Negative Aspects of Immigration to Australia

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Negative

Resource Scarcity

Economics is loosely defined as “the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends” Increasing the population through immigration results in a more challenging task due to the increase in competing ends; by definition, a bad economic decision. As population increases with fixed resources the amount per person will decrease, thus resulting in less wealth per person.

Furthermore per-unit cost of natural resources based good potentially will increase due to the increase in supply. For example Tasmania implemented an electricity generator program due to its shortage of electricity which uses wind turbines. The generated electricity then travels kilometers in cables costing hundreds of million dollars. However several years ago these actions were not necessary as cheap power could be obtained through hydro-electric schemes. Although today all rivers have been dammed resulting in other forms of power with higher costs to meet the growing population

Another example is water usage. Since 2007 there has been water shortages resulting in inland farmers having less water. Damming .rivers in northern Australia and piping all irrigation water rather than let it run through open channels have been considered. However the changing systems demands a greater economic cost than old methods of obtaining water. Marginal cost has increased with population.

Wage decline

An increase in labour supply (through immigration) in comparison to the capital supply (fixed in short run, and costly to increase in long run) and the natural resource supply (fixed in short and long run) will stimulate the free labour market resulting in wages to fall. With the higher supply of labour, working conditions will also de...

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... in 2004, although she had imposed barriers for certain skilled visas. Evidently the measures taken are not enough to hinder the flow of cheap labour. In 2003 a report was released by Bob Kinnaird stating that the stock of ICT migrants reached an unsustainable 13,000 roughly 7% of sectors labour force and job ads for ICT graduates increased by 80% from last year. David Crowe concludes that migrants are making working conditions harder and that the intake for specific labour forces such as ICT jobs should stay at reduced levels till the Australian ICT labour force can handle increased levels of ICT migrants, allowing demand for Australian graduates. Another report from the Herald Sun newspaper highlights the severity of the situation Australia faces.

Written on 21/07/05 John Masanauskas wrote an article further drawing attention to Australia's immigration effects.

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