Latest ethnicity trends in Australia’s immigration intake.

Determining the ethnic make-up of our immigration intake is not straight-forward, because the data that comes closest to ethnicity goes ‘by country’…

… and ‘region of birth’:

It’s clear now that there has been a significant shift away from North West Europe (which of course is quite diverse) to East and South Asia (which is very homogeneous by comparison). There’s been no real debate about this in the mainstream media.

The mix of countries where Australia’s migrant arrivals are born has changed considerably over time. A decade ago, in 2011-12, the largest group (20%) was from North-West Europe. Five years ago, in 2016-17, the largest group (23%) was from North-East Asia. By 2018-19, the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this had changed substantially with the largest group (28%) of immigrants coming from South and Central Asia. During the pandemic, in 2020-21, the largest group of migrant arrivals was from Oceania (excluding Australian-born) which made up 20 per cent of the total migrant arrivals for that year. In 2021-22, the proportion of migrant arrivals from each region was similar to 2018-19, the year prior to the pandemic. The largest group was from South and Central Asia (32%).

_{https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release}

“Immigration minister Andrew Giles has pledged to incorporate a question on ethnicity into the 2026 Australian census.”^[22] Rightfully, so – we should know this information for a number of reasons. It indicates the variety and magnitude of information that is being cognitively loaded onto citizens. This is a pledge that should be followed up.

Although the ABS does not collect data on race and ethnic background, various studies have put together results of the census to determine the ethnic composition of Australia, the Australian Human Rights Commission has estimated the European population at 76% of the Australian population,^[20] while a media diversity study put it at 72%, the non-European proportion was 21% and 23% respectively, and the Aboriginal Australian population at 3% in both.^[21]

_Wikipedia