Immigration to Australia

Just like United States, Australia has been hit with challenging immigration issues. The immigrants pose challenges as well as benefits to the social and economic spheres of the Australia. From these realized benefits, the government has been issuing student visas, employment visas, family visas and skilled visas.  These immigration programs have led to a heated debate among Australian community on level of immigration and composition. In addition, empirical and speculative data has exposed anticipated effects to both the economy and social setups if the current level of immigration and immigrants’ population growth is sustained.

A report released in 2002 and commissioned by Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs highlighted several concerns arising from immigration. Among them was worsening trade balance in Australia following high consumption of domestic goods, overuse of agricultural soils, increased production of greenhouse gases, deteriorating population of youthful and productive population and decline in air quality, biodiversity and water quality. These aspects present both advantages and disadvantages if immigration is allowed. Some of the benefits of immigrants is supporting the productivity of Australia considering its aging population. This has made the Australian government allocated employment and education opportunities to immigrants. This way, several assimilation approaches has been set. However, the nation is faced with the challenge of illegal immigrants among other social issues just like United States (Cohen, 2013). Policy makers are in a dilemma of ending the immigration program or supporting them. The consequences of ending immigration are both positive and negative. The negative consequences include the reduction of revenue and taxes collected from the immigrants hence slowing the growth rate of the economy. In addition, it can reduce the diversity and qualified workforce in the job market. The positive effects include boosting of national security and ending illegal drug trade associated with immigrants.

Following this situation, the Australian government has embarked on designing programs that will encourage legal immigration and reduce illegal immigration. This is the same case in United States where the government of U.S has supported immigration. The immigrants contribute to revenue, which is projected to an average of $15trillion in duration of ten years as gross domestic product. In addition, most of the immigrants have high levels of education thus contribute to the growth of the economy through various fields of profession. They also introduce rich culture and civilization in the United States (Barnes, 2013). The Australian problem is not unique and the government should devise approaches of increasing benefits of immigration and reducing any cost that can hurt the economy or disadvantage the natives.