The Australian’s Judith Sloan last week attacked the “shoddy” economic arguments used by those who favour large immigration numbers and open-border policies.
The canards identified by Sloan include the following:
- Recent high figures of net overseas migration (long-term arrivals minus long-term departures) are merely a catchup from the pause caused by Covid.
- The overall trend numbers are no different from the ones that the Morrison Coalition government had predicted.
- The problems in the housing market have nothing to do with the surge in the number of migrants.
- Any additional pressures on infrastructure and services are the result of poor planning, not because of the migrant intake.
- Any supposed loss of social cohesion is essentially the fault of those born in Australia and their intolerance to different cultures.
“Were a first-year economics student to serve up these falsehoods, they would fail”, argued sloan. “But open-border sympathisers/Big Australia advocates attempt to manipulate the numbers to push the line that there is nothing to see and there is no reason to reduce the migrant intake”.
