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Comment by beilabs | Hacker News Reader

"One of the first pieces of legislation passed in the new Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act. Now known as the infamous White Australia Policy it made it very difficult for Asians and Pacific Islanders to migrate to Australia. This Act stated that if a person wanted to migrate to Australia they had to be given a dictation test. The dictation test could be in any European language. So a person from China or Japan who wanted to live in Australia could be tested in one or all of French, Italian or English languages."

Granted this was well over a hundred years ago however I feel that the Australian attitude to migrants is still quite unfriendly. They're making it more and more difficult to migrate there even if you have roots in the country especially if you are from a non English speaking country.

Source: Am Irish and went through the Australian immigration process years ago.

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Don't be mistaken, Australia has the 12th highest immigration rate of all countries per capita. [1]

and the 8th highest immigration of all countries, regardless of population. (also [1]).

Australia has a massive, massive amount of immigration.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...

edit: I was wrong regarding Wikipedia's data.

Australia has a cap on permanent immigration per year of around 200,000. That Wikipedia page is claiming 45 per 1,000 inhabitants, which gets you closer to one million net migration. That conveniently ignores the far more important number: how many people are actually allowed to stay on a permanent basis?

Further, about half those ~200,000 allocated per year go to people already in Australia.

Back in reality, Australia is extremely restrictive when it comes to allowing permanent immigration. It has a lot of temporary work immigration.

https://insidestory.org.au/how-many-migrants-come-to-austral...

That wikipedia page stats are over a 5 year period, for every country

So the 1,023,107 listed from 2007-2012 is 204,621 per year.

Sounds spot on to me.

>Further, about half those ~200,000 per year go to people already in Australia

Sure, but they are not permanent in Australia, and immigration means they became permanent. It's not really relevant where they started from.

Australia is allowing ~1 million people each 5 years to becoming permanent, which is a huge number... in fact 8th in the world overall.

It's the same for every other country, so the comparison to other countries is still spot on.

Correct you are. I thought the wiki reference was annual, having to do with the far larger temporary work immigration that Australia allows.

But it's never enough.

Yeah. They've obviously made much progress but are still institutionally scared of non white immigrants.

Very forward thinking on the issue of partners though. If one gets the visa the other does too with little or no fuss. Don't even have to be married.

The country is, like any, full of contradictions.

Not sure what you mean by "institutionally scared of non white immigrants". In 2014/15 the vast majority of immigrants were from Asia: https://www.border.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/s...

Indeed, as one might reasonably expect given it's geographical location.

Nevertheless, within the institutions of politics and media and to a lesser extent the civil service there remains a vocal and sizeable minority who fear white people and "anglo-white" culture will become the minority and become oppressed.

Fortunately, most Australians don't feel that way.

I'd distinguish attitude of Australians to migrants (which I have found very friendly) from the strictness of the immigration department.

There have always been many more people wanting to get into the country than the quotas allowed, and so the immigration department is a gatekeeper. Getting in is a kind of game of beaurocratic chess, and the department is determined to play hard.

The UK was the same when I was living there for a few years. Germany on the other hand is more keen on attracting skilled workers and made things very easy for me. But as people, I found Germans and British to be about equally welcoming of immigrants.

In your opinion, are these policies bald attempts at keeping migrants from Asia-Pacific countries out of Australia or is there a deeper-seated historic animosity at play?

Culturally, are the psychological scars of Australia's previous status as a British penal colony still manifested in public policy?

I don't ask to be incendiary, but because I'm interested in the Second-Order Effects that stick with cultures over time, often in seemingly unrelated ways.

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