How to build a crazy awesome Australian immigration system – Casey Handmer's blog

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The Australian immigration system must exclude dickheads, bullshitters, and bludgers.

This post has been inspired by Joe Walker’s recent set of three exemplary interviews (Martin Parkinson (former Treasury, author of 2023 migration review), Mark Cully (historian), Mike Pezzullo (senior border official 2013-2023))  on the subject of immigration policy. This comes against a backdrop of growing scepticism within the West on current levels of immigration, concerns about integration, cultural compatibility, rising costs of living, straining public services and infrastructure, and the rapidly increasing popularity of hardline anti-immigration political parties who, in some cases, have already won defining majorities within the Western democratic system.

This post complements earlier posts of mine on Australian defense policy, excessive government interference in its economy, economic stagnation, and energy policy.

(As I publish this, protests are occurring in Ireland. I actually held off on publishing this for about a month in the hope I could drop it on an immigration slow news day, but it was not to be. This post is not about any specific recent event.)

My position, as an immigrant, is that I would like immigration systems to be successful and publicly supported at the highest possible sustainable rate. The question I’m here to ask is: what would a crazy awesome immigration policy in Australia look like that could enjoy majority support and work well for everyone?

Some people might argue that the existing system is perfect and ideal as it is and that the missing piece is either a misinformed or inadequately propagandised public. This sentiment is captured well in Bertolt Brecht’s poem:

“Would it not in that case<br>Be simpler for the government<br>To dissolve the people<br>And elect another?”

Certainly one evolving challenge is that the general population, now exposed to a wide and broadening variety of information through fragmented social media, has developed much stronger mimetic resistance to astroturfed ideas. The standard of rigour and transparency necessary to convince the general public that certain policy measures purportedly enacted in their own best interest are in fact in their best interest is much higher than it ever was.

In order to be successful, a reformed immigration system would need to counter the growing contradictions and challenges of the existing one. If immigration has increased our living standards, why is it that housing, health care, education, and childcare are more unaffordable than ever? If immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the general population, why is it that the criminal statistics of immigrants in Australia are classified – knowledge about public safety that is literally illegal to know or disseminate? If immigrants are generally hardworking, contributive members of society, why is it that hospitals are breaking beneath the strain of the dependents of immigrants who are brought here late in life with exceedingly complex medical problems?

To put the answer up front: Australia should adopt transparent market-based mechanisms for determining permanent residency, and it should be based on age-calibrated minimum income tax contributions. The market can expose the necessary information on sufficient levels of cultural and economic integration in a way that a bureaucratic judgment system never can.

This is not selling Australian citizenship to the highest bidder. Under this proposal, a 35-year-old single migrant would qualify for permanent residency on a salary below what three-quarters of Australians their age earn. Rather than being elitist, it requires only a clear net positive contribution. This proposal just happens to be one that, for the first time in Australian history, would be capable of mathematically demonstrating that every new migrant adds wealth to Australia from the moment they arrive. Not on average, not after twenty years, but today, individually, verifiably. That is the unique political property of the architecture I describe below.

The current system can’t be patched

In his interview with Joe Walker, Martin Parkinson describes in some depth the complexity of the points-based immigration system. This points system is designed to guide immigration officers in making decisions as to whether particular immigrants can be accepted. The system, however, has not evolved substantially in more than 25 years and it is clear that on the most important metrics the point system is either saturated or is not sufficiently discriminative. Immigrants, both good and bad, understand that it’s a game and the game must be played.

One thing that came through to me in more than two hours of interview is the steadfast refusal of Martin Parkinson to discuss the potential value of a market-based system for resolving this problem, which is an interesting...