From the point of view of most of the participants in these migrations, Australia was a much better place economically than where they came from. Much historical research has been done on letters back home from Irish migrants in Australia. They were gathered mainly by the historian Patrick O'Farrell.
The overwhelming majority of these letters speak of the better standard of living in the new country than in famine-ridden, Britain-pillaged Ireland. The Irish were particularly motivated by the possibility of taking up land in Australia.
Even the “South Sea Islanders”, who had been “blackbirded” to Australia, and the Chinese, who had been at the bottom end of the Australian social ladder, were very reluctant to leave after the imposition of the White Australia Policy in 1900. There were more economic opportunities in Australia than in China or the Pacific Islands.
The migration to Australia was always much more heterogenous than British Australian mythology allows, and in the early 20th century particularly there were constant chain migrations from Russia, the southern Slav lands, Italy, Greece and Malta, despite occasional brutal outbursts of racism against these migrations. One of the worst examples of such racism was the forcible deportation of 6000 Germans and southern Slavs after the First World War.
A large number of Jewish people migrated to Australia just before the Second World War, escaping fascism in Europe. They were very glad to get here and many prospered in Australia.
Some parts of northern Australia, such as the Cairns area, the Townsville area, and particularly the Northern Territory, always had a much more diverse ethnic and cultural mix than many other parts of Australia, even despite the White Australia Policy.
For much of its history, for instance, the Northern Territory had a larger proportion of people of Asian origin, Aboriginal origin and mixed race origin than whites. A recent very useful article in Labor History by Maria Martinez underlines the complex interplay between the racial composition of the population in the Northern Territory and attitudes in the labour movement that helped to undermine the White Australia Policy, even on a national scale.
After the Second World War another wave of mass migration commenced, including people from the Baltic states, Eastern Europeans, Greeks, Italians and Dutch. They were very glad to get here, away from war-devastated Europe, and they participated in building the Snowy Mountains Scheme and developing modern Australia. In the 1960s and 1970s more people came from Arab countries and Turkey, and they, too, contributed to the development of Australia and did well here compared with the then relative poverty of the places they came from.
There are now 300,000 people in Australia of Indochinese origin, who are here because of Australia's involvement in support of the United States intervention in the civil war in Vietnam. Although most of the Indochinese came here as refugees, they show no signs of wanting to leave and they have contributed to the development of modern Australia. Historically, Australia has been a haven for refugees from many countries, including now, Bosnian Muslims, Kosovars and East Timorese. They too have contributed to the development of modern Australia.
The latest wave of migration has been very varied, mainly from Asia, and this has pushed the number of people with some Asian background up to 1.4 million in the past 15 years. This migration has included both hard-working poorer people, highly trained young people and energetic business migrants bringing modest packages of capital with them.
This Asian migration is particularly obvious as a major factor in economic development, has served as a buffer against economic depression, and has particularly contributed to development in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, and to reducing unemployment in those cities.
The striking thing about these migrations is that, particularly since the Second World War, when our rate of migration has been by far the highest in the world (except for Israel), it has in fact been achieved at the same time as a substantial and obvious reduction in racial and cultural tensions, compared, say, with the 1950s. This is in fact the opposite of the exaggerated conflict that the chauvinist opponents of migration constantly predict even now, despite all the evidence in front of their eyes.
In Australian conditions, the more diverse the migration, and the larger it is, the more it undermines stupid xenophobic practices and attitudes.
Anyone with an eye to see, walking around this laid-back, tough, intense Sydney of ours, can't avoid being struck by the way the cultural diversity that is now dominant in our city works so effectively. It has been very moving to me in the last couple of weeks attending demonstrations, which rapidly grew in cynical old Sydney, to 30,000 people, in support of the people of East Timor, to observe the wonderful cultural diversity of the Australians in those demonstrations.
