Thank you for hat kingpins. The other perspective on immigration is its longer term economic effect:
It costs about $500K to raise a kid to 18 in parental & Government costs but if we predominantly use skills/oreign students settlement programs (which makes up about 80% of our immigrants) then there is an enormous economic benefit vis a vis "growing our own"
America the greatest economy has seen so far was built on/by immigrants.
For example the state of California had a smaller population that our State of Victoria in the 1860s but it has 25 million now; almost as big as Aus & an economy bigger than Aus
Our anti-Asian immigration/White Australian Policy from the 1880s to post WW2 meant that the US & Canada far outpaced us in population growth & GDP.
Economies are now becoming population determined with China & India forecast to be the 2 biggest global economies within a decade.
So perhaps the old addage may be right after all "Populate or Perish"
If one takes just 2 expenditure imperatives: -aged care/aged pensions & military which are set to skyrocket out to 2050, a halting of immigration means that individual Aussies will have to pay more tax per individual to just maintain these two. And there are 10s of others!
PS: As I have alredy mentioned, the 1950s was Aus Highest immigrant decade and it was followed by the 1960s, our greatest decade of economic growth @ 5% + P/A.
