Or so the conservative nationalists would have us believe. Waleed Aly has an interesting article on immigration and how government is doomed to repeat the stereotypes that immigrants have faced in the past.

From the article;

Welcome to the doctrine of Muslim exceptionalism. Yet we have seen this all before. The Greeks, with their mysterious condition, Mediterranean Back, were welfare bludgers, addicted to the dubious business practices of the cash economy. The Vietnamese had imported Triad culture's noxious mix of drugs and gang violence. Before them, Catholics were untrustworthy misfits: their allegiance was unshakably to Rome, and not to Australia. This was ostensibly a uniquely Catholic problem for 50 years.

With hindsight, we see this for the hysteria it is, yet we are strangely condemned to repeat it. Howard now argues the Muslim case is unprecedented. But the case of the latest stigmatised social group always is.

We is royal there. It is the government which gains political benefits out of a fearful society and civic structure - one which is dependent upon the national security state for safety of any kind. Vilification and discrimination by government are attempts at statist policies.

Government is not really doomed to repeat the immigrant and stereotypical mistakes of the past as I suggested in the intro. It does it knowingly and deliberately, ultimately to secure more power to itself.

One of the curious aspects of an open economy is that economic liberty is synonymous with economic integration. In this respect immigrants have taken to Australia with a will and make up a significant proportion of our productive output. According to the 2003/2004 Tax statistics there were 8.8 million income tax payers.

From the below it can be inferred there are over 2.6 million immigrants in the Australian labour force;

Source: BBS News, Factfile Global Migration

Because of our open throttle economy the unemployment rates in 2004 between native born and immigrants differed by only half a percent . Considering Australia has the highest percentage of immigrants as part of the labour force of any OECD nation this is a remarkable achievement. Only the US had better, and some of the differentials were as high as 12%.

Unfortunately, while we are running an open shop economically, lately our politicians have been trying to run a closed shop culturally and nationally. The purpose of liberal democracy is to serve the morality of liberty and the goal of a representative system is to dampen discrimination by a majority against a minority. Not much help when the representatives are the ones stoking that fire.

The global labour market is highly competitive, especially for skilled labor and Australia is just one of many nations competing in that market. The US remains dominant, the EU is increasing in appeal with a n increasingly integrated trade and work-visa system, Canada is another, and for those that have technical and language skills North Asia is highly appealing. As more and more nations adopt open economies, Australia is going to have to compete on more than just economic liberty.

Another issue we face is that the global labour market is appealing to Australians too. Currently there are approximately one million Australians living and working outside of Australia, this is nearly 10% of the current Australian labour force. The Australian Diaspora will probably increase in size, rather than shrink, as globalisation continues and work-visa restrictions between nations drop.

So where can we compete outside of economic liberty? The two most obvious are cultural liberty and political equality.

Multiculturalism is the policy of individuals pursuing their cultural interests. Multiculturalism does not over-ride constitutionalism or common law, nor does it judge cultures on value, elevating one over the other. But here we already have strong competitors; multiculturalism originated in Canada, and the United States focuses so heavily on economic integration that it stays out of the cultural arena leaving itself, by de-facto, as culturally liberal. Competition is good and the great thing about competing over liberty is; rather than a race to the bottom, it becomes a race to the top.

We used-to kind-of have a policy of political equality with subjects of the Queen of England up until the passing of the Australian Act and more recently we put a boot into the head of the New Zealanders. Rather than raise the fences, we should have gone the other way, and increased the voting franchise to include immigrants of any nationality.

