As many as 100,000 immigrants on expired temporary visas are refusing to leave Australia, warns a top population expert who says many of the overstayers are “bogus asylum seekers.
University of Melbourne Professor Peter McDonald’s warning in The Age about temporary visitors who are refusing to leave sheds light on an aspect of Australia’s open borders programme which is grossly overlooked.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics, whose net migration data is often used as a distraction by “fact-checking” mainstream media articles to hide the extent of mass immigration, was described by the professor as having “underestimated arrivals and overestimated departures since the pandemic”. The bureau’s apparent ineptitude when it comes to migration data serves to further obfuscate the devastating population explosion Australians face.
In light of the second-rate information supplied by the ABS, it is clear that the failure of the Department of Home Affairs to properly address the issue has exacerbated the implications of the government’s mass immigration policy.
But voters should not expect any meaningful resolution in the short term, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on Sunday abandoning what little an immigration cut his party previously offered.
The mutual inaction from the Liberal and Labor parties prompted McDonald to highlight that “this is a point on which politicians of both sides must be challenged”, going on to say that the build-up of migrants staying beyond their designated timeframes was a “significant problem”.
However, voters may struggle to find a sufficient voice against mass immigration amongst the list of registered parties, with One Nation causing outrage on X this week for selecting a pro-immigration Sikh candidate in a winnable seat for the upcoming WA state election.
The Libertarian Party, too, fails to present as an adequate alternative for disaffected Australians, opting to run a “radical pro-development campaign” focused on housing supply instead of demand in the recent NSW local elections, and scheduling a fireside chat with the pro-immigration property lobby proxy YIMBY Melbourne for this coming Friday.
It remains unclear if immigration will be curtailed in any substantive way in the leadup to the federal election to be held sometime in the next six months, despite the consensus amongst voters in favour of immigration restriction.
In an op-ed welcomed by many readers of The Australian today, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott joined the chorus of dissenting voices by condemning “the damage done by uncontrolled migration” and decrying the cowardice of politicians’ inaction out of “fear of upsetting migrants and being called racist”.
Meanwhile, property oligarch Harry Triguboff has been spruiking not a reduction in migration, but instead a diversification away from Chinese entrants to fill his company Meriton’s new behemoth developments.
As it stands, just two weeks out from Christmas in 2024, Australia’s political class continues to express no interest in the plight of working Australians due to mass immigration – even a whole three years after Albanese made his false promise to oppose the very open borders programme his own government has subsequently perpetuated at historic levels.
Header image: So-called refugees stage a protest in Sydney demanding permanent visas in November (Facebook)
