IMMIGRATION, REMIGRATION or NO MIGRATION?
Australia has flooded itself with migrants and about 32% of our resident population were born overseas. Is this doing the country any good or causing many problems?
Think back to the Covid years, 2020 and 2021. The government stopped bringing migrants into the country and population growth fell to about half a per cent for each of those years as natural increase, births over deaths, continued. The economy went backwards a little in 2020 but in 2021 it grew at a healthy rate so that over the two years combined the economy grew at about four times that of the population and living standards were boosted.
In the following years, mass immigration returned. While the population grew at a very high rate, the economy slowed down and living standards stagnated or in some years went backwards. In 2003 for instance the population increased by 2.5%, and most of this was due to immigration, but the economy only grew by 1.5%. We are still not doing much better and in the first six months of 2026 the economy grew by only 0.7%, hardly enough to keep up with population increase.
Meanwhile the government’s debt level climbed to a gross amount of one trillion dollars. And it was not just the government getting into debt as Australia’s net foreign debt climbed to $1.408 trillion by the end of 2024, an increase of 16.9% over twelve months. The debt reached $1.475 trillion by the end of 2025. Literally billions flow overseas in interest payments.
Many migrants remit part of their income to relatives in their home countries and this involves more billions leaving Australia. In 2024 $38.2 billion was sent overseas.
Not only have many people been priced out of the housing market but the gap between average incomes and average rents has been steadily rising since the Albanese government came to power.
Crime actually declined in 2021 while the economy was going strongly. Australia had the lowest number of murders in years but with the flood of immigrants the situation reversed and by 2024 there had been a 30% rise in cases of murder. The number of sex crimes also rose. The parts of Sydney which receive many Third World immigrants are noted for crime. One survey, a few years ago, showed that Fairfield had twice the rate of homicides as the state average, Bankstown was even worse and Auburn had over three times the state average.
While Australia is stagnating, other countries are leaving us for dead. In 2025 our economy grew by 2.5%, but China, which has virtually no immigration and a falling population, enjoyed economic growth at twice that rate. Japan has not seen any population growth for 18 years but their economy continues to grow. Both these countries are creditor nations and so have no foreign debt problems. We are falling further behind the world in living standards as measured by per capita gross domestic product. Before World War I there was only one country in the world with higher living standards than Australia, and by 1950 only four nations were doing better than us. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) we are now ranked as having the 23rd highest per capita GDP. In other words, 22 nations are outperforming us – and the IMF statistics do not include every country in the world.
We should be bringing skilled people and in fact most of those coming to Australia as permanent migrants come under the so-called Skilled Migration Program. Most of these people however are not actually skilled but are the spouses and children of some one who is skilled. Of all the people who came under this program in the financial year ended June 2025, more than half were secondary migrants, that is, the family of a skilled migrant. If we include other migrant programs, it means that only about a third of permanent migrants have a skill to bring to this country. Figures from the 2026 Census are not available yet but those from the previous census show that migrants on average earn less than people born in Australia and are less likely to be employed.
Refugees present even more problems. Australia takes in 20,000 people a year under its Humanitarian Program. Japan, with a bigger population takes in only 200 refugees a year, and many countries take in none, so we are pretty generous. Those who come under this program can go onto many types of welfare as soon as they arrive in this country, unlike other permanent settlers who must wait three or four years. It’s estimated that for every humanitarian immigrant we take in it will cost the taxpayer 300,000 over his or her lifetime. They tend to have higher unemployment rates and lower average incomes than other migrants and some are over-represented in crime and prison statistics. Migrants from Somalia and Sudan are more likely to be in prison than people born in Australia.
Bringing large numbers of migrants into Australia is causing problems, not solving them. It might not be possible to send migrants back to where they came from but it is possible, and highly desirable, to return to net zero immigration.