Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil is announcing big changes to the visa system, but that won’t do much to deter surging net immigration numbers.
Anthony Albanese says his government inherited a migration system that was “not fit for purpose”. That’s true. Just how Labor expects to fix the biggest issues in migration is still not clear after the release of its response to visa fraud and exploitation on Wednesday.
According to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, she is getting on with the job of cleaning up the mess left by one particular ministerial predecessor Peter Dutton who she claims presided over a failing migration system that facilitated “some of the worst crimes in our society”.
The government’s commitment is to crack down much harder on visa rorts and fraudulent agents while offering up some dramatic expulsions of criminal sex and drug traffickers.
Naturally, Dutton denounces all this as a distraction on the eve of the Voice referendum, arguing he cancelled 6000 visas of criminals far more than O’Neil has managed. He won’t be taking lectures from Labor, he insists, given its previous record of “losing control of the borders”.
The Opposition leader also blames O’Neil for “presiding” over 105,000 asylum seekers without acknowledging most arrived in the Coalition era. Labor is about to announce reforms in this area too.
But beyond trading political barbs over criminality or abuse or asylum seekers, the larger policy dilemma for the government is surging legal net overseas immigration numbers.
These are running at well over 450,000 to the year to March relative to the official annual delivery of 190,000 permanent visas for migrants.
Immigration numbers are always a sensitive issue domestically, especially in Sydney and Melbourne which attract the majority of new migrants.
How this official 190,000 permanent annual intake will work with the much higher number of temporary visa holders remains to be explained.
Successive Australian governments have always expressed pride in a highly successful multicultural society given nearly 30 per cent of people were born overseas �` far more than the comparable figures in the US (14 per cent), the UK (17 per cent) or Canada (23 per cent). Another 20 per cent plus of people in Australia have at least one parent born overseas in a country that has relied heavily on waves of immigration over generations.
Given the low unemployment rate and the extreme labour shortages, business certainly wants to encourage more immigration now, whether temporary or permanent. The union movement is traditionally reluctant to endorse this rather than providing more training and jobs for Australians. But when housing supply is so scarce and rents so expensive, the politics of today’s record numbers become ever more difficult generally.
Federal governments are careful never to express detailed opinions on what the long-term targets for net overseas migration should be, wary of reviving the “big Australia” debate and, more recently, of risking Australia’s lucrative export revenue from international students.
The intergenerational reports under both the Coalition and Labor simply nominated the figure of 235,000 as a Treasury “assumption”.
O’Neil maintains that one of the real drivers of today’s high figure for net

overseas migration is lower departure numbers.
“People are coming and they are staying for longer and in some instances they are not leaving,” she said. “We can’t run a sustainable migration system in that way.”
Yet, the obvious benefits in making it easier and quicker to expel criminals and dodgy long-term visa holders or blocking highly dubious international student applications will do relatively little to reduce overall numbers in Australia.
As of July this year, there are just over 2.5 million people here on temporary visas. This figure, though, includes around 700,000 New Zealanders who will now find it easier to get Australian citizenship after Labor agreed to this pathway for those who have lived here for more than four years.
As well as around 650,000 international students, 200,000 graduates, 330,000 visitors and 130,000 working holidaymakers, there are 130,000 temporary skilled workers and 190,000 temporary visa holders who are also employed.
Labor’s immigration policy reforms to be announced this month will focus on encouraging the particular skills the workforce badly needs while also allowing more temporary visa holders to become permanent residents.
Measures will include simplifying the plethora of categories and visas, reforming the current complicated “points” system and fast-tracking approvals for both highly paid professionals and for lower paid workers in aged care. Temporary visa holders won’t have to remain with their sponsor employer.
Yet how this official 190,000 permanent annual intake will work with the much higher number of temporary visa holders remains to be explained.
Some of those on temporary visas and already here, including international students, will be granted permanent status from that annual quota, for example. But many more temporary visa holders have been staying despite having no real prospects of being granted permanent residency while new temporary visa holders continue to flood in. There are 200,000 more international students who have arrived since the beginning of the year.
The government’s tougher compliance and education standards for student visas �` as well as a reduction in work hours permitted �` may reduce that imbalance over time. But it’s hard to imagine Labor can engage in mass deportation, especially when many of those here can legally extend their stay by enrolling in more courses.
Such training should logically fit with Australia’s desperate need for more skills and trained workers �` assuming, of course, that the courses are appropriately tailored and adequate to address the real shortages.
So far, meeting that goal, too, has proven elusive.
Jobs and Skills Australia’s report released on Wednesday notes Australia faces a skills challenge not seen since the 1960s. It predicts that as well as building the necessary training and skills in the vocational and higher education sectors, the government’s migration reforms will allow skilled migration to effectively address labour shortages and boost productivity.
That’s the harder test to come. V.5008

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
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An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
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EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
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As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
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DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
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Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
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Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
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In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
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Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
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