The avalanche of immigrants under this government is driving up house prices and filling up our roads and hospitals

The Albanese government has announced a “strike force” to crack down on visa rorts – but the real problem is so many immigrants were let in, in the first place.

This is why we pay Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil the big bucks.

She’s figured out why we had a record 454,000 immigrants in just a year – the population of Canberra and Wagga Wagga combined. Simples! “They are not leaving.”

To be specific, there are “lower departure numbers”.

But the Albanese Government would be “addressing this failure of people to depart”, said O’Neil, putting on her grimmest face.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil. Picture: John Grainger

Gosh. What could that be? House to house searches? Face-recognition technology at 7-Eleven stores, with snatch squads standing by to bundle overstayers into the nearest flight home?

Er, no. Here’s some of O’Neil’s plan: “We will integrate all of the different pieces of the puzzle that are involved in making sure that criminals cannot exploit this system, they will all be brought together under one function into a permanent strike force”.

What? What on earth was this press conference? Are these people having us on?

For seven months O’Neil sat on a report by former police commissioner Christine Nixon into failures of our immigration system and now – a week before the Voice referendum, with Labor desperate to change the topic – do we get its “response”.

In reality, O’Neil wanted to persuade us Opposition leader Peter Dutton was a “fraud”. Oh, he pretended he’d been tough as immigration minister, but he’d halved the officials checking whether people were rorting our immigration system.

Shocking things had happened! Sex slaves! Exploited workers!

Funny though, I remember Dutton cancelling the visas of more than 6000 crooks, while O’Neil hasn’t done a fraction of that.

But all this is a sideshow to the real immigration crisis: The avalanche of immigrants under this government, driving up house prices, filling up our roads and hospitals and trains.

No, the problem isn’t so much that some – like students – aren’t going home as promised.

It’s that so many were let in, in the first place. This government has issued a record number of visas, for a start, as well as allowing in a record 105,000 asylum seekers in 15 months.

It’s still at it. The Government last week said it wanted to extend the low-paid aged care visa agreements to other areas of work, sucking in more workers. And, of course, it’s lifted the cap on permanent immigrants from 160,000 to 190,000.

I guess they, too, “are not leaving”. Maybe O’Neil needs another seven months to work out Plan B.