SBS has preemptively played the racist card against anyone seeking a lower, more sustainable immigration intake:
Migration analysts have urged Australia to resist pressure to cut its immigration intake fuelled by the country entering its first recession in 29 years.
Mass unemployment triggered by such an economic shock has historically aggravated anti-immigration attitudes across the world with analysts wary Australia is not immune to the threat…
Western Sydney University immigration analyst and associate professor Shanthi Robertson warned it is easy to turn migrants into “scapegoats” for job losses in an environment of economic uncertainty.
“We do have to watch out for a simplistic kind of discourse that sees cutting migration levels as the solution to any kind of economic problem … to make sure that there is no kind of stoking of xenophobia and no kind of stoking of racism,” she said…
Monash University emeritus professor Andrew Markus has helped oversee social cohesion mapping conducted by the Scanlon Foundation for more than a decade…
He said economic recessions can intensify calls to cut immigration and provoke anti-migrant attitudes…
“The past record in this area is that when there are economic problems some people in the community will look to ethnic minorities and immigrants as a source of blame,” he said….
Associate professor Robertson said there will continue to be skill shortages, reliant on migrant workers to fulfil.
“Those kind of debates about where migration needs to be targeted have to be taken into account – not just a kind of slash and burn kind of mentality,” she said.
“[But] if public attitudes turn to be a little bit more anti-immigration because we are in a recession, then obviously the government is going to respond to that.”
Policy makers and commentators have spent the past 20 years telling people we have a skills shortage. And then they get surprised when people suddenly question it during a period of mass unemployment.
As you can see, it’s the old ‘if you don’t like mass immigration you must be a racist’ story from SBS. This is clearly designed to scare people away from bringing up the topic of immigration by making them fear that they will get publicly shamed as a racist, no matter how reasonable their argument.
Conveniently, there is also no discussion on mass immigration’s fundamental impacts on wages, housing affordability, infrastructure, or the environment, which are the central issues of debate and of primary concern to Australians.
Instead of playing the deplorable racist card, SBS should speak to indigenous community leader, Warren Mundine, who has called for a sustainable and non-discriminatory immigration program:
To date the discussion among Australia’s political class has been muted with the major parties holding the line that current record immigration levels are both desirable and sustainable.
Regular Australians don’t see it the same way.
It’s not bigoted to debate whether Australia’s immigration levels should be reduced.
It’s a debate about how many immigrants Australia should take each year and about what population our cities and towns can realistically sustain…
By land mass, Australia is one of the largest countries in the world. But we also have one of the most concentrated populations.
Nearly half of all Australians live in three cities — Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Include Perth and you have 55 per cent of the population…
It’s a key reason housing is so expensive and rental affordability is so low in major cities… Add to this that 90 per cent of new arrivals to Australia settle in Sydney or Melbourne. It’s no wonder both cities are bursting at the seams…
Here’s more from Mundine’s interview on Radio 2B:
“We’ve got to get away from calling people racist,” he tells Chris Smith.
“We’ve always had a non-discriminatory immigration policy since the 1960s.
“The issue is about numbers and the type of skills and professions they can bring to Australia to help build Australia.”
Surely SBS isn’t suggesting Warren Mundine is racist for questioning Australia’s mass immigration policy?
