The Benefits of Immigration and a case for Civic Pluralism Profesoor Mary Kalantzis RMIT UNIVERSITY September, 2002

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1 The Benefits of Immigration and a case for Civic Pluralism Profesoor Mary Kalantzis RMIT UNIVERSITY September, 2002 Background Since 1945, Australia has managed one of the world s most successful immigration programs. Today, over 41% of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. However, after half a century of sustained immigration, the intake has diminished for the first significant length of time. Despite now being at its highest level for a decade, the current immigration intake of 105,000 remains a mere.5% of our total population. Meanwhile, unprecedented numbers of Australians are leaving the country. Permanent departures, or people migrating away from Australia, rose to 41,000 in 1999/00, more than double the equivalent figure from 1985/6. And there is an even more interesting category buried away in the migration figures: long term departures Australians who are leaving the country for a year or more. In 1985/6 this figure was 74,400, yet by 1999/2000 the number of long term departures had more than doubled to 156,800. Further, Australian-born permanent departures have doubled from 10,000 in 1994/5 to around 20,000 in 1999/00, and are now at their highest level ever. In other words, more and more Australians are leaving the country. If these trends continue, we will not only move towards a static population, but will also continue to lose the best and the brightest Australians. About half of those presently leaving are in the age group, and nearly half are professionals, managers, or skilled workers. Equally of note is the fact that some immigrant groups are even in decline. Our Italianborn population fell by 8% between 1995 and 2000, while numbers of British-born and Greek-born immigrants also declined over this period. The silence on this change is striking, particularly when the importance of immigration to our history and identity is considered. Back in 1945, 90% of Australians had been born here, and another 8% born in Britain or New Zealand. Today, 76% of the population was born in Australia. Yet the number of Australians born overseas increased less than 1% from 1991 to 2000 contrary to the views of extremists, we are not exactly being flooded by immigrants. Indeed, the number of persons born overseas today is the same as the year of Federation, % of the population. In 1945, Arthur Calwell set a target of 1% annual population increase through immigration. More than fifty years later, that seems prescient indeed. One per cent of the world s population now moves annually. New Zealand and Canada s immigration programs have been around that level in recent years, yet Australia s is only half that

2 figure. Historically, the United States has frequently taken over one million immigrants, and even tiny Singapore has embarked on an immigration program of 100,000 per annum to boost its economy. A push towards lower immigration would be against popular contemporary thinking worldwide, and contrary to our historical position. The Benefits of Immigration There are strong social, economic and strategic reasons for pursuing greater immigration. Ultimately, Australia is an immigrant and settler society, and any return to a Fortress Australia mentality represents, in part, a denial of our unique history and identity. Indeed, the characterisation of our society as multicultural, particularly over the past quarter century, reflects the generally successful pursuit of diversity, tolerance and generosity. These lauded elements of a nation which, at its best, has indeed been outward-looking and cosmopolitan, are largely attributable to historic programs of substantial, well-managed immigration. In the twenty-first century, Australia will be judged by the way its people handle the question of immigration. Population is a global, not a national issue, and it will become increasingly difficult to justify a population of just 19 million people on a massive, resource-rich continent. Indeed, there may even come a time when it proves strategically unwise. Globalisation demands not only that our relatively low level of immigration be raised, but that the lamentably low numbers of refugees now accepted by Australia also be increased substantially. The dramatic change under the Howard government, towards accepting more skilled migrants at the expense of family reunion and refugee migrants, has obvious short-term economic appeal, but Australia must choose its intake within a global context of massive displacement of people. The fulfillment of international humanitarian obligations is just as important as economic pragmatism in determining our immigration policies. Notwithstanding these issues of composition, there are strong economic reasons for increasing the overall number of immigrants substantially. Research has for some time revealed that migrants make rather than take jobs, and that the increased demand created by immigrants is of substantial economic benefit to the nation. However, immigration in the twenty-first century is about more than the simple economic growth generated by this higher demand. In truth, the picture is more complex. In a global economy, Australia has already developed an internationally orientated, multicultural enterprise culture. Our competitiveness is in fact driven by our productive diversity. International cultural and business links, the creativity and dynamism that come from diverse work teams and organisations, and the language and cultural skills of the Australian workforce are all tailored to our export objectives. These skills will become more apposite to economic prosperity during this century, and they can only be furthered through heightened immigration. Immigrants are essential to the fostering of cosmopolitanism and productive diversity, and ultimately to the economic prosperity of the nation in the twenty-first century. Mary Kalantzis Benefits of Immigration 2002 Page 2

