Though it is unimaginable today, the border between the United States and Mexico remained relatively open until the 1960s. Migrants from Mexico travelled across it in their thousands, engaging in seasonal and cyclical work, returning to their families at the end of every season, or when the rhythms of life required it.
From the 1960s onwards, a wave of protectionist sentiment propelled the introduction of laws and policies to regulate movement across the southern border. Yet research shows that the measures had little overall impact on the numbers of people making the newly illegalised journey. By that point, Mexican workers had become part of their communities in the US and seasonal migration had become a fact of life in both places.
What the restrictions achieved instead was the creation of a large and ever-growing population of undocumented Mexican workers, barred from acting on their rights and easier for employers to exploit because they wielded the threat of state-enforced deportation.
Then, just as now, there is no necessary correlation between the anti-migrant rhetoric of governments and overall migration numbers. That is because migration restrictions always serve dual purposes: to exclude and repel some, while ensuring the unequal inclusion of the vast majority.
The same lens can be applied in Australia to Labor’s populist attempts at reducing migration intake. Take for example the much-publicised cap on international student numbers. Adjustments to planning levels have already limited the yearly student intake to 270,000. The Albanese government’s attempt to legislate that cap was intended to provide it with a firm legal basis, as well as an opportunity for political grandstanding.
But in real terms, the cap simply pins student intake to the pre-pandemic high point. Commentators have noted that it also operates based on opaque calculations, which exclude students in certain sectors from the count. Perhaps more to the point, the cap operates alongside the expansion of new and existing temporary visa programs, like the PALM Scheme for workers from the Pacific, or the lamentably named MATES visa for Indian graduates.
Whether restrictions on student visas will reduce temporary migration levels over the long run remains to be seen. The most immediate, tangible effect of the cap will be to enforce a state of perpetual limbo on temporary migrants already in Australia. Enforced through planning levels, the cap will mean that student visa applications are endlessly deferred rather than refused, leaving applicants in the lurch on provisional bridging visas, subject to restrictions on their ability to work.
Holders of bridging visas face some of the toughest conditions at work. They are locked out of the formal economy because of their precarious status, and pushed into the care and service sectors where wage theft and unsafe conditions are industry norms. The ability of bridging visa holders to enforce their rights is also curtailed by the prevailing political environment, in which temporary migrants are blamed for any number of social and economic ills, from housing pressures to inflation.
The way out of this political cul-de-sac is not by convincing voters in the abstract of the “benefits” of migration or by appealing to their benevolence. It is by convincing ordinary working people that immigration restrictions harm them by undermining the conditions of their colleagues on visas, and safeguarding their boss’ supply of exploitable, disposable labour. There are nearly 3 million temporary migrants in Australia at present, constituting nearly 10% of the working population. For most of us, temporary migrants are part of our workplaces — and part of our lives.
Compassion is no substitute for a common cause. This is what we saw at the recent Woolworths picket, as 1,500 workers, including many on temporary visas, went on strike against the largest supermarket chain in the country. A strike kitchen was set up by refugees on bridging visas as a gesture of solidarity for union members who supported their hundred-day encampment in front of the Department of Home Affairs offices earlier this year.
Becoming distracted by sleight-of-hand changes to migration levels or the reduction of rights for some will ultimately undermine the living conditions of us all.
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