Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
The Indian population in Australia has exponentially grown in the last two years according to the latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The ABS’s preliminary estimates suggest there are 592,000 Indians living in Australia as of June 2018. This is a 30 per cent jump compared to Census 2016 figures which recorded 455,389 Indians living in Australia.
India with 592,000 people moved into third place dropping the New Zealand born (568,000) down to the fourth place.
India now accounts for 2.4% of the Australian population and the median age of an Indian migrant is revealed to be 34 years, same as those born in Australia.
India has been Australia’s biggest source of migrants since 2016.
While 33,310 places of 162,417 permanent places in 2017-18 were granted to Indian citizens, 38,854 visas of 183,608 places went to Indian citizens in 2016-17.
The number of Indian students studying in Australia too ascended to a seven-year high in 2018. According to November 2017 figures, close to 70,000 students were studying in Australian universities and colleges.
India is the biggest source of migrants to Australia since 2016.
Over 7 million migrants were living in Australia as of June 2018, with people born in England continuing to be the largest group of overseas-born residents.
ABS Assistant Director of Migration Statistics Neil Scott said new figures showed that in 2018 just over 29 per cent of Australia’s resident population was born overseas.
“Australia’s multicultural society is made up of migrants born in every country around the world. Although almost 18 million Australians were born here, our society is continuing to become more culturally diverse over time”, Mr Scott said.
China ranked second on this list with 651000 people born in China residing in Australia today.
These figures include temporary visa holders like international students and those on temporary work visas.
Indian languages are widely spoken in Australia
The 2016 Census revealed that along with population, Indian languages too had grown in Australia.
Hindi came out as the top Indian language spoken at home in Australia with 159,652 speakers, with Punjabi a close second at 132,496.
Hindi and Punjabi have made it to the top ten languages spoken in Australia.
The other languages which have seen a big jump are Tamil (73,161), Bengali (54,566), Malayalam (53,206), Gujarati (52,888), Telugu (34,435), Marathi (13,055) and Kannada (9701).
Other languages recorded in the 2016 census were Konkani language (2,416), Kashmiri language (215), Oriya (721) and Sindhi spoken by 1,592 speakers across Australia.
