ScotG1 🍞🇦🇺

Episode 2 of my Immigration Series: Australian immigration policy is genuinely sui generis. Not even Australians fully appreciate this. A potted history: - The only country to have run assisted passage at scale -- around 3.5 million people whose fares were subsidised, sometimes fully, in a program that began in the 1830s and ran for around 150 years, ending only in 1981. - The first country in the world to have a dedicated Department of Immigration (founded 1945). - Probably the only nation in history to have set an explicit population target after WWII -- 1% growth from migration plus 1% from natural increase. - The first country in the world to offer adult migrants English-language training (in 1948, still running) and (I'm pretty sure) a telephone interpreting service for migrants (from 1973). - In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Australia took 60,000 Indochinese refugees -- proportionally more per population than any other country in the world. - One of the earliest countries in the world to introduce mandatory detention for unlawful non-citizens (1992). - Per capita, it's been the world's largest receiver of international students for decades. - The OECD country with the highest share of overseas-born among countries with more than 10 million people -- around 32%, about 8-9x the world average, and projected to climb into the 40s, a level likely not seen in Australia since the 1880s. I discussed the history of Australia's migration exceptionalism with Mark Cully. Mark has written the first truly general history of Australian immigration (to be published later this year). He has direct experience, having served as the inaugural Chief Economist of Australia's Department of Immigration. We discuss the six most decisive decades in Australian migration history, as well as some bigger picture questions: - has migration actually increased Australians' living standards (Mark believes it probably hasn't)? - the three potential constraints on our ability to accept migrants, and which has tended to be binding in practice - what does history teach us about the rise of One Nation? - and much more. Watch below, or on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Timestamps: (0:00:00) – Introduction. (0:03:21) – Why didn't Australia turn to slavery? (0:10:17) – The decade that made modern Australia (1850s) (0:20:51) – What was White Australia really about? (0:30:23) – The most epic policy experiment in Australian history (the postwar migration program) (1:01:57) – The 1970s: an underrated decade (1:07:02) – The drift into a temporary-migrant economy (1:21:49) – Inside the chief economist's office (1:28:56) – Culture, social cohesion, and integration (2:01:17) – Has migration made Australia richer? (2:06:56) – The main constraint on Australian immigration over the past 200 years (2:16:11) – What makes Australian immigration exceptional?

Lefty journo at the end of Unite The Kingdom attempted to take me on over the claim that our flag is “racist”. Safe to say he made himself look like a bit of a silly sausage… but kudos for trying 😂

All I can say to the "you can't control net overseas migration" crowd is, good luck. Because the longer you keep this up, the more likely it becomes that you will inadvertently end up bringing to power someone who can and will control migration levels.