11,840 overseas people received partner visas in Victoria during 2012-13, with only 10 per cent of those arrivals European-born.
The total number for Australia was more than 46,000 said the Federal Government’s latest State and Territory Migration Summary Report.
Partners comprised nearly 80 per cent of all family reunion visas while most of the balance was made up by overseas parents joining their children in Australia.
Victoria had a total of 60,430 permanent additions in 2012-13, including 41,000 settler arrivals and 19,500 foreigners already living here who were given permanent residency.
Maverick Victorian Labor MP Kelvin Thomson called for skilled migration to be slashed to save Australian jobs.
Mr Thomson said that with national unemployment now over 700,000, the argument that Australia needed to import more workers for economic reasons was false.
“The latest unemployment rise, along with the certainty of job losses at Holden, Ford and Qantas, and projections that the resources industry construction workforce will collapse over the next four years, shedding more than 78,000 jobs by 2018, make this clear,” he said.
The jobless rate in Dandenong has hit 13 per cent, while Broadmeadows and Sunshine have rates of 11.6 per cent, according to the latest data.
Mr Thomson said Australia should slash permanent skilled migration and temporary schemes such as the 457 program to the levels of 10 or 20 years ago.
“That way the jobs that will be created in the next five years will go to Australians who are out of work or who face losing their jobs,” he said.
Source: Herald Sun
