That quote as written is factually accurate and reads a bit differently to someone saying they're all doctors and engineers so let them all in.
Who’s actually verified that and as a %, is it representative? No. The Guardian are presenting this issue in an underhand way imo.
The quote is implicitly misleading because it’s taking the exception to justify making it the rule [to accept small boats]. There will be a small
% of high skill people on these boats. In reality, most small boat migrants will end up being net-tax drains on the economy and the social impacts (crime) are too numerous to ignore.
Since 2018, at a guesstimate there’s probably been around 100-150k small boat migrants. How many journalists, computer scientists, engineers and doctors have arrived?
The policy turn back the boats, process claims in a 3rd country. If there’s are people who will be high skill individuals, fast track their claims if competency can be proved and give them a route to settlement. Low skill, genuine refugees should be granted asylum on a
temporary basis and family reunification should be restricted.
That is a fair outline of a policy. Letting one and all come and then process their claims in hotels in small, local communities where is often problems with anti-social to criminal behaviour is a public policy disaster and needs a course correction.