Australia’s immigration minister has said he wants to give citizenship to the country’s almost 3 million temporary visa holders, and claimed mass migration is the solution to the housing crisis.
Tony Burke, who owns six investment properties and presides over an immigrant-majority electorate in Sydney’s Muslim-dominated southwest, made the comments in an interview with local Indian media last week where he also bragged about carrying out mass citizenship ceremonies before the last election.
Indian-born residents are now the largest immigrant group in Australia, overtaking those born in England for the first time in history, according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Wednesday.
Australia’s Immigration Minister Tony Burke tells Indian media he wants to give citizenship to all temporary visa holders “who continue to be here”.
There are currently 2.9 million foreigners on temporary visas.
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Host Pawan Luthra from the Indian Link Media Group’s The Pawan Luthra Podcast asked Mr Burke about what actions were being taken to reduce the number of immigrants who are “stuck” on temporary visas.
“There are lots of countries that have, effectively as part of their economy, guest workers who will never become citizens, I don’t believe that should be the model for Australia,” Mr Burke responded.
“I believe that people who are still here, people who are going to continue to be here and are working here should have an opportunity to become fully part of Australia’s democracy.”
According to the latest official data, there were 2,973,057 temporary visa holders in Australia as of March 31.
At another point in the 14-minute interview Mr Burke said “we can’t run our health system or build the houses that we need without immigration now”, but claimed the solution to unaffordable housing was more mass immigration.
“It is true that you need to make sure you are building enough houses for the people to deal with the housing shortage that we have – getting the right immigrants is actually part of the solution, not just, not necessarily, part of the problem,” he said.
“It’s not like you could have unlimited immigration without creating a problem with housing and infrastructure, so we need to make sure that it’s managed and it’s paced.
“If we were to stop immigration, if we were to single out, and to single out the Indian community of all communities which has so many highly trained people coming to Australia, would be to simply hurt Australia, not protect it.”
Mr Burke also claimed that “citizenship ceremonies are the most patriotic events you can have”, and said the cheers from Indians are “always the loudest” when he reads out lists of countries at the events.
Almost 2.5 million immigrants have arrived in Australia under Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, for an net overseas migration intake of approximately 1.5 million people, exacerbating Australia’s housing and cost-of-living crises, putting pressure on infrastructure, and further damaging social cohesion.
Header image: Left, Tony Burke at a citizenship ceremony. Right, during the interview (Indian Link).
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