Atually, Lash, "other Australians" , as you well know, disagreed with your silly lie about, for instance, there being no blacks in Australia.
There is a current census report still being prepared, so I do not actually know if there are up to date figures. (Edit: Found it, the url is given below)
Here is some interesting commentary, comparing US immigration to Australian:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/counterpoint/stories/s1381754.htm
Michael Duffy: Over the past few decades, mass immigration into the United States, from countries to its south and also from Asia, has changed the US from what was pretty much a bi-racial nation to a multiracial one. So what's this done to the social fabric? Has it produced much tension?
My favourite Australian magazine, People and Place, has just run an article on this, and we're now joined by one of its authors, Frank Bean, professor of sociology at the University of California, where he's also co-director of the Centre for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy. We're also joined by sociologist Bob Birrell. He edits People and Place and runs the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University.
Welcome to the program.
Frank Bean: Well, since 1965, really, when the law changed, it opened things up so that people from all kinds of countries that had not been coming in great numbers to the United States could start to come.Bob Birrell, many Australians like to see us as a nation of immigrants, but how multiracial are we now, do you think, compared with the US?
Bob Birrell: We don't have anything like the scale of the diversity Frank's just described. I was really struck by
in his article he pointed out that in the state of California, 53% of the population is classified as non-white. That's not necessarily born overseas but of non-white ancestry, and it was much the same in Texas. Now, we're nowhere near that level in Australia, however the pace of change in Australia has been much more rapid than in the United States because our immigration intake is a lot higher in percentage terms than theirs, so that currently about 23% of the Australian population is overseas born. There are some quite high concentrations of people from Asia and the Middle East. Sydney is the most striking example. Currently around about 13% of Sydney's population is Asian or Middle Eastern born. Melbourne, maybe 10% to 11%, so that's a very sizable minority, and it's increasing fairly rapidly because most of our migrants now are coming from Asia.
Interestingly, in Oz, tertiary education is becoming a big puller in of Asian (and, I think, African) citizens.
Michael Duffy: Bob Birrell, interestingly enough in Australia there's always been a lot more intermarriage, hasn't there, between black and white people?
Bob Birrell: It's certainly true of the Aboriginal population. Our rates of intermarriage there are much like the American Indians in the US, but way ahead of the blacks in the US. On other fronts, there's been a high degree of intermarriage in Australia for the southern and eastern Europeans
in the second generation the majority marry out. The news is not quite so promising for the more recent migrants of Asian, Middle Eastern origin. There's still a high degree of inmarriage there.
Michael Duffy: Do you think that's just a question of time? Are we still looking at the first, and only the first, wave of the second generation?
Bob Birrell: Yes, it's quite likely that in the second generation we will see a movement in the direction of the eastern and southern Europeans, but it's really too early to say. What we can see at the moment is a lot of younger Indo-Chinese who came here as young children who are now in the marrying stages, but they have a very high level of returning back home for a spouse, and that's true also for the Middle Eastern population. There are quite a large number of spouses coming from the Middle East for those younger Australians of Middle Eastern origin.
Michael Duffy: Bob, what can we say about the level of social tension or harmony more generally? I mean, it's only nine years ago that Pauline Hanson rose to national prominence here on what appeared to be a certain degree of resentment against Asian immigrants, and yet she certainly disappeared, and it seems to me that some of that resentment has. Do you have any sense of what's going on?
Bob Birrell: We've had periodic upsurges of concern about this. To take you back a little earlier; it was only in 1988 when John Howard, as leader of the opposition, ventured the thought that it might be better if Asian migration slowed a little. That caused a huge controversy, and public opinion polls at the time indicated that two-thirds of the Australian population agreed with him, that there should be a slowing of Asian migration. Now, as you mentioned, those issues emerged again through '96, '97, '98 when Pauline Hanson was at a zenith, when majorities were prepared to voice those sorts of opinions.
It's quietened down quite a bit, but at the same time, any of your listeners observing the discussions in the news would know that immigration issues are always close to the forefront here, and we've got a major debate going on now about border protection issues. So I think you'd have to say that Australians are very sensitive about these issues, and if there's any evidence that government is losing control in the way the American government has lost control of its borders, it would cause a resurgence of serious problems. To us, looking across at America, it's just remarkable that the optimism of America, including Frank, the changes that are going on in his society
but Americans seem to be that way; they really delight in the idea of America as a nation of migrants, and unity and diversity, and a confidence that they can incorporate people from around the world without tension. We're far less optimistic and much more sensitive, I think, to such changes.
Michael Duffy: Another issue that I know has been written about a bit in People and Places is the universities. There are a lot of foreign students coming now and paying fees, and almost automatically becoming Australian citizens afterwards.
Bob Birrell: Yes, that's a bit of a sleeper at the moment but I think that as the Australian public begins to realise that there's been no growth at all in domestic or undergraduate training in Australia since the coalition came to power, and that increasingly the government is having to pull in migrants to take up professional occupations here
this could become an issue, and the overseas students are just one component of that. In order to fill the gaps in our workforce we have to facilitate their change of status as permanent residents....
I suspect our Asian and, Middle Eastern and African populations will be growing VERY fast from now on...especially our Asian, as they have grown very fast from a small base in the sixties.
I would have had NO idea that American immigration from those areas also only reelly picked up in the mid sixties, I would have thought America had large complements of people from these regions for much longer than that (not counting Africans brought in as slaves, of course)
A view of Australian multiculturalism from the far right:
DR. C.A. DIQUE WRITES ON MULTICULTURALISM
The following most important letter was published under the heading: "The Fraud of Multiculturalism" in The Australian (March 4th):
"Dr. Evasio Costanzo states that Australia is a young and ethnically complex country' (The Australian Feb. 22nd) and 'in search of its own cultural identity'.
It was certainly not an ethnically complex country till Parliament decided without electoral mandate to make it so in 1966. Since then the much quoted 140 ethnic inputs, speaking 90 languages and practising 80 religions have been a source of embarrassment to previous inhabitants and themselves.
"Australia is the only country in the world in which an elected government has tried to alter the ethnicity of the population. The sustained and plaintive wails for a new flag, a new Constitution and a new language (Esperanto!) are merely results of the initial decision, as is the desire for 'subordinate cultures' Dr. Constanzo mentions.
"If there is any 'approved act of genocide' it is against the white, English speaking Australians whom it is directed. "Multiculturalism may be an aspiration of Mr. Fraser, Mr. Macphee, or Mr. Howard who jointly are imposing it on Australia. It is not, however, that of the majority of Australians."
Dr. C.A. Dique is a prominent Brisbane critic of the Government's Immigration policies and the multicultural society. He issues a regular Immigration reform newsletter.
Interesting how differently people may view the same phenomenon!
A police point of view. (From a while back)
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/proceedings/05/glare.pdf
Here is relevant data from the 2001 census, I am unsure how complete it is.
http://www.une.edu.au/campus/chaplaincy/uniting/links/diversity.pdf
What will be very interesting is how different race figures will be in 2006.
Moe census stuff:
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]/Census_BCP_ASGC_ViewTemplate?ReadForm&Start=1&Count=1000&ExpandView
Here is a fascinating, and horrible, examination of racist eugenics in Oz (a movement which swept the world, but seems to have been especially virulent here...or mebbe I just feel more awful about it here!)
http://www.icv.org.au/history7.shtml
Hopefully that gives some accurate figures...though all are out of date.
I like that one. This is one of my favorites:
