A Tribute To MikeMB

One of the most legendary commenters on MacroBusiness. We all knew this guy. We didn’t know who he was, where his numbers came from, and how much of them were embellished. He was the boiler plate man; a guy who would repeatedly post some modified/varied statistic heavy spiel in nearly every thread detailing the horror Byzantine Frankenstein that was Australia’s visa system.

Whether what he wrote was truly completely accurate, it’s clear Mike got it. He knew the system and how it worked, and how it was being rorted. He didn’t hide behind fig leaves to the migrants themselves, playing a tiny violin over wailing about how they were being “wage exploited” or anything like that; he called them out for what they really were, co-conspirators in the great visa rort, working under the table illicitly for the prospect of permanent residency.

He laid it all out: he knew that the system has a multiple branching network of visas from which a migrant to Australia could ‘bounce’ between in order to practically indefinitely extend their stay. He called this ‘visa churn’, a very appropriate term and apt description of how the scam works. You come over on some starting visa, typically something ostensibly intended to be temporary like a student visa or a working visa. Then you do whatever the f_k you can to move onto a visa that buys you more time in the country, a bogus partner visa for instance is a good pick. It doesn’t matter if the evidence is found to be fake; it’s easy to fake anyway and the government barely shows up to check whether your relationship is fair dinkum, because even if it is, you can then take it to appeal, which buys you two years minimum to move to another visa. The system is designed to be rorted, and it’s designed to buy migrants who want to remain in Australia a cartoonishly long amount of time before they can eventually find some final pathway to PR. Then you’re set forever.

He knew the official numbers were bogus, and so called temporary migrants were rarely ever actually temporary. The last identified MikeMB spiel I could find on a google search dated back to October 21, 2021. Here it is, if you want to again relive the legend himself:

Posted previously / but relevant to this article.

We do not have a skilled intake. Never have.

The only ‘skill’ is to falsify a visa application, pay the agent procurer bribes, learn how to live & work illegally on a visa pretext, rort our broken & corrupted border & visa system, engage an immigration lawyer to churn the visa & then finally run off to the appeals tribunal for a five year extension in being allowed to stay.

Then once granted a PR – the ‘cash back’ from the agent procurer or the sponsored applicant for chain migration of family / spouses / dependents to repeat the cycle.

PR grants. Skilled.
Of the 1.4 million+ grants (with most remaining non Australian foreign nationals on sole foreign passports) over the last decade – less than 200k or 14% were ‘skilled’. 1.2 million were not, creating a huge underclass of low & non assimilated non Australian foreign nationals as PR – mostly third world migrants on low incomes, with very high ratios of dependency on Australian taxpayer welfare. That they had made little or no contribution to.

In addition to 1.4 million PR grants – we have an additional 1.9 million non Australian foreign nationals as TR / SCV foreign nationals onshore today. .
(Detail below)
TR/ SCV currently onshore total 1.9 million.
The skilled category visa is only 104,333 and that includes secondary & dependents.
The ‘primary’ skilled visa holders ar less than 60,000 & genuine unique skilled (skills not able to be hired in Australia) is estimated at less than 10,000.
So 10,000 genuine unique skilled in 1.9 million…

Combining all the non Australian foreign nations on a PR, TR, SCV etc gives a total of 3.5 million non Australian foreign nationals living in Australia with 3.3 million unskilled.
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The 3 big lies now being peddled to Australians to justify even more unskilled non assimilated third world migrant guestworkers include:

#1. We have a skills shortage
#2. Increased migrant intake is good
#3. The migrants went back

Facts as shown below.

Lie number #1. ‘Australia has excess jobs and is now denuded of migrants leading to labor & skills shortages’

The fact is that Australia has less jobs than a year ago & very high unemployment.

The ABS says Unemployment is only 4.1%.
We all know that’s a lie in measurement.

Roy Morgan says that 8.7% of Australians are unemployed. More than double the ABS.
October 03 2021 Finding No. 8812
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8812-roy-morgan-unemployment-september-2021-202110030834

The latest Roy Morgan data shows 1.27 million Australians unemployed in September 2021 for an unemployment rate of 8.7%, with under-employment of 8.0% (1.16 million).
Total unemployed or underemployed is 2.43 million or 16.6% non employed.

More importantly the Australian Workforce jobs are only 14.57 million, below pre-lockdown level in June 2021.
172,000 less jobs than before & we have nearly 9% unemployed!

So the first big lie exposed.

Given a residual of say half a million unemployed who just won’t or can’t work – that still leaves about 2 million Australians / PR unemployed or underemployed.
And with less jobs & record unemployment.

Yet we have 1.9 million non Australian third world migrants onshore on just TR/SCV pretext visas. Overshoot from pre virus times.
These long stay migrant TR / SCV who do the most damage to Australians in job & housing theft DID NOT LEAVE. See facts below.

And now they are competing against Australians (and the PR non Australian foreign nationals) for less Australian jobs.

Lie #2. Increased migrant intake is economically good.

