Guardian angels in migrant garb
BEFORE the pandemic years, immigrants were mostly welcomed to perform jobs that the native-born did not want.
When then President Donald Trump touted America First and essential industries (agriculture and health care) and asked Americans to come to work the fields and hospital wards, the call fell on deaf ears.
On July 20, 2010, CNN reported that confronted with “growing anti-immigrant rhetoric, the United Farm Workers (UFW) union launched a nationwide campaign called ‘Take Our Jobs,’ challenging Americans to take their labor-intensive, lowpaying farm jobs.”
“Farm workers do the work that most Americans are not willing to do,” said union president Arturo Rodriguez in the announcement of the campaign.
The CNN report continued that “at least half a million applicants are needed to replace the immigrant workforce, so the union has posted an online application for Americans who want to work on a farm.
Rodriguez said at least 4,000 people have responded, but “only a few dozen have really followed through with the process.” Why?
UFW said “most applicants quickly lose interest once the reality sinks in that these are backbreaking jobs in triple-digit temperatures that pay minimum wage, usually without benefits. Some small farms are not required to pay minimum wage, and in 15 states farms aren’t required to offer workers’ compensation.”
International students, on the other hand, were greeted with enthusiasm and red carpets of welcome. They are, after all, not allowed to work in the US.
And they bring in billions in tuition.
In the academic year 2022-2023, a total of 1,057,188 international students reported by Opendoors studying in the United States contributed $40.1 billion to the US economy, according to the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA). These students also supported 368,333 jobs.
Even across the Atlantic, international students come with saving grace.
The National Australian Bank (NAB) said that “international student spending in Australia in 2023 accounted for over half of the country’s 1.5 percent GDP increase. In 2023, international students spent $48 billion in Australia, which is more than half of the country’s economic growth.
Echoing NAB, the Australian — a center-right, conservative broadsheet newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch under News Corp Australia — hailed foreign students as saviors who helped Australia “defy recession.”
Like a massive manna from heaven, “the $48 [billion] spent by international students last year gave Australia over half of its economic growth in 2023.”
This year, these guardian angels must spend more preventing Australia from going under.
The Australian government requires international students to show $24,505 for living expenses, one year of tuition, return airfare, and overseas student health coverage. The average annual living expense for international students in Australia is between AU$30,000 to AU$34,000.
Australia’s Department of Education reported in December 2023 that:
– There were 975,229 international student enrollments, a two percent increase in enrollments in the same period in 2019 (before the Covid-19 pandemic).
– The commencement count for this period (561,162) is the highest on record and 10 percent higher than in the same period of 2019 (510,460).
– Fifty-five percent of international students were from the following five student source countries: China (21 percent of international students), India (16 percent), Nepal (8 percent), Colombia (5 percent) and Philippines (5 percent).
– As for skilled workers, Australia Home Affairs will accept fewer skilled migrants for the 2023-2024 permanent migration program — 137,000 versus last year’s 142,400.
– Skill stream (137,100 places, approximately 72 percent of the program vs 28 percent for the family stream — 52,500 places). The focus on the skill stream “has been designed to improve the productive capacity of the economy and fill skill shortages in the labor market, with focus for those in regional Australia.”
Bringing up the rear from among the five DestiNations, New Zealand reports that the country has “recovered to nearly 60 percent of pre-Covid international student levels.
As of July 2023, Immigrant New Zealand (INZ) reports “a total of 53,428 student visa applications, of which 47,057 (88 percent) were approved. The pre-pandemic baseline cited was 2018/2019, the last full year before the onset of the pandemic, when 89,096 student visa applications were received with 82,176 (92 percent) approved.”
Looming as dark clouds is an expectation of “some visa processing delays with the higher volumes this year, with the INZ cautioning that “unfortunately, we have received many applications submitted only a few weeks before the student intends to commence study in New Zealand.”
The education sector also rang alarm bells with a recent advice from INZ that “overseas students must apply for their visas four months ahead of their departure” to assure admission.
As of October 7, the average processing time for an international student visa application submitted from outside of New Zealand was six weeks (29 working days), according to an Immigration New Zealand (INZ) update on Education New Zealand’s website.
New Zealand also posted the lowest revenues generated from international education.
According to Unicef, international students contribute just about NZ$6 billion to New Zealand’s GDP each year due to their labor supply and productivity.
The mother ship of Commonwealth nations, meanwhile, is sticking to its policy of keeping international students near the gates of processing hell.
From Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to the previous and current home secretaries — Suella Braverman and James Cleverly, respectively — the United Kingdom is bent on exorcising the UK of migrants and international students.
The exorcism of guardian angels in migrant garb continues next week.