Scott Morrison has brought the discussion about immigration and refugees to attention for the federal election campaign 2019. This was done with an announcement that a Coalition government would freeze the immigrant intake. He has warned the immigration system to be running ‘too hot’.
In a speech on Sunday, Scot Morrison promised to cap the numbers of immigrants to Australia every year as refugees frozen at 18,750. He also revealed a set of measures demarcating exactly who will be permitted to reside. The government also promised last month to drop the permanent immigration from 190,000 a year to a cap of 160,000.
On the contrary, Labour leader Bill Shorten plans to slowly increase the humanitarian immigration to 32,000 per year with 27,000 sponsored by the government and 5000 sponsored by the community. Mr. Morrison opines that he believes immigration to be the key feature of Australia’s future and that is the reason why he wants the immigration program to be sustainable.
With the already hot running immigration system, he states that by electing the Labour party, the Australians will ‘put it all at risk’. He continued saying that the cap placed in 2016 by Malcolm Turnbull was the second highest immigrant intake per capita in the world. According to Morrison, this will remain as it is for another four years if the Labour party wins the May Federal Election.
The coalition has also pledged to increase the number of women immigrants from 50 percent in 2017-2018 to a 60 percent. Prime Minister also declared $167 million investment in infrastructure upgrades such as for roads and car parking to ‘catch up’ to the migrations. The government will also target to increase the number of immigrants and humanitarian applicants being settled in regional areas from 30 percent to 40 percent in 2019-20. This will be done by ensuring that the new entrants will settle in areas having a strong community support.
Former Prime Minister John Howard in his address to the Liberal cheerers incited them, giving his feedback on Mr. Shorten’s stance of their immigration policies and expectation that the elections would result into his enthronement. He opined to the crowd that people are questioning Mr. Shorten more than ever before which has rendered him irritable and frustrated, which was not meant to be.
While appearing together with Mr Howard, Prime Minister Scott Morrison also targeted Labour’s immigration policies, demanding Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to declare what type of immigrants he would allow arriving in Australia.
On the other hand, Labour alleged that the coalition was essentially budgeting for an increase in migration, with a leap in transitory visas for the overseas workforce and university students. One such visa is the 457 Australian visa used by the employers for sponsorship of skilled overseas workforce to work in Australia on a temporary basis such as a period of four years. The employers have to follow a thorough application procedure when applying for employees to work for them.
