With immigration levels now a regular topic of discussion, what does the hard data tell us about migrants to Australia? We’ve combed through the stats to see how different immigrants are to locally born Australians.
Proportion of Australians born overseas: 26% (2016)
How old are they? Overseas-born Australians have a median age of 44 compared to 34 for locally-born Australians. Australians born in Europe are oldest, with a median age of 59. However, 85% of overseas-born Australians who have arrived since 2000 were between 15 and 64 in 2016, compared to 65.9% of all Australians.
Where do they live? More likely in major centres: 32% of people in major cities were born overseas compared to 26% of all Australians; 11% of people in towns smaller than 10,000 people were born overseas.
How healthy are they? Healthier than locals. At the age of 30, locally-born Australians can expect to live, on average, another 47.5 years. Overseas-born Australians can expect to live 52.6 years. The longest-lived are Vietnamese-born Australians, who on average will live another 56.2 years.
Jobs and income: The median income of foreign-born taxpayers in 2013-14 was $48,400, 6% higher than the median income of all Australians. The unemployment rate for migrants arrived since 2007 and temporary residents was 7.4% in 2016, around 2 percentage points higher than for the overall workforce.
However, recent migrants with Australian citizenship had an unemployment rate of just 3.3%. The participation rate for recent migrants/temporary residents was 70% in 2016, compared to an overall rate of 66%; recent migrants with Australian citizenship had a rate of 80%.
Forty percent of aged pension recipients were born overseas; 54% of permanent migrants aged 15 years and over (who arrived 1 January 2000 to 9 August 2016) owned their own home outright or with a mortgage, compared to 66% of all Australians.
Education: 60% of overseas-born Australians had a post-school qualification compared to 54% of locally born Australians. The most educated group is the Indian community: 79.3% of Indian-born Australians have a post-school qualification; 78.7% of the Bangladeshi community does as well.
Religion: 27% of foreign-born Australians report having no religion, compared to 34% of Australian-born people. However, between 2006 and 2016, foreign-born Australians reporting no religion increased from 17% to 27%.
Crime and punishment: 18% of prisoners in Australia are overseas-born, compared to 35% of the population aged 17 and above. Assault and other violent acts are the most common offence for New Zealanders and Sudanese-born people; drug offences are most common for people born in China, Malaysia and Vietnam, sexual assault is the most common offence for British-born prisoners.
So Bernard, what you appear to be telling us; overseas born Australians will be our new ruling elite? Thus has always been so. Those that strive, survive. Evenso, we generational drudges have never held those that aspire to elitism or to rule over another as particularly valued individuals, lacking egalitarian beliefs essential to survival outside confining securities of mega cities and political patronage. Modern day Australia remains an outpost of a past era. One way or another, change is inevitable. There is nothing to be afraid of. Other than Australian values, beliefs, reflective of heritage, land and openness to another Australian?
I would be interested to know where they come from both overall, and in the last few years.
First – I do adore it when the media actually reports facts. There should be so much more of this. The infamous example a couple of years ago which showed the public drastically overestimate the percentage of GDP spent on foreign aid, and want to “cut it”… to a figure that is drastically higher than it actually is, that should have been a wakeup call that so much of our politics is based on people being ignorant.
So this is my favourite article of today. More of this please.
Second- “How healthy are they? Healthier than locals. At the age of 30, locally-born Australians can expect to live, on average, another 47.5 years. Overseas-born Australians can expect to live 52.6 years. The longest-lived are Vietnamese-born Australians, who on average will live another 56.2 years.”
This is interesting, since Australia is still pretty high on the world life-expectancy list. At birth, the average Australian is expected to live about 9 years longer than the average Vietnamese. Is Australian overall life-expectancy being propped up by immigrants from higher life-expectancy countries like Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea? Is our immigration program selecting for high life-expectancy immigrants (perhaps by way of socio-economic selection)? Is something in the water here powering up Vietnamese immigrants the way Earth’s sun powers up Superman and other Kryptonian immigrants?
And considering that many migrants have only arrived here recently, how do you know how long they’re going to live here compared to locals? What is it based on? Are there enough e.g. Indians who have been here long enough to out-survive the locally born?
I’m sure demographers have ways of extrapolating these things.
Further thought actually suggested an answer to the life expectancy discrepancy mentioned in my post. Of course, life expectancies from birth are heavily influenced by infant mortality rates, and also vaccination rates against childhood illnesses. The life expectancies given were for people already age 30. It is conceivable that the average Australian has a longer life expectancy from birth than Vietnamese (due to better infant mortatlity and better childhood health care and poverty safety nets) but for those who survive to age 30 the Australian is then more likely to suffer obesity, suffer heart attacks, or simply be a sickly person who was carried to survival that far through Western medicine.
Yeah that’s all great but why is there so much global Immigration? It is not the destinations country or citizens that are the cause.
Why are we pretending that Continual Growth is possible or even desirable, as a country and more importantly as species… Cancer is the only continual growth occurring in nature and it eventually destroys the whole organism.
Yet all political parties, business council, ACTU and other governing bodies believe in growth at all costs, including population growth. They obviously have no idea about population biology? The phrase ”boom and bust” figures prominently, there is even a statistical curve that can predict our species approaching rapid decline.
We live on a finite sphere, called Earth; it currently costs approx $100000 usd per kg to get an item into orbit, that option is out.
Sorry but all people will have to start controlling their own reproduction rate, or let nature control it for them through famine and disease. It is not possible to sustain growth and it is not even desirable.
And the worth of overseas tertiary qualifications? The sub-Continent mass produces them – particularly among their middle class. I’m not sure too much credence can be placed on a lot of overseas qualifications. Doesn’t this also deprive the developing countries access to professional services like medical services, educational services, etc? All this to lower the price of our workforce in professional and other fields. I notice studies in other articles on Crikey and elsewhere which show that many overseas born migrants possessed with educational and professional qualifications who don’t work in their fields of specialty and are resentful of this fact. No mention of this here from good old BK. Just a mash up of “facts” to support….What precisely? I tell you what. That our immigration program is a plot by the government and business community to artificially secure increases to our GDP at the expense of the local population and local, State and Federal governments; to secure for business a population growth and a captive market for their products and services; to ensure competition among the workforce for jobs as they become available to reduce the bargaining power of labour.
Nice analysis Bernard! how about the real truth about the impact of immigration and migrants to our community and our economy. The dumb way to achieve economic growth. Just pack ’em in. Al least if things go pear shaped for these new arrivals they have a new or old place to start again. Those born here have to live here and make the best of it. It’s all one way traffic.