Australia and Canada have gone immigration mad

In the lead-up to the Jobs & Skills Summit, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) urged the Albanese Government to aggressively compete with Canada for migrants:

Temporary skilled migrants now account for around 0.7 per cent of the labour force, less than half the level when temporary skilled migration peaked shortly after the mining boom.

The global migration landscape is also changing. Canada significantly increased its permanent migration intake through the pandemic to provide greater certainty to temporary migrants already onshore and send strong signals to prospective future migrants offshore (see Figure 2)…

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil expressed similar sentiments, claiming many of the “best and brightest minds” were choosing to migrate to Canada and other nations instead of Australia. Australia, therefore, needed to compete harder in the “global war for talent”.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles repeated the claims last week in a speech to the Law Council of Australia’s Immigration Conference:

As of the end of February, more than 5.4 million temporary and migration visas have been finalised since we came to government.

The visa backlog has been reduced, down from almost one million to under 600,000…

We have to reshape our migration system into one that is fit for purpose and acknowledges that Australia is in a global race for talent.

A pathway to permanency is paramount if we want to continue to attract the world’s best and brightest to call Australia home.

As we know, the Albanese Government has deliberately engineered the biggest immigration program in this nation’s history via:

• Increasing the permanent (non-humanitarian) migrant intake to a record high 195,000 people a year (up 35,000);
• Increasing the number of hours international students can work and how long they can stay after they finish their studies: and
• Committing 500 new staff and committing $42 million of funding to clear ‘visa backlogs’.

These policies have already borne fruit, with Australia’s population increasing by nearly 500,000 in 2022 (a record high) on the back of net overseas migration (NOM) of nearly 400,000 (also a record high):

Monthly visa data to February also shows that net temporary visa arrivals (excluding visitors) has soared driven by record international student arrivals:

Therefore, Australia’s NOM is set to go even higher in 2023, probably to around 500,000.

And with it, Australia’s rental crisis will get even worse while the unemployment rate is certain to rise (and wage growth fall) on the back of record labour supply growth.

While Australia’s immigration policy is mad, spare a thought for Canada, which has truly jumped the immigration shark.

Canada’s population surged by a record high 1,050,110 people in 2022, with nearly 96% of this growth coming via immigration:

Canada’s population was estimated at 39,566,248 on January 1, 2023, after a record population growth of 1,050,110 people from January 1, 2022, to January 1, 2023.

This marks the first 12-month period in Canada’s history where population grew by over 1 million people, and the highest annual population growth rate (+2.7%) on record since that seen for 1957 (+3.3%). This previous record population growth rate in 1957 was related to the high number of births during the post-war baby boom and the high immigration of refugees following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

In 2022, the reason behind Canada’s record-high population growth was somewhat different, since international migration accounted for nearly all growth recorded (95.9%)…

Canada is by far leading the G7 countries for population growth in 2022, as it has been the case for many years.

Compared with 2021 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country growth rates, the latest available for all members, Canada would rank first with a population growth of 2.7% for the year 2022. Moreover, according to the most recent figures for other countries (as of 2021), Canada’s population growth rate of 2.7% in 2022 would put it among the top 20 in the world. Almost all countries with a higher pace of population growth were in Africa.

If it stayed constant in years to come, such a rate of population growth would lead to the Canadian population doubling in about 26 years…

For the year 2022, Canada welcomed 437,180 immigrants and saw a net increase of the number of non-permanent residents estimated at 607,782. Both of these numbers represent the highest levels on record, reflecting higher immigration targets and a record-breaking year for the processing of immigration applications at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Unsurprisingly, and just like in Australia, the surge in immigration is exacerbating Canada’s rental shortage, with the Royal Bank of Canada warning that the nation’s rental housing shortage will quadruple to 120,000 units by 2026:

Canada’s vacancy rate fell to 1.9 per cent in 2022, its lowest point in 21 years, from 3.4 per cent in 2020 and 2021.

Competition for units also drove the highest annual increase in rent growth on record, by 5.6 per cent for a two-bedroom unit…

Canada’s rental housing stock grew by 2.4 per cent in 2022, led by Calgary at 7.4 per cent and Ottawa-Gatineau at 5.5 per cent, while Toronto and Montreal saw the smallest percentage increases at 2.1 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively.

“We haven’t seen that many additions to the purpose-built inventory in almost a decade, so you would think that added supply of units would ease some of the competition, but what the CMHC rental market data revealed to us was that it didn’t,” said RBC economist Rachel Battaglia.

Slow growth in Canada’s two most populous cities has been outpaced by rapidly increasing demand, partly fuelled by high immigration levels, she said. Annual federal immigration targets are set to grow eight per cent by 2025, meaning demand is unlikely to let up.

Why do centre-left governments like the Trudeau and Albanese administrations hate the working class so much?

With friends like them, the working class sure doesn’t need enemies.