Getting a Uni degree

Yes; but would they move to Blacktown?

No, of course not.

The wealth gives you choice.

The Vietnamese still choose to stay in Springvale, regardless of their wealth
Chinese still choose to stay in box hill, regardless of wealth
Aussies still choose to stay in cranbourne, regardless of wealth :D
 
Yes; but would they move to Blacktown?

No, of course not.

The wealth gives you choice.

Your point was a correlation between wealth and your level of education.

Totally different things with a very limited correlation.

Median house price in Blacktown is $476k. If your culture has a preference for 3 kids and the wife staying home, guess where you're going to live.

Most engineers I know who didn't work with me are on less than $70k/year. Two even on under $50k (several years out of university). Guess where the ones on $50k dead end job live. Pyrmont in a 3 bedroom luxury apartment and the other in a 5 bedroom house in Surry Hills. Parents bought it for them.

Again little correlation between education, self made wealth and where you live. Way to many other factors can influence this.

I do agree with you to an extent, I'm highly doubtful they would be living on Kidd St in Bidwill if they could afford to GET OUT ASAP.
 
Last edited:
Don't have to give exact figures at all for this argument.

There are such things as trends and observation.

The country of origin and race is not the issue.
The problem is, "observations" rarely give the whole picture, and can be biased. I personally "observe" a lot of people who work in IT (in fact most people I know work in IT). But that doesn't mean most Australians work in IT.

The point is - immigration is not limited.
Actually, it is - all countries limit immigration. Unlimited immigration would literally mean one billion people can immigrate without any issues.

Unless you mean unlimited over an infinite amount of years (but that's assuming Australia survives as a political entity for an infinite amount of years).
 
Those figures are misleading in that:
- USA: 2014 estimate 318,349,000 population.
- AUS: 2014 estimate 23,545,776 population.

I'm not the best mathematician, but 45.9M immigrants for a population of 318M+ is less than 6.5M immigrants for a population of 23.5M+.

I suspect this post got overlook - so will repeat it.

As a percentage of existing population, Australia takes in significantly more immigrants than other western countries.

Also - cimbon mentioned that 4 out of 10 people living in Noble Park were born in Australia ... sooooooooo ... that means 60% of the population are immigrants.

I'd say that was a significant proportion of immigrants in a single area.
 
Have you been outside of Australia? There are cities in many countries with double that or more. 60% of a very small suburb being "migrants" including people born in the UK, NZ and similar is not "a lot".
 
It is a majority of ONE suburb of 20 odd thousand people. Noble Park isn't even 1% of Australia's (or even Melbourne's) population.
 
It seems like many missed this:

These are the figures for Australia overall:

The most common ancestries in Australia were English 25.9%, Australian 25.4%, Irish 7.5%, Scottish 6.4% and Italian 3.3%.

...

In Australia 69.8% of people were born in Australia. The most common countries of birth were England 4.2%, New Zealand 2.2%, China (excludes SARs and Taiwan) 1.5%, India 1.4% and Italy 0.9%.

http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/ce...nsus/2011/quickstat/0?opendocument&navpos=220


Wow, such huge numbers there. :eek:

Diversity fail
 
Have you been outside of Australia? There are cities in many countries with double that or more. 60% of a very small suburb being "migrants" including people born in the UK, NZ and similar is not "a lot".

I'd say a significant majority is a lot.
 
It seems like many missed this:



Diversity fail

I don't see how your stats support your contention.

I wish we had more immigration especially from genuine refugees. I'd love to see us move to number 1 in the world for refugee resettlement rather than No. 2 or 3 depending on he measure (absolute or per capita). However to suggest that 30% of the total population being immigrants isn't significant is strange. And to further suggest that nearly 79% of those immigrants being from countries other than NZ and England is a diversity fail is even stranger.
 
