The sentiment is that right now things are tough and current immigration adds to current pressures.
See Graph 1.1: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas...
Australia has had steady net immigration for quite some time .. that fell in a hole during the pandemic and right now the net intake is much higher than it has ever been - it's the normal intake PLUS the backlog of everybody who didn;t come during lock down.
Australia has always coped with a steady level of intake, right now it's creaking under a much higher level than normal.
I'm also pretty sure that people on hn are people who generally work globally (take opportunities remotly without even immigrating anywere), travel and or consider moving around the world as they see fit.
And your statistic is really interesting (pure curiosity) but most immigrants are coming on a temp visa. How much impact have 80.000 permanent visa immigrants in a year for one specific industry?
We only have 6 cities with populations bigger than 500k. We let in a number of people greater than the population of our capital city in one year.
I am not anti-immigration (I have two people in my team I've helped arrange visas for). But this insane number has seriously changed the fabric of our society in real, tangible ways, purely from the pressure it has put on the housing market.
We are already seeing anti-immigration rhetoric from the usual suspects and its only going to get worse.
A few weeks ago there were stories about recent immigrants heading back home because the opportunities here are few and the cost of living is so high there's no way they can live here (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-08/why-these-immigrants-...). (I had an Uber driver tell me he's going back to India to open a gym because he can't afford to live here in Brisbane any more.)
And now literally today we're getting early warning signs of stress in the employment market, which is going to hurt the new immigrants the most (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-23/economists-warn-unemp...).
Again - not anti-immigration. We /need/ it in Australia. There are many reasons why we're in the mess we're in and not all of them are immigration. But at the end of the day our housing market is completely fucked and the flow on effects from this are dramatic. I don't think we're simplifying the problem down to "immigration" but it's simply undeniable that it is a factor in our current situation.
Check the tone of the comments by myself and troy above, we're a mostly friendly nation happy to meet people from across the globe, currently something like 25% of the Australian population was born overseas.
If you look at the graph I linked in a comment above you can see the current pressure - way more new people arriving than normal .. overstressing the existing means for absorbing fresh meat into the BBQ Borg collective.
The extremists we have a few but feral .. we have small pockets of bush nazis and some leafy suburbs with nervous elders who remember a distant White Australia policy. I think they're most worried about the first people moving in next door: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0_Hb7QRlw
With the graph above, australia gained in avg 200k people per year
Dealing with an average of 200k has been manageable (well, some would argue with this - we still haven't been building enough houses, but leaving that aside).
If you look at 2023 specifically the raw number of people was over 500k - more than double the average. It was a surge that the housing market - amongst other things - simply was not prepared for.
I think the job stats are starting to reflect that these people did not suddenly all become gainfully employed, as well - I have thought for a while that there might be a more serious crash if we enter a recession because of this surge.
Or are the immigrants now the thing you need for growth?
Do you like or hate immigrants? Are you australian native or are you also an immigrant?
What type of immigrants do you get? Are a lot of high skilled IT people immigrating to australia?
Do you personally struggle or know people who suffer because of immigrants?
What would you do with immigrants?