Federal Parliament’s joint standing committee on migration is investigating the value of skilled migration to Australia.

At a time when anti-migration sentiment is running hot in sections of the media and community – despite the undoubted contribution of managed migration to Australia’s ongoing economic growth and success – this is a timely inquiry to carefully consider this issue.

The Migration Institute of Australia has just submitted to the inquiry that skilled migration is essential to Australia’s long-term economic performance, productivity growth and fiscal sustainability.  

Skilled migrants supply a significant component of net workforce growth, underpin essential services, support innovation and regional development, and contribute positively to government revenue.  

Treasury’s recent intergenerational reports have highlighted Australia’s ageing population problem, with our age dependency ratio (percentage of working population compared to the young and old) predicted to rise from 26.6 per cent about now to 38.2 per cent in 2062-63.

Australia faces a demographic cliff and, without any unexpected increase in our low birth rates, only skilled migration can help ameliorate this problem.

No amount of anti-migration rhetoric can change the fact that without properly managed migration there won’t be enough workers to adequately provide the health, aged care and general services that our ageing population will need.

Just take a look at any health care company or transport company today and check out the migrant component of their workforce. Many of these companies would struggle to provide adequate services to Australia’s ageing population without migrant workers.

Successive studies have shown that skilled migration contributes significantly to GDP growth, productivity and labour force participation.

Migrants have accounted for more than 70 per cent of workforce growth since 2000 and are projected to continue contributing materially to economic growth over coming decades.

Skilled migrants are highly educated and more likely to be net fiscal contributors than the general population, supporting the sustainability of our health, aged care and welfare systems.

They are also typically younger and, along with international students and working holiday makers (who have limited work rights and are also young), they help ameliorate our ageing population and labour constraint challenges.

Skilled migration is critical to workforce capacity in sectors with persistent shortages, such as health, aged care, construction, engineering, education, agriculture and technology.

In regional Australia, skilled migrants play a vital role in sustaining local services, supporting business viability and stabilising population decline.

The MIA submission notes that migration is not the primary driver of housing and infrastructure pressures, and that these challenges are largely the result of structural supply constraints, planning delays and long-term underinvestment.

Restricting skilled migration in construction would risk worsening labour shortages in that area, thereby increasing housing and infrastructure constraints rather than alleviating them.

The government could also consider a niche housing investment visa requiring a significant $5 million plus investments in housing infrastructure if it wanted migration to help address housing shortages.

The MIA’s submission also notes that while the economic, social and cultural benefits of skilled migration are well established, the effectiveness of Australia’s current skilled migration system is being affected by challenges in policy design and administration.

For instance, regional migration settings are sometimes less attractive than metropolitan pathways, undermining their effectiveness in addressing regional labour shortages.  The MIA’s submission calls for simplified, incentive-based regional visa settings to better attract skilled migrants to regional areas.

The government also needs to respond to its regional migration paper of 2024. The regions desperately need well-managed, properly targeted regional migration backed up by policy reform.

Lengthy visa backlogs, processing delays and complex administrative systems are also affecting the effectiveness of the skilled migration program.

Just last week, Queensland construction company Maaken went public on the slow and complex administrative processes to hire skilled tradespeople such as carpenters for its projects. According to Maaken, these delays are threatening critical housing and infrastructure projects.

The government also needs to address skilled migration processing delays, particularly for the demand-driven temporary skilled Subclass 482 visa. This visa is designed to address immediate skills shortages and is critical to our overall economic performance by reducing skills bottlenecks that can delay projects.

There needs to be increased departmental resourcing to meet stated processing targets of seven and 21 days for this flagship visa, rather than the months long processing delays that are common now.

Finally, the MIA submission stresses the importance of improving public understanding of skilled migration and countering misinformation that undermines confidence in Australia’s managed migration system. This could include the development of a migration strategy that is transparent and evidence based.

Properly managing migration, ensuring social cohesion and providing adequate settlement services are important issues for the government to address.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that skilled migration has been a critical component of Australia’s economic success and has helped sustain decades of continued economic growth for all Australians.

It’s time we all recognised and celebrated this, and for the government to focus on strengthening our skilled migration settings.

Peter van Vliet is CEO of the Migration Institute of Australia. He was previously a senior executive in the Commonwealth and Victorian governments