By Peter Boyle
Labor, Liberals and even Australian Democrats are now calling for some reduction in migrant intake. The Liberals also propose to deny migrants welfare benefits for two years after their arrival in Australia. Opposition immigration spokesperson Phil Ruddock has called for tightening entry under the family reunion and humanitarian (including refugee) category.
Over the last two years there have been at least a dozen official reports, investigations and surveys on the impact of immigration on the economy, the environment, culture, national identity, social cohesion. The 22% of Australians estimated to have been born overseas have become the most studied, talked about and, from some quarters, attacked section of the population.
The focus is now mostly on migrants of "non-English speaking backgrounds" (NESB) because they face high unemployment levels, especially during a recession. It is argued that we should not be bringing NESB and low-skilled migrants into the country to join the large pool of unemployed. Whipping up anti-migrant sentiment further, the press has given prominence to statements suggesting that thousands are coming to Australia to get the dole and live off taxpayers.
Certainly all the statistics show that throughout the last decade, NESB migrants suffered higher rates of unemployment and lower labour market participation rates than either the Australian-born or migrants from English speaking countries.
In August 1985, unemployment among NESB migrants was 9.6% while it was 7.6% for Australian-born workers and 7.7% for migrants from English-speaking countries. In August 1990, it was 9% for NESB migrants, 6.7% for Australian-born and 6% for ES migrants.
According to the final report of the National Population Council (NPC) survey, Population Issues and Australia's Future, released at the end of January, the recession and "structural change in industry" have left 21% of NESB migrants who arrived in Australia since 1986 unemployed. The figure for ESB migrants was 11%.
One reason NESB migrants are hit so hard by the recession is their concentration in industries which have had the biggest job losses. According to Discrimination Against Immigrant Workers in Australia, a 1991 report prepared by the Bureau of Immigration Research for the International Labour Office, overseas-born workers were over-represented in manufacturing and construction. NESB migrant workers (especially women) were even more concentrated in these sectors.
NESB workers were also highly concentrated in low-paid and low-status occupations — labourers, plant and machine operators and drivers — and were under-represented in clerks, salespersons, tradespeople, managers, administrators, professionals.
These figures confirm that NESB migrants have tended to be put into some of the worst paid and dirtiest jobs. The opinions of migrants collected by the report underlined this fact.
"Vietnamese are always asked to do the shit work. They are also asked to do more work than the others. I do anything I am told because I have no choice. Other workers, migrants or not, don't mind. Most of them like seeing us pushed around. Unions are totally useless in acknowledging the seriousness of our problem", said one Vietnamese male worker.
"Australians brought us out here as cheap meat from Europe", said a male Greek rail worker. "... I can guarantee you that they would not ask an Australian to do my job because it's dirty and not good. A few days ago an Australian tried my job. He didn't like it and the boss gave him another one ...".
A Lebanese woman worker had the same story: "Australians think we are stupid. Because you are a Lebanese woman, for example, they think that you are less human. But we can't argue with them. They don't like us — we don't like them! The problem, of course, is that we continue to do their dirtiest jobs. When there is hard and dirty work we are the first to be asked to do it."
In 1990 the Public Service Commission released a report which found discrimination against NESB workers in the public service. The situation can be assumed to be worse in the private sector. In 1991 the federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission National Inquiry into Racist Violence in Australia reported that "institutional racism was to be found in education, workplace, media, housing and local neighbourhoods, police and the criminal justice system".
The HREOC's 1990 annual report also noted a 22% increase in complaints under the federal Racial Discrimination Act.
A major problem in collecting evidence of discrimination against NESB migrants is that discriminating parties can usually hide behind a migrant worker's real or presumed language difficulties, lack of "Australian experience" or "Australian qualifications".
Blaming language problems rather than discrimination for the poor position of migrant workers can become a cover for racism directed against Asians, Pacific Islanders, Africans and Europeans from countries other than Britain and Ireland.
The category NESB, defined as people from countries other than New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, the United States and Canada, ignores the fact that many migrants from NES countries are fluent in English, especially if they manage to pass the points test required for economic migrants. My father, for instance, migrated to Australia from an NESB country and immediately began teaching English in an Australian school!
More accurate statistics linking unemployment rates and English language proficiency can be obtained from the 1986 census figures. They show that migrants who speak little or no English had an re than 60% in their first year in Australia. But it also showed that migrants who spoke English well or very well also suffered a high unemployment rate (33%) in their first year. Even migrants who spoke only English had a 25% unemployment rate.
The real problem highlighted here is the lack of facilities to teach migrants English (particularly on the job) and the absence of a full-employment policy. NESB migrants on their own are trying their best to gain language and other skills: they have higher participation rates in secondary and tertiary education than Australian-born. The main education problem facing new NESB migrants is the difficulty of studying English while working.
However, in the last few years migrant special education has suffered cutbacks. Further statistics gathered by the BIR show that Australian-born workers have greatest access to on-the-job training (73.3%), followed by workers from ES background (71.9%) and at the bottom NESB workers (63.1%).
The growing proportion of refugee cases (still only 10% of the migrant intake) and family reunions from migrants who came in earlier under this category account for a growing number who have little or no English. In 1988-89, some 91.6% of migrants admitted under the humanitarian (includes refugee) category had "poor English ability" compared to 37.9% in the family reunion and only 18.2% in the economic category.
The NPC report recommended that language and skills testing be tightened for the latter two categories and that humanitarian and special assistance entry should be reviewed considering "whether assistance is better provided through addressing root causes overseas"— a cynical suggestion given that Australia and other wealthy western countries perpetuate a global order that is intrinsically unjust.
The report thus argues not for a reduction in overall immigration as much as for selecting more rich, English-speaking, skilled migrants. This fits in with the interests of most of the employing class, who want sustained high migration to boost the economy, build the domestic market and maintain a permanent oversupply of labour.
It is a fundamentally racist view that countries like Australia should be allowed to pick only those they want from poorer countries and exclude everyone else, adding to the brain drain that contributes to the underdevelopment of the Third World.
While the "more skilled and English-speaking migrants" lobby feigns concern both for conditions overseas and for high migrant unemployment rates, the policy scapegoats migrants from poorer, non-Anglo countries, mainly in the Third World. Is the White Australia policy really a thing of the past?