Is More Immigration a Good or Bad Thing?

Immigration is such a hot topic. Our borders are, in a sense, our collective skin and the question of who we let in seems to activate our primal instincts. Who comes in can feel and can at times be dangerous. 

Yet we want new ideas, new brain and brawn-power to fuel our country. A larger population can bring greater economic growth and prosperity. And with fertility rates below replacement level in most wealthy countries, our population will decline without immigration. 

There’s our sense of identity at stake as well – who are we as a nation? Are we defined through an ethnicity or particularly culture, as many nations today still are? Or do we define ourselves through our heritage, our stories, our values?

The lens we bring to immigration often colours our reading of the facts. Do immigrants ‘take our jobs’ or do they add to the pool of consumers and producers that make us bigger and more interesting? Are immigrants more likely to turn to crime, or are they in fact harder working than the local population? Will they join and grow the story of our nation, or will they remain foreign? 

But most importantly for this episode, how many immigrants can our natural environment and our infrastructure bear before the burden outweighs the benefits for the local population? And are these hard limits or can we invent and invest our way out of them? 

To help us through this, we have George Megalogenis and Bob Carr. 

George Megalogenis is a strong advocate for greater immigration. He’s a journalist and author of five books including The Australian Moment which won the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-fiction and formed the basis for his three-part ABC documentary series Making Australia Great. George’s other books include Faultlines, The Longest Decade, Australia’s Second Chance, The Football Solution and Balancing Act.

Former Foreign Affairs Minister and the longest continuously serving Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, is an author of multiple books and is currently Professor of Climate and Business at the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney.  He is outspoken in his concerns for the environmental limits of immigration

Monday, 9 August 2021

6:30 PM

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Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

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Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Bronwen Reid

Find Jonah @JonahPrimomusic on Instagram. 

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