BY SARAH STEPHEN
A new provision in Australia's immigration intake for 2001-02 allows overseas students to apply to settle in Australia once they have graduated, without first having to return to their home country.
Australia's immigration levels have increased in recent years. The total intake for the 2001-02 year will be 105,000, a 22% increase from 1999-00, due almost entirely to an increase in skilled and business migration.
The Australian government refers to it as a "balanced" immigration program. It is anything but balanced; the scales are tipped strongly in favour of Australia's economic interests at the direct expense of the Third World.
Australia is one of a number of countries which deliberately seeks to rob the Third World of educated people, through the weighting of its immigration policy in favour of skilled migrants. This is called the "brain drain".
The trend is increasing, with Australia being used by some European goverenments as a model of how to restructure their immigration programs.
Overseas students pay full up-front fees to study in Australia. An average course might inject $10,000 into the education system. This leaves the (substantial) cost of education borne by the very countries that are being plundered by the First World.
Australia invests nothing in educating overseas students, but, in convincing some to migrate here permanently, is happy to take advantage of their skills to benefit Australian business.
While politicians crow about our multicultural "knowledge nation", they obscure the global consequences. Draining the Third World of its educated stands in stark contradiction to the way a people-first immigration policy should operate.
The government should follow a moral rather than an economic imperative. As it did in the 1970s, it should offer free education to far larger numbers of students from Third World nations.