New visa rules force migrants to live in regional towns over cities

Migrants on regional visas will no longer be able to move to Australia’s bustling capital cities under new rules being established by the Home Affairs Department.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, NSW migrants will be forced to stay in regional towns to help ease population growth and booming house prices in Sydney.

While the regional visa stipulates that migrants must live in rural and regional towns, the Telegraph reports that only “7000 of the 190,000 who moved here last year lived outside the capital cities”.

Currently, migrants on the regional visa can live and work permanently in Australia and can sponsor eligible relatives for permanent residence.

The Home Affairs office told Starts at 60 a public consultation process carried out last year showed many Australians want migrants to be given more incentives to live and work in regional areas.

A spokesperson for the department said the government “is considering how it can achieve this outcome” noting that there is already a range of visa programs with a regional focus.

Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge told the Telegraph the “many migrants” who don’t “stay long in the region once they have their permanent visa” had become a major issue.

“Many migrants are sponsored for permanent residence on the basis of an intent to live and work in regional Australia but don’t stay long in the region once they have their permanent visa,” he said.

The crackdown in the latest in a series of changes to Australia’s visa program as the debate over migration numbers heats up. Earlier this year, Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton found himself in a tit-for-tat battle with Tony Abbott, who was calling for a drastic reduction in the country’s migration numbers.

Abbott wants the migration rate cut to Howard-era numbers of about 110,000 per year. That’s a whole lot less than the country’s current annual migration rate of 190,000.

According to Australia’s official parliamentary library, the migration program’s planned intake rose from 74,000 to 140,000 per year between 1996 and 2007, when Howard was in power, with the annual rate sitting at around 110,000 for most of that period.

It rose sharply under his successor, Kevin Rudd, and remained steady under Abbott’s own reign as prime minister. However, Abbott’s calls to cut down on migrants were rubbished by senior government members, including Dutton and Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, who said reducing migration figures would be like “cutting off your nose to spite your face” and that Abbott’s proposal would actually cost the government $4-5 billion over the next four years.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you rather migrants lived and worked in regional areas?