Are you serious? The most common place of birth outside of Australia/NZ/UK is China - people born here make up a whopping 1% of our population and this is an achievement? My mother in law lives in Canada and on the first day of arriving in Australia to visit, she said she was surprised that there are so many white people here. I think I'll be leaving this thread before my head explodes.
 
Are you serious? The most common place of birth outside of Australia/NZ/UK is China - people born here make up a whopping 1% of our population and this is an achievement? My mother in law lives in Canada and on the first day of arriving in Australia to visit, she said she was surprised that there are so many white people here. I think I'll be leaving this thread before my head explodes.

The numbers that you have provided are pretty straight forward. We are a nation with the 9th largest number of total immigrants in the world. We have a lot more immigrants as a percentage of population than Canada (nice anecdote by the way;)) who are number 8 in absolute terms. Only 3 of your fabled European nations have more immigrants and all are substantially less as a percentage of population.

80% of our immigrants come from countries other than UK and NZ. It proves diversity in immigration rather than disproves it. You are simply wrong. Australia by world standards is a powerhouse of world immigration, and those that come are from an enormously diverse number of countries.
 
  • Like
Reactions: S.T
Your point was a correlation between wealth and your level of education.
.
No; it was not.

I mentioned "and/or" several times.

I know full well that education does not equal wealth.

The poster said that we have "limited immigration".

By that, he meant we are very selective about which levels of education, skills, professions and possibly wealth as well (although I'd doubt that wealth is an immigration criteria at all in Aus) are used to select immigrants to Aus.

I am merely illustrating that by the very existence of lower-end suburbs - all over Australia - that have immigrants living in them (and some with a larger representation) that we, in fact; do not have "limited immigration" as the poster describes it.

And based on my observations over 4 decades of adult life; we have lots of "unlimited immigration"...and I don't mean volume; I mean selection criteria.

This is based on the reasonable assumption that professional/highly educated folks, wealthy folks (often these two things are found in the one person when talking of immigrants) will not stay in lower-end suburbs for very long by choice.

If they do, it might be to live near family, but even then; many live in a nicer place - which is within reach of the family. God; the last thing I want to do is live very near any of my family. I love them; but I don't want to be constantly near any of them. I want a bit of protection via some distance.

Highly educated immigrants don't make a habit of coming here by choice to work in a scuzzy low paid job, and then have to live in a lower-end suburb as a result.

Why would they? They may as well stay in the homeland.

As I have said; we do not have limited immigration. Isn't it great!!

What a frickin fantastic Country we have...we let everyone in; plenty don't.

You can all keep twisting what I say and pull out some other irrelevant Gubbmint stats until the cows come home.
 
By that, he meant we are very selective about which levels of education, skills, professions and possibly wealth as well (although I'd doubt that wealth is an immigration criteria at all in Aus) are used to select immigrants to Aus.

*delete*

Highly educated immigrants don't make a habit of coming here by choice to work in a scuzzy low paid job, and then have to live in a lower-end suburb as a result.

Why would they? They may as well stay in the homeland.

Highly educated immigrants leave home all the time. It's actually a really big issue for developing countries (and if you want to look locally, rural Australia), it's a phenomenon called a brain drain or human capital flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight

This quote sums it up pretty well. "There is a surge of intellectuals leaving Latin America who are usually doctors, architects, and engineers. They often choose the US as their destination. However, after migrating, most of them work in jobs that have nothing to do with their original majors. Therefore, it is not only brain drain for their own countries, but also brain waste for the whole world."

I know this because my family and majority of my family friends are just such immigrants. Highly educated doctors, IT, scientists, engineering immigrants.

I've met a few bus drivers, taxi drivers, and highly successful painters who use to be surgeons and engineers overseas, a polish friend was a mining engineer and instead runs a cleaning company in Sydney, it was too difficult for them or not economically viable to get their qualifications transferred here.