Citizenship is based on the just relationship between individual and government. Immigrants pay taxes, follow laws and pursue their interests; as citizens do. An immigrants relationship with the government is exactly the same as the native born and enfranchisement should reflect this. There would be many benefits to the policy of giving immigrants the vote; it would stand out in the global labour market, it would speed the political integration of immigrants, it would reward immigrants for their contributions to Australian prosperity, it would give immigrants voice in representative politics which has a habit of singling out a politically weak minority; and finally it reinforces the just relationship between individual and government.

x-posted at clubtroppo

One of the fears of the civil disorder in Iraq was that it would lead to spill-over into the neighbouring countries. This has happened, according to the Washington Post there are approximately two million Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordon, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt. In addition to the exodus, it is estimated that 1.7 million Iraqis have been displaced and forced to relocate within Iraq.

To put that in persepective, the Australian Diaspora is approximately one million and about five percent of the Australian population; the Iraqi Diaspora is now double that in the space of three years and approximately eight percent of the pre-war population. So nearly 8% of the country have fled in three years of violence and disorder.

Source: Washington Post, War in Iraq Sets Off Massive Migration.

What should Australia's policy be on this issue? Iraq will eventually be a liberal democratic state with an open market economy as this remains this best technologies to bring prosperity to a people. Though it will probably have to wait twenty year until the current civil war and its future perturbations finally die down.

However, Australia should set itself up for this eventuality by taking some of these refugees, maybe as many as 10,000 a year, in order to establish more Australians that are familiar with Iraq for future trading and diplomatic reasons. There will be a day when we can sell wheat to Iraq without having to pay 300 million in bribes, it will be good if we have Iraqi-Australians who have prospered in Australia to help make this a reality.

Reason has an interesting article by Kerry Howley titled: Open Markets, Closed Borders . It cites a study of the Irish Potato famine where Irish immigrants fled to the United States and effectively relieved the pressure of what was a failing Irish economy while feeding the demands of a burgeoning US labor market.

The article states that since the migration wave from the famine that it has taken the Irish population 200 years to recover and real wages did not fall following the disaster. This is a similar economic process to the freed convicts in Australia who suddenly found themselves in a very tight labor market courtesy of limited migration to Australia. That colonial scarcity led to many eschewing the labor market altogether and becoming self-employed.

It is a sad fact that nation-states are clinging to their power through appeals to nationalism and clogging up the labor and market flows with poor policy designed to stop economic osmosis at the political boundary of the nation-state. The article writes:

Where once moving in meant showing up, the process of emigration has become bureaucratized, escape valves shut tight. Imaginary lines have hardened into often impassable borders, labor markets sharply curtailed.

Europe is not replacing itself, but it is harder to enter; developing countries cannot sustain their bulging populations, but they are harder to leave.

The article also notes that the free movement of goods and capital under globalisation has not been met with the free movement of labor. Despite this increasing numbers of individuals are joining the global workforce. Australia is a good example; it is estimate that the Australian Diaspora is approximately 5% of the current population.

One truth is that where politics does not provide or prohibits, then people will find a way around it:

The [immigration] bill fails to tap into the huge potential of the U.S. and developing world for mutual wealth creation; that's a potential employers and illegal immigrants will continue to discover themselves, outside the formal economy. Which means that we'll soon be having this debate again.

The fact there is so many illegal immigrants in the US means the labor market is broader than what politics or legislation defines it to be.

Political power in a market-state system comes through economic power; and the latter is heavily dependent upon population. Australia has twenty one million, and if it is to rival the political power of nations such as the UK, Germany and France it is going to have to increase its population. The Imagining Australia folks argue that forty million is easily achievable by 2050.

Russia and China are good examples of autocratic nations who have chosen different paths to achieve political power on the international stage. Russia has chosen military power backed by government controlled oil and gas resources. On the international stage they are treated more as an annoyance than a genuine political threat.

China, on the other hand, has chosen economic power as the fastest means to international power, and as a result are out-stripping Russia in international influence. (Would the IOC give Moscow the olympics in today's environment?) This is the difference between a market-state approach and a martial-state approach.

Australia has adopted the market-state with the economic rationalist policies from the 1980s and we have now maxed out our economy; it is genuinely limited by its labor output. Productivity and immigration are the main means for it to grow now.

