Talk:Immigration to Australia

Immigration and Economics
This section does not deserve as much attention as it is receiving, really. Arguments over the winners/losers of immigration is covered in articles that cover mobility of labor and how it affects all countries.

Does evryone in this formum that came here on a NZ passport realize that if they arrived after Jan 2001, they will never get Citizenship probably?.

No PR Visa or Citizenship means ZERO financial help by way of unemployment or sickness benefit ever!! should you need it.

No help if unemployed means no can pay rent, no food and school fees.

Unless Rudd reverses Howards appication of the Immigration act towards the Social Securtity act be reversed like the very unfair I.R (work choices) law.

OZ now has significant trade lined up thanks in part to NZ worth $80B... so I am told. So any cost to Australia is not significant anyway.

Mr Rudd has proven to be the best PM OZ has seen for over a decade, but if he wont help the Kiwi who will??.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.131.30.172 (talk) 11:23, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I removed this sentence ''' "Battlers" is a term that describes native working-class people in Australia who cannot afford education for their children to the extent immigrants can, and hence learn less money and have lower rates of health. This is mostly due to government policies.'''. (a) the term as understood means struggling people generally, (b) immigrants are certainly not advantaged over native-born Australians in terms of accessibility to HECS, education etc and (c) the IHT article cited makes no reference to your definition of "battler" or the alleged disadvantage they suffer. It is dishonest to put your words into the mouths of more established writers. Kransky (talk) 05:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "Battlers" aside, I would like to see this article thoroughly reviewed for POV-pushing. Wikipedia doesn't exist to propagandize for Australia's immigration industry. ZwickauDeluxe (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, the article has tendentious and irrelevant writing from all political sides and lacks objectivity and clarity. Kransky (talk) 08:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Immigration and Australian politics
The article states:
 * "Both major Australian political parties favour a relatively high level of immigration. When John Howard became Prime Minister, net migration was rising, and the upward trend in the number of immigrants has increased over the decade since he took office. According to Banham, Australian political leaders who support higher immigration include Amanda Vanstone, John Howard"

What is "relatively high" immigration? In the first few years after John Howard became PM, he reduced immigration, so it wasn't "rising" as the article states. Article says J.Howard supports "higher immigration"... higher than what? Higher than he has allowed? Much of this text is meaningless.-- Lester  02:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

We're comparing levels of immigration during the Howard era compared to the government before him (under Paul Keating) and against immigration rates as a whole.

According to http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/19/1061261148920.html Gittens says "net migration has been on an upward trend since the Howard Government's first year in office, 1996-97."

--Knowledge-is-power 09:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Ummm. Several years before Howard barely 30,000 people came to Australia. During the time Howard spent in government the number of immigrants was over 100,000. In 2006 it was 150,000. I guess it doesn't matter what policy you have. If your economy is weak then no one wants to come and when it is strong there's plenty of people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.99.176.206 (talk) 16:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

POV tag June 2008

 * I have added a POV-section tag to this section. It is a hatchet job on the Liberal party. It is also out of date now that the Libs are out of government. I would favour deletion of the entire section, but if someone rewrites it to NPOV I will remove the tag. --Surturz (talk) 06:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it's pretty close to being able to take this tag off. The circumstances are such that the previous Liberal government will get a bit of a mention because that accounts for the past decade.  The ABS stats for 2007-08 will be out around the first anniversary of the new government - and we can slot that in, plus anything that anyone may have gleaned from budget documents, policy statements etc in relation to the Labor government.  Wouldn't that help it look more balanced?  πιππίνυ δ -  (dica)  14:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Poster illustration,Origin Date
The poster used is a good indication of the white Australia policy,and might be from either pre-WW2 or just after.Does anyone know the date it was made? The politics of Australian immigration policy is a matter of record.Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 01:15, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Poor quality grammar
unfair treatment of Kiwis Mateship in OZ for New Zealanders?... yeah right.

Over the past many decades NZ’ers have worked and even died along side their OZ’y cousins throughout good times and bad.

In world conflicts this has happened and still does today. Some 500,000 Kiwis now call OZ home. They have helped build its economy during the boom times alongside ordinary Australians, hell OZ even steals the odd one now and then like Russel Crowe.

Are we like brothers?. Well well when it suits the answer is YES!!. But in times of trouble are we Brothers?, the answer is yes.. we send Kiwi firefighters here even donations.

But is this repaid in kind?. The answer is NO!. I would bet that the average OZy does not know that any Kiwi that arrived after Feb 2001 cannot access Centerlink assistance should they through no fault of their own, lose their job. Answer… Kiwi go home. Go home and get help from your own Government cause we don’t need you right now.

Closer economic ties worth 80 billion and a domestic air agreement making it easier for Qantas to make money flying Kiwis here, but no Centerlink help.

The reason is due to John Howard changing the immigration laws to make all Kiwis treated the same as the rest of the world. From Zimbabwe to China and now NZ all must meet the tough permanent visa laws. Which means even if you are in full time employment, own property and even have your children in School here for many years. If you cannot meet the criteria in the skilled category and be under 45 years old or be able to buy a substantial business in Australia, you cannot really call it home.. not now not ever.

