With the onset of the great depression, the Governor-General...

With the onset of the great depression, the Governor-General proclaimed the cessation of immigration until further notice, and the next group to arrive were 5000 Jewish refuge families from Germany in 1938. Approved groups such as these were assured of entry by being issued with a Certificate of Exemption from the Dictation Test.


In 1954 the 50,000th Dutch migrant arrived; Maria Scholte is to the right of the pictureAfter World War II, Australia launched a massive immigration programme, believing that having narrowly avoided a Japanese invasion, Australia must "populate or perish." Hundreds of thousands of displaced Europeans migrated to Australia and over 1,000,000 British Subjects immigrated under the Assisted Migration Scheme, colloquially becoming known as Ten Pound Poms.[14] The scheme was initially open to citizens of all Commonwealth countries and after the war, was gradually extended to other countries such as the Netherlands and Italy. The qualifications were straightforward: you needed to be in sound health and under the age of 45 years. There were initially no skill restrictions, although under the White Australia Policy, people from mixed race backgrounds found it very difficult to take advantage of the scheme.[15]

Around 1970, there was a fundamental change in immigration policy. For the first time since 1788 there were more migrants wanting to come (even without a subsidy) than the government wanted to accept. All subsidies were abolished, and immigration became progressively more difficult.

During the 2001 election campaign, asylum-seekers and border protection became a hot issue, as a result of incidents such as the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Tampa affair, Children overboard affair, and the sinking of the SIEV-X. This incident marked the beginning of the controversial Pacific Solution. The Howard government's success in the election was largely due to the strong public support for its restrictive policy on asylum-seekers. However, the overall level of immigration increased substantially over the life of the Howard Government.
http://www.hotcopper.com.au/post.asp?fid=262&pid=144795&tid=1337974&rtype=thread