Barnaby Joyce says One Nation will not send immigration officers “running around door to door” looking for visa overstayers, but a former senior Immigration Department official says the party’s promise to remove tens of thousands of unlawful residents eventually confronts a basic problem: if they do not leave voluntarily, somebody has to find them.
The question is emerging as one of the most difficult parts of Pauline Hanson’s plan to reduce Australia’s temporary migrant population by more than 750,000 over three years and drive net overseas migration into negative territory.
One Nation wants about 80,000 unlawful non-citizens given three months to leave voluntarily. Those who comply would retain the ability to seek an Australian visa from overseas in future. People who stay unlawfully and are subsequently caught could face lengthy or permanent bans on returning.
Joyce has sought to distinguish the policy from the mass immigration raids associated with Donald Trump’s administration in the United States.
“We’re not going to be running around door to door,” he said while explaining the policy on to Sky News, arguing people living unlawfully in Australia would eventually “pop up” through employment and other interactions with authorities.
One Nation says cutting off illegal employment and increasing penalties for businesses hiring unlawful workers would encourage people to leave without requiring an American-style enforcement operation.
But Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the Immigration Department, told Guardian Australia that long-term overstayers and unsuccessful asylum seekers were unlikely to be persuaded simply by the threat of tougher penalties.
“Making threats will make little difference to any longterm overstayer or unsuccessful asylum seekers,” Rizvi said.
He estimated implementation could cost the Commonwealth “many, many billions” once immigration compliance officers, detention facilities, court proceedings, legal services, deportation flights and possible compensation for wrongful action were included.
“They would need to hire a large number of staff – many, many hundreds – to locate overstayers,” he said, warning that raids on farms, building sites and other workplaces would also provoke resistance from employers.
The expense would not end when somebody was located.
“Copying Trump would be just a massive waste of money. A carefully calibrated and targeted expansion in compliance activity would be much better”
Rizvi said authorities would need additional detention capacity and staff while cases were resolved, and the government would sometimes need to negotiate with foreign governments before people could be returned.
“They will also need staff to guard and run a big increase in detention centres. Where will these be built? At what cost?” he said.
Rizvi compared the scale of enforcement required with the approach taken under Trump, arguing a targeted expansion of Australian compliance activity would be more effective than attempting to reproduce the American model.
“Copying Trump would be just a massive waste of money. A carefully calibrated and targeted expansion in compliance activity would be much better,” he said.
The criticism goes to the difference between announcing a migration target and building the machinery needed to achieve it.
One Nation’s policy would reduce Australia’s temporary migrant population by more than 750,000 over three years, largely through lower student and graduate numbers, restrictions on dependants and fewer temporary skilled migrants. The party says new visas would be the principal lever rather than attempting to forcibly remove hundreds of thousands of people already in Australia.
Graduate visa holders would be cut particularly sharply, while international student numbers would fall substantially and family visas attached to temporary skilled migration would be heavily restricted.
Joyce has defended that approach by arguing Australia can continue accepting workers it genuinely needs while removing migration pathways he believes are adding population without sufficient economic benefit.
He has also argued against allowing temporary skilled migrants routinely to bring their families, saying that removing those associated visas would account for more than 100,000 of the proposed reduction.
The difficulty is that Australia is simultaneously competing internationally for nurses, doctors, engineers, tradespeople and other skilled workers.
A country can offer a job to an overseas nurse, but the offer becomes less attractive if the nurse is told a spouse or children cannot come.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation estimates internationally qualified nurses make up about 20 per cent of the nursing workforce and about 35 per cent in aged care
Joyce has played down claims that One Nation’s plan would cripple nursing and aged care, arguing those occupations account for a relatively small share of skilled migration. However, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation estimates internationally qualified nurses make up about 20 per cent of the nursing workforce and about 35 per cent in aged care.
The aged-care sector is already warning about the consequences.
Rob Stokes, an advocacy officer with Anglicare, told Guardian Australia the proposal could be “catastrophic”, particularly in regional communities where providers already struggle to recruit.
“Dozens of homes would have no choice but to close down across the country, particularly in regional and rural areas, where the workforce is just very, very hard to recruit,” he said.
Agriculture presents a similar problem.
Industry representatives are in Canberra this week raising concerns over the processing of working holiday visas before the pre-Christmas harvest period, when farms require large numbers of seasonal workers. One Nation says working holiday makers and the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme would remain, reflecting the party’s acknowledgment that some regional industries could not function without overseas labour.
Hanson has responded to criticism from business by arguing corporate Australia has become too dependent on migration.
In a social media post, she said people had stopped trusting big business because it too often defended “the indefensible”, accusing business groups of supporting continued mass migration “to prop up their bottom lines at the expense of yours”.
There is a political argument in that attack.
Strong population growth increases the pool of workers and consumers, supports demand for housing and retail spending and adds customers for businesses. Universities have also built substantial financial dependence on international education.
But those economic interests do not resolve the enforcement question at the centre of One Nation’s unlawful migration policy.
If people accept the three-month offer and leave voluntarily, the cost is relatively contained.
If they do not, Australia must identify them, establish their status, potentially detain them, deal with appeals and judicial reviews, secure travel documents and arrange their departure.
That process becomes more complicated when people have lived in Australia for years, formed families or come from countries where reliable identity documents are difficult to obtain.
The official unlawful population is also not identical to the much larger group of unsuccessful asylum applicants still in Australia. Home Affairs figures cited by Guardian Australia show more than 110,000 people who were not granted protection visas were yet to be deported in July, but that includes people lawfully on bridging visas or pursuing administrative and judicial reviews.
That distinction matters because lawful bridging visa holders cannot simply be treated as illegal overstayers.
Greens senator David Shoebridge has argued the practical consequence of One Nation’s policy could be a much larger detention system, warning that behind the proposal was “the threat of detention camps” and more people being placed in what he described as a cruel system.
One Nation rejects the characterisation of its policy as indiscriminate enforcement.
Joyce’s message is essentially that people will first be given a choice: leave voluntarily and retain the possibility of returning legally, or remain unlawfully and risk being found later with far more serious consequences.
That may prove politically attractive to voters who believe migration rules have not been enforced.
It is relatively easy to reduce future visa grants. It is much harder to reduce the existing migrant population quickly while protecting hospitals, farms, aged-care homes, construction projects and other industries that have become reliant on overseas labour
But it does not eliminate the administrative problem.
If One Nation comes to government and tens of thousands of people ignore the deadline, the party would eventually have to decide how actively it intends to find them.
The same dilemma runs through the wider 750,000 target.
It is relatively easy to reduce future visa grants. It is much harder to reduce the existing migrant population quickly while protecting hospitals, farms, aged-care homes, construction projects and other industries that have become reliant on overseas labour.
One Nation has moved well beyond its earlier migration slogans and produced a policy with numbers that can now be scrutinised.
That is useful.
It also means questions about implementation can no longer be answered by simply repeating the size of the cut.
Joyce says there will be no door-to-door hunt.
Rizvi says removing the people who refuse to leave could still require hundreds of officers, workplace raids, larger detention centres and billions of dollars.
Both statements can be true.
And that is precisely why the next phase of Australia’s migration debate will be less about how many people politicians promise to remove, and more about what they are actually prepared to do to make them leave.
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