3 Much has also been made of the value of immigrants in countering an ageing society. The median age of Australians is due to rise from 34 to 45 by the year 2050, and immigration does help to keep the age profile of the Australian population younger. Immigrants also cost less in terms of social infrastructure over their whole lifetimes, often arriving fully trained and educated at another nation s expense. The notion that higher immigration levels would be a drain on the Australian economy, then, is flawed in many respects. Indeed, the reverse is arguably the case it is difficult to see how Australia can thrive in a globalised economy without a culture of productive diversity, itself supported and fostered by a substantial immigration program. Those who support maintaining or even lowering the present rate, however, frequently hold not only that immigration is an economic risk, but that high migrant numbers will lead to a damaging of the environment. Some even believe that this damage will be irreparable. Environmental harm and degradation, however, is arguably more the result of our relationships to the environment than of overpopulation. Indeed, Australian agriculture presently feeds perhaps several hundred million people in total we have more head of cattle and over five times as many sheep as people on our land. ( 150 million!) Despite frequent argument to the contrary, our stored water per head of population is also relatively high in global terms. (Only Canada has more.) There is certainly a great deal of damage occurring, but much of it is the result of ecologically unsustainable farming methods and poor policies and practices. Redressing these problems requires the promotion of different relationships to the environment, rather than maintaining or reducing the number of people on our vast continent. Australia is not alone in often blaming immigrants for rising unemployment, social disharmony or environmental damage. Indeed, historically we have been more tolerant than most, a tolerance both reflected in, and promoted by, our relatively high levels of immigration. The past decade, however, has witnessed a disturbing new trend towards lower overall migrant intake, and still lower percentages of family reunion migrants or refugees. It is, as we enter the twenty-first century, doubly important that this trend is reversed. In Australia today, considerations of economic self-interest and international responsibility are more closely aligned than ever before. Maintaining a positive immigration program is critical to both. Regarding the numbers, I have a conservative proposal about immigration. Let s stick to what, as a nation, we ve mostly done. Let s be true to our history and the kind of society we have been, certainly since the end of the Second World War and the formal abandonment of the White Australia Policy. The average population growth as a result of immigration over the post-war period has been 0.67% per cent per annum. That would mean an immigration and refugee program in which the excess of arrivals over rapidly increasing departures was 127,000 per year. This would be a big shift away from the current policies, but still rather less than net immigration during the 1980s. Mary Kalantzis Benefits of Immigration 2002 Page 3

4 But more importantly, I have an urgent call, let s stop the atavistic conversations about immigration and the environment, and let s renounce the cynical racist populism that now dominates the so-called debate about population and Australia s borders. Immigration, multiculturalism and Australia s future The diversity of Australia s citizenry means that the range of policies referred to as multiculturalism, have particularly pragmatic bases. And our vulnerability as an exportoriented economy means that Australia has taken a leading role in regional economic integration and the GATT process to encourage free trade. These are reasons why negotiating diversity has had to become a foundational principle of economic and public life. Pragmatically, Australia cannot do business efficiently, service the population effectively in areas such as health and the arts, or plan education and training, local policing and national security without addressing diversity. Nor can we operate regionally or globally without addressing diversity. There can be no return to the past. Australia is irreversibly an immigrant society, a society built on cohesion in diversity. The hard facts are these: Australia s immigration program has been larger than any other in the world in the past half century, bar the peculiar case of Israel. Twenty percent of Australians were born overseas. Forty per cent of Australians have at least one parent who was born overseas. As well as the 150 remaining indigenous languages, Australians speak 140 immigrant languages. No society is more diverse, ethnically, linguistically, religiously. This is why racism is completely untenable in Australia. Of course, cultural and linguistic diversity is not unique to Australia. Indeed, it is a feature of all nations in the world. But, as we know, diversity does not lead of its own accord to mutual respect and social cohesion. It can also lead to xenophobia, discrimination and violence. Our future as a cohesive and productive country rests with our ability to assure all people, no matter what their cultural or racial origins, that they all belong here, equally. There is no doubt that mischief has been caused by the very loud and ignorant claims of a very small number of voices during last few years, amplified by a sensationalist media. There is however, mounting pressure from ordinary Australians business leaders, educators, workers and farmers to put an end to the damaging and ignorant sentiments of racism and isolationism that flared up in this country in Civic Pluralism This means that new forms of civic competence are now needed: the ability to engage in the difficult dialogues that are an inevitable part of negotiating diversity; the morality of compromise in which parties to negotiations are willing to meet on ground which they do not necessarily share in common; multiple citizenship in both the literal sense of being a participating member of more than one nation-state and the metaphorical sense of participating in a range of public and community forums; an ability to express and represent multilayered identity appropriate to the different lifeworlds, civic spaces and work contexts that all citizens encounter; the extension of cultural repertoires appropriate Mary Kalantzis Benefits of Immigration 2002 Page 4

5 to the range of contexts where difference has to be negotiated; a capacity to engage in collaborative politics which matches differences in relationships of complementarity; and dexterity with systems devolved according to the principle of federalism, where different lifeworlds and devolved community and work activities are the social core and the central or the federal is subsidiary to these, rather than the other way around. Above all, civic competence, local and global, involves cultural understandings and practical skills for negotiating differences. Civic Competence: New Dimensions! Difficult Dialogues.! The Morality of Compromise.! Multiple Citizenship.! Multilayered Identities.! Collaborative Politics.! Cultural Repertoires.! Subsidiarity and Federalism.! Negotiating Cultural Differences; Cultural Understandings. Civic Pluralism and the new competence in negotiating differences that it demands produces almost the opposite outcome to those of past Multicultural Policy. The latter tends to fix cultural differences as the identifiable and relatively unchanging ancestral forms that are implied in the notions of heritage and tradition ; it also tends to put neat boundaries around these and assume that they are more internally homogenous than they really are. Civic pluralism makes virtue of the opposite: as differences engage, culture and identity can only be understood and multilayered, hybrid, shifting, dynamic, contingent and never clearly bounded as the simplistically aggregating cultural categories of ethnicity and nationality suggest. This, then, is Australia s opportunity. Nor is it just an expression of pluralism as an ideal. It also reflects a cultural and social pragmatics. It reflects the way in which Australia really has transformed itself and continues to transform itself, even if some of those who denigrate Multicultural Policy are still unwilling to recognise the inevitability of the transformation. Over the past fifty years, immigration on an almost unparalleled international scale and the growing recognition of indigenous claims have both changed Australian demography and our sense of ourselves. This is the basis for Civic Pluralism. And the basis for a confident, vibrant society and economy. Mary Kalantzis Benefits of Immigration 2002 Page 5