Titbit: It’s Getting a Bit Irish in Australia

On ABC News 24 today (Saturday, 26th May) they had an interesting item about people migrating to Australia, and in particular, Western Australia; to get in on our so-called ‘mining boom’—although our mining boom seems to be turning into more of a mining bang lately as commodity prices continue to fall.

Anyway, as one might expect, the number one nationality migrating to Australia is Asian/Indian.

But the number two nationality migrating to Australia might come as a bit of surprise to many. It did to me. It is the Irish. It seems Irish people are flocking to Australia in significant numbers looking for work as the bad times continue in Ireland.

There are two significant differences in these two types of migrants that were pointed out by the ABC News item.

The first difference they covered was that Asian/Indian migrants are mostly going for the up-market white-collar type services and administration type of work. I can attest to this. I am working on a major three year IT/IM project and all of the high-end consultants coming in on the project are single or double degree Asian/Indians. Also when we have teleconferences linking up other project members it seems everyone on the call but me is Asian/Indian. When I check the project teams at other sections of the business working on the project all the names are Asian/Indian.

In stark contrast to this the Irish are targeting the more manual hands-on blue-collar ‘trades’ end of work spectrum.

The other difference underlined in the article was that the Asian/Indians have come to stay. They are taking out 20 year mortgages and buying houses, and making plans to bring over other members of their family. On the whole they plan to make Australia home.

Whereas the Irish are generally not putting down roots. They are here until things in Ireland pick up, and then they plan to return to their homeland.

Well … I though that was interesting …