View From the Hill: One Nation Would Have More People Leaving Than Entering Australia Over Three Years

One Nation on Monday released a radical policy proposing Australia’s net overseas migration (NOM) be negative over three years, as the country reduced its temporary migrant population by 750,000.

Under its plan, the student intake would be dramatically cut, the opportunity for temporary students, graduates and temporary workers to sponsor family members would be substantially restricted, “visa hopping” would be attacked, and those here illegally would be booted from the country.

{snip}

After the negative “reset”, the NOM would return to a ceiling of 130,000. under the policy. At present the NOM is about 300,000, with the government seeking to reduce it to 225,000 by 2027-28.

{snip}

Under One Nation’s proposed program

• students would have to depart when they finished their studies unless eligible for a targeted graduate pathway
• graduate visa holders could switch to an employer-sponsored temporary skilled visa,but not to another graduate or student visa from onshore
• temporary skilled workers could renew their work visa if eligible, but could not switch onshore to various other temporary categories
• visitors could not apply for another visa from within Australia, apart from an exception for family sponsored applications.

There would be carve outs for PALM (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme) workers and backpackers, needed for regional areas. Most of these workers are not counted in the NOM.

The main student visa intake would be capped at 100,000 a year for three years.

The migration policy says the target would be to cut the student visa population , including accompanying family, from 590,000 to 350,000 – the same level as in 2015.

One Nation wants to cut the graduate visa population from 270,000 to just 40,000 by the third year, a massive reduction.

There would be a single student graduate visa with a cap of only 20,000 granted annually. The new visa would be for 18 months and one off.

Allocations will first be made to graduates who held the new high-value study visa. Remaining places will be open to other students, with priority being given to fields such as science, engineering, frontier technology and healthcare, and exceptional graduates in other fields that serve the national interest.

One Nation’s plan will also ensure Australian students are not competing with international students for graduate jobs in fields like accounting, IT and business where there is a clear oversupply of graduates already.“

One Nation would end family visas for temporary skilled workers.

Employers will still be able to sponsor skilled workers. The program will remain demand-driven, with no new cap on primary worker visas.

{snip}

One Nation claims the skilled visa program “has become a family immigration program”.

Under the policy, people here illegally would have three months to leave. If they complied they could apply from offshore for a visa in the future. If they did not comply they would face “immigration enforcement” and be banned from ever re-entering the country.

{snip}

Immigrants could not come from countries on the government’s “do not travel” list. There are currently 26 countries which would include Ukraine, Russia, Venezuela, Palestine and Lebanon.

{snip}