I grew up in the 1940s and the 1950s and you'd better believe it, mass migration has been overwhelmingly beneficial to every aspect of the real quality of human life in Australia, as I experience it. Food, culture, politics, the economy, the whole universe of things that affect the essential features of our life.
Opponents of migration and other reactionaries have recently dusted off the quite old theory of the new class to stigmatise supporters of migration and multiculturalism as members of an egregious elite, different to the popular Australian “volk” who, it is claimed, are ativistic and racist to the core.
This desperate rhetoric is inaccurate as a sociological description of modern Australian society, and rather ineffective as a call to arms. When examined closely, it is obviously a biased, primarily ideological construct.
Nearly 20 per cent of the adult population, including school teachers and nurses, now have degrees, and half of them are women. Do they all constitute members of a “new class”? The idea is absurd. When pressed, ideologues such as Betts, Dixson and Bill Hayden redefine their proposition a bit to say that maybe the “new class” consists only of people in the media and the bureaucracy who favour migration (and disagree with them), which makes this construction even more absurd sociologically speaking. It is merely a sort of bizarre point-scoring aimed at stirring up perceived popular animosity to people with degrees.
The problem with it as a call to arms is that a majority of the industrial working class without university degrees, at whom it is presumably directed, are recent non-English-speaking-background (NESB) migrants themselves, and are therefore very unlikely to respond to this demagogy. This recent desperate new class rhetoric underlines the developing social isolation of the people who use it in the newly evolving Australia that is already around us.
Betts and other conservative populists make big fuss about some very old public opinion polls, which they claim show that migration is unpopular. Occasionally Betts acknowledges that opinion polls results are influenced powerfully by how the questions are asked, and what information is given to the people polled about the issues before they are polled, but she shrugs off this problem and makes much of her proposition that the elites are ignoring public opinion in their support of migration.
In the absence of carefully controlled polling, not overloaded by emotive construction, Betts's conclusions from her polls have to be treated with great reserve for the same reasons that opponents of the death penalty tend to put aside emotive tabloid polls, which often seem to favour capital punishment.
We now know a great deal about the phenomenon of push polling, and many of Betts's favoured polls get close this. The deliberately emotive way many public opinion poll questions are posed is the reason that most democrats are very suspicious of the right-wing populist mania for citizen-initiated referendums.
An interesting new development, probably caused by rapid demographic changes in Australia's major cities, is that recent opinion polls, organised though they are in this fairly emotive way, are beginning to show a fairly substantial swing in favour of migration (article by Murray Goot in The Bulletin of February 15, 2000). What spin Betts and company will put on these changing poll results?
In reality, political outcomes in bourgeois democracies such as Australia are decided by a complex interaction between various aspects of the popular will, and the special interests of the ruling class, expressed through their manipulation of the media. What comes through in the media is much more an expression of the interests of the tiny elite that owns the media than any independent expression of opinion by a so-called new class of media workers.
In elections the voting is decided by a multitude of factors, and “public opinion” is actually a product of the push and pull of assorted interests and pressure groups. It is even possible that, influenced by right-wing populist hysteria against migration, expressed through the tabloid media, a majority of electors may wish for a reduction in migration. When they come to voting, however, many other factors influence their decision as well.
Many people who favour low migration end up voting for parties that will support high migration and, indeed, the reverse also applies because of the many factors that affect voting behaviour. That's all part of the political process.For example, a clear majority of the population opposes a GST. Nevertheless, the Tories and the ruling class have managed to push through a GST because they succeeded in scraping together a slight majority in an election.
I believe that highish, humane imigration, non-discrimination in immigration, and reasonable family reunion, are overwhelmingly morally justified.
I believe that one takes advantage of one's democratic rights to influence the political process in whatever reasonable way is available to get the outcome you want. Everybody else involved in politics does the same thing, and why should those who favour high migration suddenly impose on themselves a self-denying ordinance in these matters when the reactionary tabloid press puts so much effort into whipping up prejudice against perceived minorities, and migration in general.
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