Kiwi go home. Will Mr Ruddd right the wrong of the Howard Government?. Will Turnbull if he was to regain Government?. Who knows because if you ask them, neither will respond.


 * I'm not interested in getting into a political argie-bargie with anyone, but I can say with the utmost confidence that the tense used in this line: "...and the upward trend in the number of immigrants has increased over the decade since he took office" (referring to Howard) is just plain wrong - it's terrible grammar.   Seeing Howard left office whenever it was, "has increased over the decade since he took office" is terrible grammar, regardless of whether it's correct or not.  πιππίνυ δ -  (dica)  07:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed sofixit :-) --Matilda talk 07:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * What, actually do something useful and practical (and enter the bear pit in the process) - no thanks.  πιππίνυ δ -  (dica)  07:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Immigration act used illegally in denial of benefits to Kiwis.
Does evryone in this formum that came here on a NZ passport realize that if they arrived after Jan 2001, they will never get Citizenship probably?.

No PR Visa or Citizenship means ZERO financial help by way of unemployment or sickness benefit ever!! should you need it. No help if unemployed means no can pay rent, no food and school fees.

Unless Rudd reverses Howards appication of the Immigration act towards the Social Securtity act be reversed like the very unfair I.R (work choices) law.

OZ now has significant trade lined up thanks in part to NZ worth $80B... so I am told. So any cost to Australia is not significant anyway.

Mr Rudd has proven to be the best PM OZ has seen for over a decade, but if he wont help the Kiwi who will??.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.131.30.172 (talk) 11:24, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

The above comments by anonymous reader has no verifiable data added.This isn't a forum for debating Australian immigration policy, or advocating a political stance, it's for providing background FACTS that might be considered to improve the article.More light, less heat, thanks. Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 01:22, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Countries of birth table
Is it me...or did that table move down to external links...If its not just me, can someone please fix it. Edit: Never mind... fixed it... at some point, someone changed the end of the table from |} to |-114.77.223.5 (talk) 11:46, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Immigration and the ageing population
"Peter McDonald claims that "it is demographic nonsense to believe that immigration can help to keep our population young."

And Peter McDonald is right.

Why do some people still cling to the absurd argument that immigration can solve the ageing population problem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.155.56.95 (talk) 22:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Who are Wolds Agencies? Why are they so prominently mentioned?
In the opening paragraphs, there are two sentences referring to "Wolds Agencies" seem to be little better than adverts - the "reference" is simply a link to their homepage. I propose simply removing the two sentences entirely. Mark Suter (talk) 13:03, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

New External Link added
I moderate the Culture Victoria website and have added an external link to stories,images and video about immigration to Australia.Eleworth (talk) 05:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Immigration to Australia
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Immigration to Australia's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "abs34120_2005": From Demographics of Australia: (table 6.6) From Culture of Australia: (table 6.6) 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 14:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Aborigines as Immigrants
The statement that aboriginal Australians (or Americans) were the first migrants is silly, as it negates the concept of indigenous people and has misleading implications (We are all Africans; Everyone is an immigrant; Aboriginal societies have lived for 50000 years without cultural change). This politically charged trope has frequently and unhelpfully been used in support of, or against, multiculturalism, immigration, land-rights, or special recognition of aboriginal peoples. The problem is the vast difference in the time scale of human genetic ancestry and that of social history. Humans first arrived in Australia some time before 40000 years ago and genes from these original migrants are prominent in the ancestry of Aboriginal Australians. That, however, does not make living Aboriginal people migrants. No culture on earth has survived over such a period and those ancient societies would have been as foreign to the Eora people around Botany Bay in 1770 as were Cook's crew. The early archeological record is sparse, particularly in cultural artefacts but there is abundant evidence of cultural change over the last 5000 years, during which there was also contact and interbreeding between Asian and aboriginal people. Even this recent time-frame encompasses the entirety of all written history - and predates such concepts as Europe, Asia, America or Africa. Aboriginal societies are culturally diverse but, to my knowledge, Aboriginal oral history and traditional belief unequivocally places their origins in Australia. If Aboriginal people are migrants, or descendants of migrants, then there is no distinction between Europeans and Sumerians. The social concept of ancestors is more meaningful when it is restricted to recorded or reported history. Spookpadda (talk) 11:24, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Australian immigration policies
All of the information in the policies article is duplicated elsewhere (such as Immigration to Australia and White Australia policy). I don't see that there is enough content, which isn't notable on it's own (White Australia Policy), to warrant an article to itself. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Support merge: That article doesn't have much content, and any information present there seems to be better fitting within the Immigration to Australia article. -- benlisquare T•C•E 11:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Ranking of Australia for accepting humanitarian refugees
I've just checked the refs provided for the changed rankings given by IP User:122.108.54.117, and there seems to be a discrepancy. The figures quoted in Table 1 of the reference given, UNHCR Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2012, have Australia accepting 3% of the global number of asylum seekers in 2012, ranking Australia 11th in terms of global numbers, and 19th in per capita terms. The IP User had put


 * Australia ranks 49th in the world for total number of refugees (62nd in refugees per capita). Less than 0.3% of refugees worldwide are resettled to Australia under UNHCR mandated conditions.