Nation-states remain the dominant political entity on the international stage for bartering over local or regional interests. In this area Australia needs to assert itself more and back it with the economic power of the market-state. For instance the 'great and powerful friends' doctrine of foreign policy must go now, and that independence backed with the economic output of forty million (I have argued for sixty million in the past).

The Imagining Australia folks argue for an immigration flow of approximately 1% of the population each year up to 2050. This would double our existing immigration intake each year.

This would make our immigration intake about the same as what it was post-WWII. This level of immigration is not historically scary, nor is it that much of an increase on present levels of population growth:

It would lead to population growth of around 1.5%, which is only marginally more than the population growth of 1.25% that Australia has experienced for most of the last twenty years.

The Imagining Australia book (which is a policy book) has policy recommendations for achieving the target of forty million Australians by 2050.

With the failure of an immigration bill to get through the Senate at the Federal level in the United States, local government such as counties have started passing similar legislation. Recently Prince William County and Loudoun County in Virginia have passed laws which deny illegal immigrants services and require police to arrest them if discovered during routine stops and enforcement.

The problem for local lawmakers is we are moving from a nation-state to a market-state. The WaPo Editorial writes:

Illegal immigrants are in Northern Virginia for the same reason that they are in so many other parts of the country: Their labor is in demand. That's not going to change, unless the powers that be in Prince William and Loudoun have discovered a way to defeat market forces.

It is easy to write off nativism, nationalism and monoculturalism as driving these laws; but there are some real concerns in neighbourhoods due to over-crowding and some real oddities such as one recent article where a chook pen was kept in a local suburban house.

It should be noted where I grew up in the outer-edges of Sydney, the folks over the back of us had a chook pen until they tore their house down and rebuilt it. We lived in a suburban development.

Home Owner Associations [HOA] are having a role in this area too as they effectively homogenise suburbs and developments through voluntary agreement. Putting a chook pen in a HOA development will quickly earn a ticket from the board.

The argument for banning illegal immigrants from services is that they don't pay taxes as it is assumed they exist in a cash in hand economy. The local county here raises all their revenue from property taxes and business asset taxes.

Immigrants by increasing the demand for rental housing and supplying cheap labor indirectly increase the revenues for the county. Since the county does not have income taxes I don't see that as a valid reason at the local government level.

The other argument is that they are breaking the law. Which is true. However, nation-states have absurd regulations and bureaucracy in order to enter a country and work. Apparently H1B visas have made it easier for seasonal workers to come to the US in summer, but with the recent crackdowns it has become harder to get the H1Bs. So people enter anyway. The drive to work is greater than the drive to adhere to the bureaucratic regulations. Market forces ...

What is a valid policy then?

At the local level it is best to pass ordnances to ensure that local communities and developments have recourse for complaint. These exist anyway and most of the issues or horrors of suburbia are dealt with through county and town officials or inspectors.

HOAs also provide services in this area - mainly through being exceptionally strict and having a very homogeneous approach to the development, right down to what colour the house can be.

I don't think forcing police to check for illegal immigration is a good policy, it is probably best left if the individual is charged and then discovered to be illegal. However, rule of law is the rule of law, but I would not be surprised if discretion is used in this area.

Local officials are hampered in their ability to have some kind of local work visa or policy as this is handled at the federal level. The states, counties and towns have no recourse in that area.

What is obvious is that the political structures of the nation-state cannot deal with this aspect of economic liberalism. We allow capital and goods to flow unhampered from one nation-state to another. Inevitably labor will seek to do the same. I am personally of the opinion that economic prosperity is incomplete without the free movement of labor.

However, like capital and goods, I am comfortable with some degree of regulation - though minimal - inside a wider policy of the free movement of capital, goods and labor between political bodies.

Dan Deniehy was elected as the member of Argyle to the NSW Parliament at age 28. He ran on a platform as an independent liberal and described himself in his opening speech at the Lyceum Theatre as "the most rabid little democrat" ever to represent the people of Argyle.

