Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of foreign-born Australians


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. J04n(talk page) 16:12, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

List of foreign-born Australians

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Vague list of people, mostly politicians. Should this list be refined to Australian politicians? The list was created by an editor who was eventually blocked indefinitely a month later. AngusWOOF ( bark  •  sniff ) 16:29, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 16:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.  AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 16:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 16:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions.  AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 16:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. Virtually all of the major economically and politically stable "First World" countries attract a lot of immigration from other countries, so a list like this is virtually unmaintainable. To be honest, given that the list comprises entirely politicians, I suspect the real reason for this is the recent controversy about Australian politicians' citizenship status. But the controversy isn't about foreign-born politicians per se, but foreign-born politicians who (accidentally or intentionally) failed to renounce their prior citizenship status in the process of becoming Australian citizens, and it has also knocked out some native-born Australians who merely overlooked the fact that they technically had dual citizenship by virtue of their parentage. So it's not in and of itself a reason to keep this list, because the list of people affected by that issue does not correspond to the list of people who fit this criterion. Bearcat (talk) 18:03, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment, "Vague list of people, mostly politicians.", so expand it, this is not a deletion reason, there are numerous books that discuss notable australians that were born overseas so this would meet WP:LISTN, that said i envisage this turning into a megalist of 1000s of people (again not a reason to delete) that can be organised into various sections (with their own articles?) ie. all these pollies into a "Politics and Government" section, authors in another, artists in another and so on. Coolabahapple (talk) 03:43, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Numerous books that make such lists? Can you provide those? AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 15:36, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * i did not say that the books "make such lists" but that "discuss notable australians" (should have said notable and non-notable:)) ie. Immigrant women tell their stories, Big white lie : Chinese Australians in white Australia, Immigrant women in Australia : an annotated bibliography, The Scots in Australia, anyway i'm not that fussed about whether this is deleted or not (hence my "comment"), agree that as it stands it is indescriminate, although it could be turned into a "list of lists" ie. "List of Foreign-born Australians" - "Politicians" - "see main article - List of Foreign-born Australian Politicians" and so on, but consensus looks as if it will disappear pretty soon:)) Coolabahapple (talk) 07:10, 18 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Strong delete This list is absurd. Australia, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Israel and Uruguay, as well as maybe a few other countries, have such strong traditions of immigrations (I think New Zealand goes on the list), that creating listings on immigrants makes no sense at all. In Australia the immigrants became both the political/economic/social controlling factor and the vast majority of the population at some point in the 19th-century. European immigration came later to Australia than all the countries I mentioned above (except Israel, which has a totally different set of issues), and the aboriginal/Torres Straits Islander population in Australia is only 2.8%. However while the United States put drastic limits on immigration in the 1920s, Australia saw immigration remain a driving force. While the United States has the most immigrants of any country (47 million, more than Australia's total population), this is only 19% of the population as opposed to 26% of the population for Australia. Australia's population has quadrupled in the last century, largely fueled by immigration. Canada has almost exactly the same percentage of its population as immigrants as the United States. To put these statictics in perspective, in France less than 10% of the population is immigrants, although it rises to 19% when combined with the percentage of the population that is children of immigrants. US statistics do not track closely the latter, but it may well be more than the number of immigrants in the United States. What this adds up to is a list of immigrants makes no sense for any of these countries, but is most absurd for Australia.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:17, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete – a broad, potentially limitless list which doesn't pass WP:LISTN. Would be more appropriate as a category rather than as an article. Kb.au (talk) 06:49, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll add that it would have to include cases when someone's parent(s) are Australian and they are physically born outside Australia. AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 15:36, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
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 * Delete. This is simply much too broad for a list - particularly for Australia (with many notable historic people being immigrants). Much better served by a category - reminds me of the recently closed Articles for deletion/List of people associated with World War I.Icewhiz (talk) 15:45, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Millions of Australians were born abroad. Cordless Larry (talk) 15:51, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Commment I just realized that AngusWoof is correct. OK, I was going to comment such, before I came here. I don't know enough Australians to pull an extreme example of the top of my head, but N. Eldon Tanner is an example of someone who would go in a similar list for Canada. His parents were residents of Canada when he was born, but his mom was visiting his grandparents when the birth actually happened. This would also include A-people born in New Guinea, when it was an Australian possesion, even if their parents were there as administering agents of the Australian government, B-people born to parents where one or both was in the Australian military, and they were stationed outside Australia. That is not as big an issue as some, because as far as I can tell all Australian military bases are in Australia, but it does have impacts. Also children of Australian diplotmats born abroad would be included, as well as children of Australians working abroad in business, sports or several other endevors. I have no clue how high these numbers are, but suspect that as with many other developed countries, from Japan, to Britain, to the United States, there is a number of Australian nationals who work, often on short-term rotating basises, in countries beyond Australia, often for only a few years and coming back to Australia. These are often high income migrant workers, who have much more control over their employment and migration decisions than the low income Filipino migrant workers who are so prevalent in Hong Kong, Southwest Asia, and also appear in the United States and elsewhere, as well as the remitance workers and such. To give another example, I have a friend who would self describe as "a P_akistani, who migrated to Malaysia, who came to the US as a refugee", however she was actually born in Libya to Pakistani parents working abroad. To cut deeper, it has long been held we should not categorize by place of birth because place of birth is not defining. If a person's father was working on a year-long business placement in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome or Lagos, at the time of their birth, but both their parents were Australians, and the placement ended 5 months after the person's birth, and they lived in Australia for the remaining 85 years of their life, is the fact that they were born in some other country, that they have no recognition of, and has no effect on their status as a natural born citizen of Australia, at all notable?John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:55, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment This is such a broad, disparate topic, that it is covered by three category trees. One is Category:Immigrants to Australia. However this does not cover all the people who might be put on this list. Category:Expatriates in Australia is debatable if its contents should go on this list, as they are basically by definition non-Asutralians who have resided in Australia. However, some of the potential people I mentioned in my last category would belong in Category:Australian expatriates, since from birth they were defined as Australian, but they were expatrited, and this fact might be defining enough to be worth categorizing by.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:59, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE. Open to article being split into more well defined lists. Ajf773 (talk) 19:40, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:IINFO. Hurrygane (talk) 22:21, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong delete Unmaintainable, essentially unbounded definition.  28% of 24.13 million people fit this article title.  As pointed out above the list currently contains politicians only.  At best perhaps convert this to a category such as Category:Australian politicians born overseas, given the constitutional notability.  Aoziwe (talk) 11:45, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. Yikes, seriously? This is way too broad of a list category/criterion/subject. Aoziwe offers an interesting solution above regarding the politicians involved, but that information should be preserved before this article is deleted, as it obviously will be. SunChaser (talk) 06:34, 20 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.