Dreams of a better life, education and solid investments have fuelled movement of migrants to Australia, with more than 28 per cent of the resident population born outside the country.
That equals about 6.6 million people, numbers not seen in 120 years or since the tail end of the gold rush, said the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Denise Carlton.
The figures chart the continued rise of China and India as source countries and the decline of people moving here from Britain.
While the fastest increases in migrant populations between 2004 and last year were from Nepal, Brazil and Pakistan, China and India still led the way outside the traditional Britain-New Zealand leader bloc.
“Overseas migration has been a large contributor to the total Australian population growth for several years: it has consistently been the main driver since 2005-06, contributing more than 50 per cent of population growth in Australia,” Ms Carlton said.
“While the largest migrant groups were people born in the UK and New Zealand, with a total of over 1.8 million Australian residents being born in those two countries, the next two most common birthplaces were from the Asian region.”
These were China and India, with about 450,000 and 400,000 respectively. Still, net overseas migration dipped almost 10 per cent in the past year.
Source: The Australian