Currently more than 137,000 applicants are stuck in the processing pipeline for a permanent visa to Australia.

Australia’s migration program has a strong bias towards youth, skills and English language proficiency, because evidence shows that migrants with these attributes make the biggest economic and fiscal contribution to the nation over the course of their lives. A skew towards youth also helps to slow the overall ageing of society (at least in the short term), increasing the number of wage earners and taxpayers who can support those too old or too young to work. Even if they are only in their fifties or sixties, and have valuable skills and speak good English, parent migrants are already at the latter end of their working lives.

This is the parent conundrum. On the one hand, is the legitimate, heart-felt desire of first-generation migrant families to bring parents and grandparents to live with them in Australia. On the other, are economic considerations regarding the long-term national interest that lead swiftly to a conclusion that parents are not the kind of migrants Australia wants or needs.

In light of the current parent migration gridlock, the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute commissioned journalist Peter Mares to provide an independent analysis that makes a case for urgent reform of Australia’s troubled approach to parent migration.

Investigating the current situation, this long-form essay examines the evidence for and against parent migration and explores the practical, political, and ethical challenges of reform.