The Australian-Style Points-Based Immigration System: Reality, Myth, and Delusion
One of the stranger elements of the British political landscape is the fixation with an ‘Australian-style points-based immigration system’. It features in the political discourse as a ‘sensible alternative’ to freedom of movement after Brexit. It has been named dropped by Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, and Priti Patel. It is a core commitment of the Conservative Party’s manifesto in the current general election. The problem is that it has little to do with Australia and that country’s immigration system. Indeed, it is a dog whistle that appeals to the folk-memory of the far right in the UK.
The Reality of the Australian-Style Points Based Immigration System
The premise of a points-based immigration system is that a non-citizen’s ability to immigrate is determined by how well they score on a selected criterion. This criterion usually falls along the lines of age, language fluency, wealth, and the like. The reason why Canada first adopted this form of immigration system was to remove bias against non-Europeans. Australia adopted a similar system for similar reasons several years later. This immigration policy appealed to Canada and Australia because they are both large countries with relatively small populations. Australia is geographically comparable to China in size, but has a population comparable to that of Shanghai. There is a lot of room for growth. In both states the points-based immigration system was designed to bring in large numbers of young, educated, and English-speaking (or French-speaking in case of Quebec) migrants. What the Australian points-based system is not is a system that matches highly skilled immigrants with vacant jobs. Under the points-based system migrants generally do not have to have a job offer to receive permission to settle; they can accrue enough points without one.
This seems to be contradict what Boris Johnson says he wants. On the one hand he wants an Australian-style system, on the other he wants highly skilled migrants with job offers. This is not a hot take. Many commentators and analysts have pointed out that this system is not really suitable for the UK. So why the fixation on an ‘Australian-style points-based immigration system’?
The Myth of the Australian-Style Points Based Immigration System
The idea of a points-based immigration system is not Australian in origin; as mentioned above it is Canadian. Yet, a ‘Canadian-style points-based immigration system’ doesn’t have the same resonance, perhaps because Canada seems too liberal and comfortably multicultural in the British imagination. Australia’s immigration policy, on the other hand, has long been a fixation of the British far right. The ‘White Australia’ policy was deeply promoted in the interwar period in the UK as a way of keeping Australia an ethnically ‘pure’ bastion of British Empire; it was strongly championed by the British Union of Fascists. This left a resonant folk memory about immigration to Australia in the far right of the UK. Australia was seen as essentially Anglo in character and ethnicity, but without the constraints of liberal political correctness or the interference of the European Union. It became the UK’s alter ego. It does not matter that this is completely disconnected from the reality of life in Australia; those who are most passionate about an Australian-style points-based immigration system probably have never set foot in Australia and if they did would be shocked to find a multicultural society that welcomes people from all over the globe thanks to its points-based immigration system. But myth and memory do not need to concern themselves too much with reality.
The United Kingdom Independence Party tapped into this folk-memory when it became the first party to champion the Australian-style points-based immigration system. Per the research of Stephen Gibson and Rachel Booth, it enabled UKIP to avoid accusations of racism by adopting an ‘impartial’ points-based system, while still emphasising the importance of controlling immigration; it let them use the discourse of ‘us and them’ to wink and nod towards the ‘right’ sort of person that would be able to gain the requisite points. This has been echoed in the ‘firmer and fairer’ description of an Australian-style points-based immigration system found in the Tory manifesto that vows to ‘put you first’. The signalling is hardly subtle.
The metastization of the myth of the Australian-style points-based immigration system into the discourse of the Conservative Party shows how far to the right the party has moved under the tenures of Theresa May and Boris Johnson. It is a party that is obviously catering to the xenophobic far right through the use of this particular dog whistle. Its resonance shows how a large portion of Brits are willing to embrace the febrile folk-memory of Empire with its calming delusions of purity, hierarchy, and stability, rather than embrace an immigration policy suitable to the needs of post-imperial Britain.
*This was posted during the UCU strike in my capacity as a citizen. This website is not maintained or paid for by my employer.