Does the ABC represent actual Australians living in Australia or is it merely a lobbying outlet for migrants wanting to come to Australia?
Last week The ABC published a whinge piece bemoaning that so-called ‘skilled’ migrants were being treated unfairly because they were not easily able to bring their elderly parents to live in Australia as permanent residents.
“Skilled migrants are telling others to move to Canada or the US ahead of Australia because of parent visa delays”, the article reads.
“A review of the system found processing backlogs may be detracting from Australia’s reputation”.
It then cites several ‘skilled’ migrants that are ‘unfairly’ having difficulty importing their elderly parents into Australia.
The first case study is Adelaide engineer Nitin Parwal, moved to Australia 20 years ago as a skilled migrant and has waited more than five years for his elderly parents’ visas to be assessed:
He is now supposedly reconsidering his decision and telling others to go to Canada and the US instead.
“You’re not going to get professionals if you tell them ‘you come here and by the way, your parents are not allowed'”, he said.
“Think twice before you make that move”.
“There are other OECD countries where you can think of that. Canada is definitely more welcoming and [the] US”.
“Definitely consider those two countries before you consider Australia. That is my advice and that has been my advice to all my friends and family back home in India”.
The second case study is ‘skilled’ migrant Anam Shahid, who moved to Australia a decade ago.
Her parents still live in Pakistan and she believes the wait time for considering permanent parent visas was ridiculous.
“Our parents, our only remaining family, they’re still in Pakistan and we would like to bring them here. Their entire family lives in Australia and it doesn’t make sense for them to continue to live in Pakistan”, she said.
The ABC also cites a token migration agent, Rajwant Singh, who claims Australia is not playing its part as a “welcoming nation”.
“If somebody, say, is sitting in India or some other country thinking of migrating to Australia, in the back of their mind, there will be ‘who is going to care for my parents’, so it does impact”, he said.
“As a welcoming nation we are not playing our part”.
Peter Strachan made the salient observation that parental visas actually create skills shortages:
Their cost to the federal budget is also enormous.
According to the ABC’s article, “Treasury estimates that each parent permanent migrant costs $393,000”.
There were also “27,692 new parent visa applications lodged between May 2022 and May this year, taking the backlog across the seven subclasses to 138,508 as at the end of May”.
So, the federal budget would be in the hole to the tune of $54.4 billion if all of these parent visas were granted.
The Productivity Commission years ago also estimated that the cost of the 7,000 to 9,000 parental visas issued each year are between $335 000 and $410 000 per adult in net present value terms, and warned of these visas divert scarce taxpayer funding from other government programs:
“Overall, the cumulated lifetime fiscal costs (in net present value terms) of a parent visa holder in 2015-16 is estimated to be between $335 000 and $410 000 per adult, which ultimately must be met by the Australian community”.
“Ultimately, every dollar spent on one social program must require either additional taxes or forgone government expenditure in other areas. It seems unlikely that parent visas meet the usual standards of proven need, in contrast to areas such as mental health, homelessness or, in the context of immigration, the support of immigrants through the humanitarian stream, and foreign aid”.
Everyone knows that health costs are highest in the last few years of life.
Importing elderly parents that have contributed nothing to Australia is batshit crazy.
Basically, these whinging migrants want young Australians to pay much higher taxes and suffer from fewer services so they can subsidise their parents and privatise the benefits.
The entitlement is astonishing.
There is no magic pudding with Australia’s public finances. The gigantic fiscal sinkhole of parental visas diverts funding away from other social programs, including:
- funding for schools and hospitals;
- funding for the Aged Pension and JobSeeker;
- funding for the NDIS; and
- funding for infrastructure.
The fiscal cost of parental visas is already massive and growing, and threatens Australia’s welfare state.
These visas also make a mockery of the specious argument that a strong immigration program is needed to mitigate an ageing population. Instead, these visas exacerbate the ageing problem.
The Albanese Government should abolish parental visas altogether. The ABC should also pull its head in and actually represent the broader interests of Australians.
Just because somebody comes to Australia as an economic migrant does not give them the right to bring their parents along for the ride at taxpayers’ expense.
It was their choice to come. Nobody forced them.
