Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Population Growth Through Migration

Australian migration have begun a long, long time ago. Their ancestors are called modern Indigenous Australian who came to the island via land bridge and short sea-crossing. The original settlers are called aboriginals. And now, after 48,000 years, the estimated population of Australia is 20 million, combining the count of both native and migrants. The birth rate is 12.14 percent and migration rate is 3.5 percent.


From a report by the Australian Associated Press, 60 percent of its population growth is from the United Kingdom. For the longest time, the British is still the best source of new arrivals from overseas. The Australian Bureau of Statistics also said that 5.5 million or a quarter of the population in Australia is composed of other nationals from different parts of the world. 213,000 people have migrated to Australia in year 2007-2008, this means 60 percent of the population growth was filled-up by non-Australians, with the average age of 15 to 34. Most of the nationals that migrate to Australia are British, counting 1.2 million, New Zealander, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian and Italian. All of these given countries are said to be the highest migrants from a list of more than 150 countries.


The population of Australia is composed of different races. Migration is one of the factors why it continues to grow. This takes account from the country's historical development. On 26th of January 1788, a British First Fleet of Penal Transportation ships landed at Sydney Cove, for an attempt to establish a penal colony, which later on became the Colony of New South Wales. In 1851, called the Gold Rush Era, an enormous expansion in population took place with large number of settlers from Britain and Ireland, Germany, other Europeans and Chinese.



And after the World War Two, the Australia government launched a massive immigration program to avoid any invasion, led by the country of Japan. The must “populate or perish” to have someone to take care of the security of the country and the richness of nature. As what many people always say, there is safety in numbers. And so, hundreds of thousands of displaced Europeans migrated to Australia and over 1 million British traveled under the Assisted Migration Scheme. At around 1970, people who are aspiring to migrate to Australia just went up, exceeding the number that the government expect. This is why there have been Australian law published, to make Australian immigration more controllable., prior to the incident called the Tampa affair wherein thousands of asylum seeker crossed the border of Australia illegal.


The population of Australia is growing and expected to explode up to 44 million by 2050. Though it is a big island, it is still viewed a problem. Immigration to Australia is now tightened to filter who is legal and who is not. An Australian visa will be your proof to cross its border and become a convincing Australian citizen.

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