THE YACHT PEOPLE

Back in the early1980s, in a previous life on 3AW, I was broadcasting from Hong Kong on the way home from an historic live broadcast from Beijing. I picked up the local English paper, the South China Morning Post and there was a story and photo about wealthy Chinese migrating to Australia. It quoted Australian officials saying that if you had $250,000 to bring with you then you could queue jump and be welcomed with open arms.

I didn’t believe it. But it turned out to be true. And clever Chinese migrants used it to sucker the Australian Government. It was around the time of the early ‘boat people’ so I nicknamed this new breed the ‘yacht people’. And they sailed right through our immigration rules and regulations.

Sure, they deposited quarter of million dollars in Australia and promised to start a business and they got their citizenship. But once here they sent the money back to Hong Kong and another yacht person brought it in. How many times did that scam work? The mind boggles.

Immigration policy is in the news again (is it really ever out of it?)  because the Federal Government is working on a new five to ten year plan  to consider the types of migrants that Australia needs, where they should settle, and how the country can handle increased demand for housing, transport, and water.

Not quite John Howard’s effective boat people scare campaign which won him his second term in office with his famous quote ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’.

On the surface the numbers don’t seem a problem. Australia took in less than 200,000 official migrants last year. But we also welcomed more than 600,000 temporary residents on overseas student visas, working holiday visas, and the 457 skilled worker sponsored visas. And once they get a foothold they never leave. Why would they want to? Then there are refugees, queue-jumping boat people and around 50,000 New Zealanders.

One of our biggest problems is that we are a vast country, with a half-arsed policy, on a continent that only has 21 million people. That’s less than California.  It is true half the population clings to the eastern seaboard in two cities  Melbourne and Sydney. But you can’t force people to live in Mt. Isa or  Mudgee.

It would be like migrating to America and being ordered to live in Biloxi or Poughkeepsie.

The other thing that intrigues me about the immigration debate – which sadly always degenerates into racist stereotypes – is that some of the most vociferous  supporters of a closed door policy are either migrants or from migrant families themselves.

Happy, prospering people from Italy and Greece and Eastern Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s who seem to be saying: ‘We made it. We’re happy. Now shut the gate’. Plus the British migrants who think Australia should have remained an Anglo-Saxon outpost protected from Pakistanis and Indians and Asians. Except as servants, of course.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009