Assimilation must be part of the deal for new citizens

It’s remarkable how often former prime minister Tony Abbott sends the commentariat into a spin. Perhaps only Donald Trump attracts more media attention. Recently in an opinion piece on this page (“Australia Day debate: There are 364 other days to wear a black armband”, January 22) he forewarned us: “I’ll have more to say about scaling back immigration.” Perhaps, like Trump, his views on immigration jar with the progressive elite. No surprise there. To mention Abbott and immigration in the same sentence is bound to elicit howls of outrage given his successful record of “turning back the boats”.

But, then, migration is an emotional topic. Take John Howard’s 2001 election campaign launch speech when, following a wave of unauthorised arrivals, he famously declared: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”

That sent the open-borders lobby wild. Journalist David Hardaker, commenting on the ABC’s The Drum, suspected nothing but bigotry. “The debate around asylum-seekers,” he said, “has always been framed around the undeclared racism that infects so much of Australia. John Howard’s line, ‘We will decide who comes to this country …’ worked powerfully on those who suspected filthy foreigners were trying to overtake good, upstanding Australia.”

ABC Insiders anchor Barrie Cassidy saw the Abbott government’s uncompromising action on border security as cruel and intended “to prevent the suffering of others from spoiling our utopia, a utopia built on migration”.

Not really. The Howard and Abbott governments’ strict enforcement policies saw record numbers of authorised refugees settled. In contrast, the soft approach, with its chaos, criminality and confusion, so favoured by Labor and advocated by the ABC’s intelligentsia, put our official humanitarian commitments in danger.

What critics of controlled immigration neglect is that Australian citizenship is a many-splendoured thing. It should be prized and not given lightly. It offers opportunity, democratic government, the rule of law, an advanced economy, a generous welfare safety net, taxpayer-funded education, gender equality and a wonderful natural amenity. It’s why so many are willing to pay a fortune for it and risk their lives to get here.

The Australian public understands this. They may be generous of spirit but they’re not stupid. They share Howard’s view that however they arrive, “migrants are obliged to ‘be Australian’ and social integration must be pushed harder”. Clearly, among the latest wave of migrants, this is not always accepted. Crime rates among some cohorts are disproportionately higher than for the general population. Many of those of Islamic faith in particular remain consciously outside the mainstream, a pattern that has been obvious in Britain and Europe for decades. Sharia law, illegal cultural practices, not to mention terrorism, have caused the Australian people to reconsider the sources of our migrant intake, humanitarian or otherwise. And when the children of those migrants fail to assimilate, it adds weight to the perception that the problem of integration is more cultural than time-related. It’s not bigoted or intolerant to point this out.

Nor is it racist to mention that migrants from North Africa and the Middle East are three times likelier than Europeans and Asian migrants to be out of work in the first five years of settlement. Islamic migration experts blame the high unemployment rate on employers who shun applicants named Mohammed and women who wear hijabs. But many have little English and few skills, and with unskilled jobs increasingly lost to technology these people are at risk of becoming a permanent underclass. The fastest growing income-support pension is disproportionately drawn by people born in the Middle East.

The 1960s bestseller They’re A Weird Mob records the traditional, generous, if sometimes irreverent, welcome given to migrants 50-odd years ago. That spirit remains. But then, as now, there was an implied reciprocal obligation. Immigrants were expected to be grateful for their good fortune, to make efforts to speak English and to rapidly assimilate.

Then, in the 1970s, came the sudden shift to a multicultural model, with “ethnic” radio and “multicultural” television providing a “cultural bridge” to the arrivals’ new home. The priority for assimilation dissipated. Instead, institutionalised “diversity” promoted by a powerful industry dedicated to identity politics emerged. The result is division, growing intolerance and diminished national pride.

Because newly settled migrants are to be found away from the corridors of power or the trendy inner city and leafier suburbs, the commentariat has little contact with them outside the workplace. Not for them the daily issues of ethnic enclaves, the crime and the loss of amenity. For them it’s easy to signal compassion and tolerance, and to sneer at those who complain. Yet, while ordinary Australians see their living standards falling and their infrastructure failing, they observe new settlers receiving favoured treatment when it comes to welfare and justice. They watch the price of dwellings being bid beyond their reach by absentee immigrant landlords. Right or wrong, they feel discriminated against. Newly installed senator Jim Molan has picked up on this.

While skilled migration represents two-thirds of our total intake, the skills focus may need to be sharper. Our immigration policies should rely less on emotion and more on hard-headed experience. What is the point of accepting people as Australian citizens if they and their families want to live their lives as if they had never left the land of their birth?

The truth is social pressures have always been a feature of Australia’s many waves of migration. What makes the present pushback different and more intractable is the rise of state-backed multiculturalism, which encourages Balkanisation and aggravates cultural tensions.

Abbott or not, this debate has a long way to go and political correctness can’t settle it.