Asia is the Largest Source of Immigrants to Australia

International Migration Transforms Australia - Population Reference Bureau

The post-World War II period stands out as an exceptional era in Australia's immigration history because of a major influx of immigrants from outside the United Kingdom and Ireland. For much of the post-World War II period, the UK and Ireland have been the major source of immigrants even while there was a series of successive waves of immigrants from various non-English speaking regions. The immediate post-war period saw the arrival of substantial numbers of displaced persons from Eastern Europe. This was followed by waves from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Middle East. In the late 1970s, substantial flows from Asia commenced and still continue. Since the late 1980s, Asia has been a more important origin of migrants than Europe. In the 1990s, the United Kingdom lost its place as the largest single source of immigrants.

These patterns reflect some significant shifts in immigration policy over the last half-century. In the aftermath of World War II, significant labor shortages arose in the newly expanding manufacturing sector as well as in traditional areas like agriculture. When this demand for labor could not be met from traditional sources, the government assisted more than 300,000 displaced persons from Eastern Europe to settle in Australia and fill vacant jobs. This policy broke the previous almost exclusive reliance on immigrants from the UK-Ireland. The success of the displaced-persons policy led to an extension of the immigration program to other parts of Europe.

The 1970s saw several major shifts in the immigration policy. First, Australia began to experience substantial levels of unemployment with structural change in the economy, the movement of manufacturing jobs away from Australia, and the entry of the baby-boom cohorts into the labor force. Immigration policy shifted from an emphasis on the recruitment of semi-skilled and skilled foreign workers for manufacturing to a more complex program with four main components:

* Economic migration. Attraction of people with skills in demand in Australia.
* Family migration. Relatives of Australian residents. The specific regulations of this part of the program have changed over the subsequent years.
* Refugee and humanitarian migration.
* Special categories. The largest is New Zealanders who can move more or less freely across the Tasman Sea.

The government introduced a points system to assess applicants for economic migration. In the 1980s a system was introduced whereby each year the government sets the numbers of immigrants to be allowed into the country. Over the years, the numbers and balance of the four categories has shifted with changes in government policy, the economy, and the global situation.

The second major policy change in the 1970s was the removal of the final vestiges of the "White Australia policy" which was one of the first initiatives of Australia's first national government in 1901. This policy prevented non-Europeans from immigrating to Australia. With its removal, Asians began to compete equally for places in the immigration program. The entry of refugees from Indo-China was the first wave of a continuing influx from the region.