lockdown, almost complete lockdown.

00:26Even during those years, we still had problems with housing, we still had problems with rental.

00:31So clearly there is no direct correlation between migrants and the housing crisis, which

00:38of course has other contributing factors.

00:40When you look at the overall migration program, the largest component is always the temporary

00:47migrants.

00:48Those kind of arrivals tend to live in small flats, they crowded, sharing, etc, to reduce

00:56cost.

00:57That is not what is really in demand in terms of the broader population.

01:02They want proper rental supplies, they want proper accommodation supplies.

01:08Australia is a migration nation.

01:10We would not have the Australia that we have today, with its socio-cultural fabric, with

01:14its economic prosperity, without migration.

01:17By and large, Australians have favourable opinions towards migration.

01:22It's more than three quarters in 2024, thought that migration is a good thing for Australia.

01:27It's only when migration becomes weaponised politically, that we have a conversation that

01:34becomes driven by disinformation, by things that have nothing to do with migration as

01:40we know it in terms of either systems and technical infrastructure, or migration that

01:45impacts social, cultural and economic domains.

01:47The main thing to remember is that migration doesn't lead to more security threats, it's

01:53not the main contributor to some of the key challenges that we have in our society, including

01:58housing for instance, or unemployment or inflation, but it needs still to be able to be debated

02:05and people need to be able to articulate their views on migration.

02:09So that's the kind of conversation we need to be having.

02:11What does our economy require that migration programmes can actually contribute to?

02:18In what ways can we turn migration into a net positive contributor to our economic,

02:24social and cultural well-being?

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