His main targets were the political inequality of the squattocracy (his term) who survived through a mix of policy and malapportionment.

The politics of the people should be to wrest this mighty land from the hands of a faction [the Parker Government] whose only idea of its greatness was that it was a most excellent wool growing country.

An early identification of the "sheep's back" economy or its modern equivalent, "quarry Australia".

Deniehy advocated many Chartist positions such as paying members of parliament and universal male suffrage with no property requirements. Representing the Goulburn area was fiscally hard on Deniehy, he left Sydney for Goulburn in order to establish himself in a law practice, and unpaid public service put him deeper into debt.

While Deniehy, along with Harpur and Dunmore-Lang, was one of the great Australian republicans of the 19thC, his liberalism did not extend to the Chinese.

In consequence of the discovery of gold in the country, we are threatened by an overwhelming influx of barbarians, men of low social and mental development, and given to the indulgence of vices unfit to be named by a decent man.

If this immigration continued on a large scale, it would impart to the country a degraded and barbarous aspect, and the colonial descent would of a decidedly inferior caste.

Like Confucious and Jefferson, this is the retcon we have to perform for Deniehy, and in fact all Australian republicans of the 19thC. They were illiberal when it came to race and immigration.

I wonder what Australian republicans of the future will shake their heads over when they read the writings of 21stC republicans.

Haneef was detained under the Migration Act for the purposes of indefinite detention when the executive did not get the judicial ruling it wanted. This is classic exception governance which is outside the rule of law. This makes it repugnant to republicanism and liberal democracy; and consequently incompatible with them. Repudiation of the rule of law has follow on effects too.

The globe for skilled workers is the best it has ever been. Courtesy of globalisation, skilled workers are in demand everywhere, the main issue is getting around the nationalistic restrictions on the movement of labor which hinder the free movement of labor. Australia is just one nation competing for these skilled workers and governance plays a role in how professionals judge the appeal of a nation. For instance, as an extreme example, I am sure Zimbabwe would love my skills in their economy but no matter how much I got payed in that labor market there is no way I would work there. State of exception governance has rotted that nation to uncompetitiveness.

From the article:

The number of overseas doctors seeking to work in Australia has fallen 90 per cent because of the federal government's handling of the case against former suspected terrorism supporter Mohamed Haneef, a medical association warns.

The article does not determine there is causation or correlation in these figures and just quotes what the AMA states. However I would not be surprised if Indian medical professionals are now wary of Australian governance.

Good governance should never be traded for the continuance of power or for an electoral ploy. The last five years has seen this occur far too often. Dissappointingly so.

The purpose of globalization is the free-flow of goods, capital, communication, ideas and innovations through national borders. Globalization is incomplete without the free-flow of labor. As someone who is part of the global workforce and has worked in Australia and the United States this is an unshocking and completely humdrum conclusion to come to.

The political borders of nationalism are what stops the flow of goods, capital, labor and services and worse; it is becoming harder and harder for labor to compete in the labor market they want to. People are artificially held at home, and artificially excluded from labor markets by nationalism.

Chris Berg argues that the liberal position on immigration is that it is moral to enable and promote the free-flow of immigration.

This is not merely apologetics. I suggest that not only is immigration practically beneficial, but we have a moral obligation to accept into our borders those who want to come. For individuals born in under-developed countries, simply crossing into the developed world can dramatically increase their potential salary, as well as allow them to experience the historically unprecedented living standards that we already enjoy.

The objections to expanded immigration seem nationalistic or economically illiterate at best, and immoral at worst.

There are real issues in the absorbing of large numbers of immigrants into a country in a short time period but not in the manner of 'Fortress Australia' which becomes the politics of isolationism, cultural weakness (Australian culture has to be protected politically through nationalism) and xenophobia.

If anything, Australia, is an outstanding example of the absorption of immigrants and the positives that an increasingly open labor market brings.