{"id":152264,"date":"2025-09-18T14:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/152264\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T14:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:39:09","slug":"australias-immigration-is-not-out-of-control-its-trending-lower-and-has-been-for-over-a-year-australian-immigration-and-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/152264\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s immigration is not \u2018out of control\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s trending lower and has been for over a year | Australian immigration and asylum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest population numbers are out and they debunk recent claims<\/a> by right-wing media and thinktanks that immigration is at \u201crecord\u201d levels and \u201cout of control\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Australian Bureau of Statistics<\/a> estimates that net overseas migration, or Nom as it\u2019s known, was just shy of 316,000 in the year to March.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s down from about 335,000 in the year to December.<\/p>\n

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To be clear: migration, while easing, remains high compared with the roughly 230,000 annual rate in the five years before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

But this time last year, the ABS was reporting an annual Nom of 493,800, while the peak was almost 556,000 in September 2023.<\/p>\n

immigration graph<\/a><\/p>\n

Clearly, then, migration is not at \u201crecord levels\u201d, nor is it \u201cout of control\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s trending lower and has been for 18 months.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even tracking lower than predicted in the March budget, as Jim Chalmers told journalists on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now 17,000 people lower than the Treasury forecast for net overseas migration and 40% below the peak that we saw in that overseas migration following Covid\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Trumpian tactics\u2019<\/p>\n

Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the immigration department, said the latest figures were a tonic to outlandish claims that he said were designed whip up an anti-immigration<\/a> \u201cfrenzy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rizvi said some organisations were guilty of misusing separate (albeit related) overseas arrivals and departures figures to inflate migration statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do need to discuss immigration levels in an open, honest and transparent way,\u201d Rizvi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a very real question of where net migration will settle under current policy settings and how that relates to the prime minister\u2019s promise to get net migration down to pre-pandemic levels.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut these media outlets and thinktanks do not seem interested in an honest debate. They prefer to mislead and whip up hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what now?<\/p>\n

Treasury officials assume net migration will slow to 335,100 in the year to June, before trending lower to about 262,000 in this financial year and steadying at about 230,000 annually for the rest of the decade.<\/p>\n

Is that too much migration? Too little?<\/p>\n

As Rizvi suggests, the government doesn\u2019t seem to know, and largely accepts net overseas migration as something that happens, rather than something they plan.<\/p>\n

Certainly, our labour market<\/a> has comfortably accommodated the post-Covid jump in immigration.<\/p>\n

Data released on Thursday showed the jobless rate was 4.2% in July, and has been at about those levels for 18 months.<\/p>\n

But if Nom doesn\u2019t naturally revert back to its pre-pandemic levels over the coming couple of years, then expect to hear more about \u201cout of control\u201d migration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest population numbers are out and they debunk recent claims by right-wing media and thinktanks that immigration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-152264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}