Speaking English and having a skill deemed important to Australia gives you extra points on your application. That's how my family came, my dad had an IT degree back when it was a big deal and he speaks/writes in Harvard level English (which trips me out cause he deceives me by failing to structure basic sentences and speaks with an accent 90% of the time) as he learnt to translate for the Iranian military during his compulsory military service. A lot of these skilled migrants will then apply for family who DON'T have these skills to come afterwards and they get their extra points because they now have family who live here that can support them financially.

In Iran I've had family put in gaol for their religious beliefs, family friends murdered. I've had family killed by the drug trade in Peru (they were Interpol and government agents). A family friend who was mega wealthy had to flee to Canada to escape the mafia. My mate from Philippines has armed escorts and carries a gun when he goes to visit his family because they are wealthy and kidnappings of wealthy kids are rife.

Point being, there are many reasons educated people leave. I think I'm pretty lucky. I've seen what my life could have been like in Peru. Good by comparison to the rest of the population, but nothing like how I have it here. Then again, maybe I would have started a large construction company and bought OTP apartments in Sydney CBD with my enormous fortune.
 
It seems like many missed this:



Diversity fail

I would say that is exclusive use of stats ... over the last 200 years the majority of immigrants were from Europe ... but I would be interested in the stats for the last 20 years - which is the time period we are talking about
 
I used to teach a Somalian refugee Doctor when I worked at Tafe. He was unable to work as a doctor and some agency sent him to do a Cert III in Office Admin, and to practice his English. Wonder what he is doing now, 12 or so years later.

In the same class we had a young lady from Serbia or one of those Slavic countries (I really don't recall which one) who had been severely burned in the war and was brought to Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane for treatment. She was in the Burns Unit for over a year before being released - her family also came over to be with her.
 
If you're smart, you will discourage your children from wasting their time and money going to Uni and encourage them to either go into a trade (you can't outsource plumbing, carpentry and electrical work to India) or get a job doing monkey work and save and invest as much as possible, so their futures are assured. Even better, encourage them from a young age to start businesses.

I've been busy of late (moving house) so I missed the start of this thread and I don't have the time atm to read through it all - so what I am about to say may have been said before.

While not every decision to "invest" in a university education can be justified on financial grounds and (and I have said this before on SS) imo too many people get a university degree (there is an oversupply of grads, though I appreciate that is a blanket statement) - I do think it needs to be acknowledged that (like many other things in life, including the choice of ones partner it could be argued) we as human beings are simply drawn to do some things.

In that sense I do not begrudge any one who desires a university education (I have one myself, so it would be hypocrisy of me to deny others).

Regarding encouraging people to start businesses.... Arguably this is the best way to control ones future and it could also be said that the best time to do it is when you're young (the costs of failure when you're a carefree 20 year old are a lot less than they are at age 40 when you have a wife, kids, and a mortgage).

But - lets be honest - most businesses are simply poor paying jobs in disguise.

Regardless, whether you have a PhD or you left high school at age 15 and thereafter pursued no formal education ---- what will get individually get you (and collectively get the country) ahead is not how many letters you have after your name - it is whether you have a drive to be better and to succeed in life.

There's no degree in that.
 
Regardless, whether you have a PhD or you left high school at age 15 and thereafter pursued no formal education ---- what will get individually get you (and collectively get the country) ahead is not how many letters you have after your name - it is whether you have a drive to be better and to succeed in life.

There's no degree in that.
Yep; well said.

This is the mentality we need to encourage in society somehow.

Almost all my closer friends are golf pros and ex-golf pros; and friends of theirs and mine who we know through golf. None of us golf pros finished high school, and all of us are successful financially. Not billionaires; but not lower-end either.

As you get older, you surround yourself (unconsciously) with like-minded folks.

Golf pros - by nature - are driven and have the mindset to reach for success; if you don't you will never get to the level of golf pro in that sport. They go hand in hand - like any sport for that matter.

So, we gravitate to folks who are successful and driven; and they to us. All the folks I hang out with socially - are like this.

Some have been to Uni, many haven't.

The common denominator is the drive...or is that; "putt"? :D
 
Last edited:
Back
Top