These figures may be right on a global scale, if all countries are considered and not just the industrialised ones - but this would need to be supported by a more relevant reference. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 05:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * IP User:122.108.54.117 has provided an updated reference, however it is to this webpage "UNHCR Statistical Yearbooks" and the IP's very inadequate note "See tables 3, 24.", which aren't on that particular webpage. By hunting around I've managed to verify only one of the figures (Australia is ranked at #62 "Refugees to 1,000 inhabitants" - buried in table 24 in a statistical annexe to the 2012 report) but not the other ranking and percentage figures (e.g. Table 3 in the statistical annexe has only absolute numbers, not rankings or percentages).
 * It would be very helpful if IP User:122.108.54.117 could provide more specific and properly formatted references. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Consensus is requested on the deletion of a text titled “Recent concerns about New Zealanders taking Australian jobs”
I wrote this text in this article:

________________________________________

Recent concerns about New Zealanders taking Australian jobs
Bob Birrell, an academic at Monash University, wrote in a 2013 article entitled "Tougher policy needed for New Zealanders wanting to work in Australia" that:

"During the 1990s, the Australian government sought to better target its migration program to skills needed in Australia. The resulting tight arrangements contrasted with the freedom of New Zealand citizens, regardless of age or skills, to move to Australia. Also, by this time about a third of the New Zealand citizens arriving in Australia were from third world countries who had gained New Zealand citizenship after the required three years of residence (now five years). As the New Zealand migration rules were less strict than those applying in Australia it was thought that this was a form of "back door" entry.

The changes to the Trans-Tasman rules in 2001 reflected these concerns. The Australian government’s expectation was that the new rules would deter movement on the part of New Zealand citizens who could not meet the requirements for permanent skilled migration.

Few New Zealand citizens arriving since 2001 have accessed this permanent residence pathway. The changes have also not deterred New Zealand citizens (including those from third world countries) from moving to Australia. Their numbers continue to increase. New Zealand citizens are adding about a net 27,000 to the number of Australian residents each year – more than any other country.

The reason is that the gap in GDP per capita in Australia and New Zealand is growing and is currently over 20%. New Zealanders will keep on coming while this gap persists.

Successive Australian governments have continued to better target the migration program to skills needed in Australia. The emphasis now is on employer sponsorship – on the grounds the employers are the best judge of the skills needed. The unregulated New Zealand flow is leaving a gaping hole in these efforts."

________________________________________

and Nick_D removed it saying “Birrell is qualified to have views on this topic, but he's unusually unkeen on migration among Australian demographers”

There is no undue weight, because the only thing that text is doing is quoting Bob Birrell, it is not making any conclusion from that quote, and the text would be very useful to readers of this page, especially due to the reference, because when readers click on the reference to Bob Birrell's article they can see the sources that he uses.

I think that with the removal of this information the only consequence that occurs is that readers have less access to information about the opposing views to immigration. It would be perfectly appropriate for the government that wants to bring as many immigrants as possible. So I think that following Nick_D's advice would only serve to promote the interests of the government. Nick_D also opposed to a well-sourced text on the anti-immigration sentiment in Australia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Australia#Can_this_be_said_in_this_wikipedia_article.3F
 * It should be deleted. The section is a) future oriented (" New Zealanders will keep on coming ") such that it violates the Wiki rule against crystal balls and b) is poorly sourced ("it was thought that..." means who???) and c) is heavily loaded with nativism ("The unregulated New Zealand flow is leaving a gaping hole in these efforts." ) Rjensen (talk) 10:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, quotes should be exempt from these rules, I guess there are already many quotes in wikipedia that are future oriented. A quote is what somebody says, that person may say future oriented things. But I imagine that all the criticisms of this text are directed to the fact that the ideas presented in it are being given too much importance and the opposing ideas not. Well, first, I have not found the opposite view on the Internet, so I can not write it here, if you know it then enter it here. Second, if you do not have sources that tell the contrary opinion then we could put a notice in the main article near the text so if any reader knows these sources then that reader could add them here. That may be what it should have been right for Nick-D to have done (to put a notice requesting additional sources) rather than removing the entire text. Third, I will think better if making this quote shorter is a good idea. Finally, I guess you can not deny that this text provides some more useful information that was not present in the article before, right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abcdudtc (talk • contribs) 13:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

1969-70
''The highest number of settlers to arrive in any one year since World War II was 185,099 in 1969–70. The lowest number in any one year was 52,752 in 1975–76.''

Hmmm, I wonder if this is accurate?. I believe in 2008-2009 the number of arrivals may have exceeded 185K.Inchiquin (talk) 19:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Quality of Sources
This article makes far too much reference to newspaper and television reports. This is acceptable in regard to public opinion on the topic but not for the facts themselves. I recognise that recent data seems hard to come by but this reliance on low quality sources makes the article unscholarly. 124.177.15.245 (talk) 18:54, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

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Economic migrants
Am I reading the article correctly that there are no immigrant visas for people who are simply poor and want to move to Australia for better opportunities? -- Beland (talk) 20:55, 7 August 2018 (UTC)