Immigration levels are at all-time highs into Australia right now. The #1 source country is India, #2 China. Australia hit 25 million people 33 years earlier than planned, and annual migration levels are about 300,000.
Immigration is achieving the following:
- Lowers wages by increasing supply of labour, including creating a pool of workers willing to be employed at illegal rates - $10/hour. Many workers are willing to work for these rates, substantially below minimum wages, because it is more than they would earn in their home country, and because of promises from the employer that they will sponsor them for permanent residency. (Typically they will be paid correct minimum wage for 20 hours work, but in reality be staffed to work 30 to 50 hours).
- Increasing demand on public services. More people means a greater need for shared services: health, education, public transport, roads, welfare. Considering that the majority (~80%) of new migrants are going to Melbourne and Sydney, two built-up mature megacities of 5 million people, adding more services to these cities is incredibly expensive (eg. a new rail line means tunnelling, land buy-back, extensive shutdowns of existing road and rail etc).
- Increases consumption. This means increased consumer demand throughout the economy, simply based on the higher number of people. However, it also means consumption in an environmental sense: increased demand for water (which we need to desalinate, on the margins), increased demand for food and land (resulting in land clearance), increased CO2 emissions (Australia is a CO2 intensive country), increased pollution and waste.
- Increased demand for land and housing. Young Australians can no longer buy a house in their own country, and home ownership is at historical lows. Huge amounts of houses are being converted to large apartments.
So, if you're a land-owner and business-owner, happy days. You have greater demand for the things you own, and lower wages to pay out. If you're a tradesperson, you're also benefiting a lot from the intense housing and infrastructure construction activity. If you're an average Australian, you have lower wages, higher congestion on public services, increased taxes to pay for those services to be expanded, and no hope (in many cases) of buying your own house.
There is also the added social friction of these two large groups of migrants moving to the country - Indian and mainland Chinese culture is dissimilar to Australian. Already we are seeing neighbourhoods stratified by ethnicity.