Putting aside the PR (much the same ) and dealing with just the 1.9 million TR / SCV migrant guestworkers onshore.

They facts are that in the last decade of migrant intake – the TR / SCV have (in what otherwise would have been without this intake):
•Lowered our wages average in comparative terms by 6.8% / costing Australians many tens of billions.
•Lowered our GDP per Capita in comparative terms by 4.5%.
•Lowered our productivity in comparative terms by some 5%. Most of the industries these migrant guestworkers participate in has seen dramatic reductions & loss of Australian productivity in world rankings (as is unskilled cash in hand migrant underclass or illegally working labor – rather than say capital investment, employee investment, automation / value add).

So they are in fact a massive economic & social liability.
Because – they are third world, unskilled, non assimilated, on low income, not invested in, create housing & use of infrastructure contention, and so are a high impact to our society. They are a particularly high impact to Australian employment & wages and our housing. The PR & particularly the TR/SCV intake do not bring capital & as most are participants in the foreign run blackmarket cash economy, they make little if not zero / negative economic & tax contribution.

Lie number #3
‘The migrants went back’.

The temporary resident numbers overall – particularly the categories of those who are long stay Temporary visas has not declined.

They didn’t go back.
1.9 million TR / SCV are still here.

They used the virus, border closures, didn’t attend classes, increased their illegal work hours & then visa churn to stay in Australia
But they are still here in Australia- living & working illegally. See the category detail.

The only real decline in TR migrants was of about 600,000 in ‘long stay & repeat visitors’ then offset by huge surge in churn onto protection & other visas.

Fact / detail. Link
https://scanloninstitute.org.au/migrationdashboard#part-one
Comparative numbers.

Dec 2019 to September 2021.

SCV was 668,687 now 672,659 -3,972
Much the same number but if masks the continuing trend of aged genuine NZ born returning back to NZ offset by a huge increase & majority of SCV grants to non NZ Asians & Indians to use NZ as an entry point into Australia.

Students was 480,543 now 377,785 -102,668
This hides the real number being closer to 580,000 who are now on ‘other visa categories’ as well as partners & so on on secondary visas, or DFAT & other non DHA categories.
As we all know they are not an export. Their money is earned here. Most enter in debt to a foreign agent procurer, only the first semester is paid upfront, usually borrowed & then all their ‘fees’ and living costs are from money earned here. Over 9 billion is sent back as foreign remittances or agent procurer debt repayments.
They are not an export.
They are a very high cost import, each foreign student or partner costing Australian some $52k each yearly in social & economic costs (unemployed Australians, housing, congestion, higher education costs for Australians as the education sector prostitutes itself as a migrant guestworker visa alibi)
Human capital value?
Their progression into a higher income and a professional vocation in their home country or Australia if granted a PR?

3.9% (Migrant Pathways A Decade On report 2015 – leading to the Productivity Commission later recommending the removal of access to PR)
That’s right – 96% of all foreign students in Australia fail to ever achieve a professional higher income vocation a decade later.

Zero / negative human capital value.

They remain unskilled with their useless falsified diplomas & certificates, often with no international recognition, non assimilated, entrenched in the foreign criminal run migrant black economy.

Skilled was 119,160, now 104,333 -14,827
Always marginal & a marginal reduction. In fact there are only 76,000 primary skilled and even that’s massively overstated.
Most of the skilled are usually on a cash back deal by the employer with falsified skills by the migrant (aka Gladys/Darryl)

We don’t have a skilled intake.
Nearly 95% of the 1.9 million non Australian migrant TR or SCV are on an unskilled visa category.

Visitors was 635,109, now is 28,741 -606,368
Here is the biggest reduction, the Chinese, south East Asians & Indians coming in on long stay or repeat stay visitor visas to live & work illegally. Or in ‘Medicare tourism’ (all those bus loads of elderly Chinese & Indians) to avail themselves of Australian Medicare & then PBS drugs to fund their trip using a borrowed or frauded Medicare identity.

Bridging was 119,655, now 359,981 so +240,326. Up nearly quarter of a million.
Exploding as their visas expire or they churn onto this racket to extend their stay.

’Other’ 300,143 210,796 -89,347
Still a huge number 210,000 made up of a splendid array of niche visa categories – all corrupted.

And in the 2020 total we can add Temp visa now granted PR to join the conga line for welfare (167,432 grants so +167,432)
I haven’t added overstayers (+70,000) or DFAT & scholarship/ trade visa bribes & gifting but that’s another (+35,000) or +105,000 in addition.

Totals (offical DHA visa categories- doesn’t include DFAT or overstayers)
Dec 2019 2,203,543
Oct 2021 1,921,727
Actual reduction onshore -281,816

And almost of that in the 600,000 plus reduction of illegal working ‘long & repeat stay visitor’ category.
Other visa categories stayed much the same or went up.

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So, who was MikeMB? How did he know all the stuff? Was he a Department of Immigration insider or a schizo concern troll making up numbers? Whatever the reality of Mike’s numbers, chances are they were closer to the truth than anyone would ever dare hope to imagine.