Last month, the Morrison Government announced that Australia will re-open its international border to overseas students, skilled visa holders and working holiday makers from 1 December, with Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews expecting that at least 200,000 migrant workers will arrive in Australia by July 2022:
“We are working on a figure of 200,000, it may well be more than that but we will be actively looking to bring as many people into Australia as soon as we possibly can“ – Karen Andrews, 22 November 2021.
This decision effectively brought forward the Intergenerational Report’s (IGR) projection of 235,000 annual net overseas migrants from 2025-26 onwards:
The various business lobbies and universities hailed the decision, with Restaurant & Catering CEO Wes Lambert stating “this is the biggest early Christmas present the hospitality industry has ever received”.
The emergence of the new “Omicron” COVID strain threatened the immigration reboot, with the federal government forced to delay Australia’s international border reopening by two weeks (from 1 December to 15 December) while it awaited more data.
To nobody’s surprise, Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday announced that Australia would fully reopen to international travel on Wednesday:
Of the 235,000 current overseas visa holders who may be eligible to enter Australia after December 1, 162,000 are foreign students and another 57,400 are skilled workers. There are 11,700 refugees and 400 temporary and provision family visa holders.
If they are fully vaccinated and test negative 72 hours before entry, the arrivals will not need a travel exemption to enter participating states.
The Victorian Government has also scrapped the 14-day mandatory quarantine hotel requirement for international travellers who have been to eight southern African countries of concern. They will now only have to self-isolate at home or in private accommodation for 72 hours after arriving in Victoria, in line with other international travellers.
The federal government will also accept Chinese vaccines as proof of vaccination, despite their poor efficacy.
Thus, the federal government’s mass immigration reboot is back on with quarantine-free access available to anybody that has taken an eligible vaccine.
Australians, who are overwhelmingly against pre-COVID levels of immigration, have been ignored yet again by our political leaders in favour of the edu-migration, business and property lobbies.
