...Who comes to Australia?

Immigration and border protection have been important, and difficult, policy issues in the past ten years. Pauline Hanson was elected to the federal parliament on the basis of anti-immigrant (and anti-aboriginal) comments. To be sure, she was not re-elected and her party, One Nation, has disappeared from the national arena. Nonetheless, issues surrounding immigration to Australia remain prominent, and close to the top of policy agendas. Andrew Norton, writing in the Autumn 2006 Policy, demonstrates that Australians favour large-scale immigration, but expect migrants to `fit in¿.[1] Fitting in can be very important. In a provocative article, Andrew Leigh has demonstrated that higher levels of ethnic diversity lead to lower levels of trust at the Australian neighbourhood level.[2] He defines the challenge for policymakers as being how to maintain the high levels of migration while minimising the adverse impact of diversity on Australian society. This, of course, begs the question: Are immigrants to Australia very different from native-born Australians? In this paper we examine the differences and similarities between migrants to Australia and the native born population. While migrants may be multi-hued, multi-accented, and multi-cultural they may not be too different from the people already here.