part three - Department of Immigration & Citizenship

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connections can be enhanced. Perhaps these types of development should not be left for chance and ways considered to facilitate them through policy. Turning to consideration of return migration, it is useful to bear in mind that much of Ireland’s economic boom of the 1990s has been built by Irish returnees who emigrated in the 1980s. Returnees bring with them the greater breadth and depth of experience that working overseas gives them. Moreover, they return with extensive international networks that can assist in their Australian employers developing contacts with overseas markets. Indeed, in many cases they will be more valuable as Australian employees as returnees than would have been the case if they had remained for their entire careers in Australia. The question then arises as to how such skilled Australians can be lured back. Of course, the availability of appropriate, well-renumerated jobs are a crucial element if the economic situation is going to play a role. This can, of course, be assisted by governments and a number of Asian nations have had successful programs to lure back highly skilled nationals with specific skills. In recent times Taiwan has been most successful in this (Luo and Wang 2001), developing a special Technology Park to accommodate hand-picked returnees to kickstart the development of new industries, especially in IT. Such policies would seem to have a role to play in particular strategic areas of needed skilled human resources. In attracting back skilled people who originally left Australia as young recent graduates or people with only limited years of work experience, there are a number of areas to bear in mind. There is little point in attempting to lure back young people in the earliest stages of their careers who are at a stage in the lifecycle where they wish to travel and experience life in another country. However, once they begin to ‘settle down’ and form families there are some major attractions that Australia offers to them. These include the presence of family and friends – the grandparents’ factor is an important attraction. In addition, there is often a desire for them to ensure that their children are brought up as Australians in Australia. These ideas need detailed testing empirically with controlled surveys of Australians overseas before policies and programs are developed, but the idea of targeting young skilled people with around ten years of overseas work experience as candidates for return would appear to be a feasible strategy to attract back people with particularly needed skills. The role of policy is to identify strategic areas where such bridgeheading is possible and to develop ways in which the networking between Australians in key positions overseas and relevant Australian connections can be enhanced. The availability of appropriate, wellrenumerated jobs is a crucial element in luring back skilled Australians. A number of Asian nations have had successful programs to lure back highly skilled nationals with specific skills. A crucial question here relates to how such potential returnees can be identified. Increasingly, it could be argued that Australia investigate maintaining registers of skilled workers overseas to facilitate programs targeted at bringing back people with particular skills and expertise. Indeed, many Asian countries have kept such registers of their graduates working overseas and worked through their embassies to maintain contact with them. This involves newsletters and organising social occasions. With the current levels of IT available, however, a number of possibilities suggest themselves. One with a great deal of potential is the alumni lists maintained by Australia’s tertiary institutions. While in the past many of these have been poorly organised and maintained, this has changed with the realisation in universities that alumni can be the source of future students and funds. Accordingly, most universities now maintain well-constructed electronic databases on their alumni. These could be used to set up networks, perhaps even using the Internet. The development of attractive and informative websites, regular networking among Australians in particular overseas cities are all possibilities that can be investigated. It is clear other nations are contemplating doing this. As indicated elsewhere, the US plans a special census of its overseas citizens in 2003 and by 2001 it intends for its regular census to C E DA – Emigration from Australia: Economic ImplicationsJune 2001 109
Skilled labour markets are becoming increasingly competitive and Australia needs to have a range of policies to ensure constraints are not placed on development by lack of skilled workers. International migration must never be seen as a substitute for having the highest quality eduction and training systems. All of the OECD nations and many others have active immigration policies to attract and retain highly skilled workers. include not only all of the residents in the US but also all of its citizens abroad. This reflects an attitude of wishing the census to capture the total national human resources and Australia should be contemplating a similar system. Other systems include the registration of Australians overseas with their nearest consulate or embassy and the development of a central system for such registers using state-of-the-art information technology. It needs to be made clear that being on such lists should be voluntary and it needs to be made worthwhile for the Australians overseas to be on the list. The regular dissemination of a magazine, invitations to social events overseas, regular circulars about job and housing opportunities could be included. The point is that these skilled labour markets are becoming increasingly competitive and Australia needs to have a range of policies to ensure constraints are not placed on development by lack of skilled workers and that Australia places itself as strategically as it possibly can to foster the innovation which drives the new economy. International migration must never be seen as a substitute for having the highest quality eduction and training systems that are flexible enough to change to meet the labour demands of a rapidly changing economy, but also to foster the innovation and research excellence that are so critical to maintaining national prosperity. An earlier report (Hugo 1994) put forward the argument that migration from Australia to Asian nations possibly had a number of beneficial aspects, especially if Australia was to continue to seek to embed its economy in Asia. In 1957, 51 per cent of Australia’s exports were to Europe and 21 per cent to Asia. By 1995 the proportion had shifted to 12 and 65 per cent respectively, and in 1999 to 12 and 57 per cent (McGurn 1996, p. 63). Over the same period the proportion of Australia’s permanent immigrants coming from Asia increased from 2.6 per cent in 1959–60 to 33.7 per cent in 1999–2000, while those from Europe fell from 91.7 per cent to 20.4 per cent. However, Australia cannot expect to be a full participant in the Asian economy if it only sees Asia as a source of skilled migrants and a massive export market. Movement of people, both nationals of Asian countries and Australians, in both directions is also required. Lewis and Stromback (1996, p. 53) also argue that Australia should encourage skilled migration to Asia. They argue that there is the need for an emigration policy that encourages more Australians to engage with Asia at a personal level. 5 . 6 C o n c l u s i o n The present volume represents the first stage of a comprehensive study of emigration from Australia. When the predecessor of the study was published, almost a decade ago, it was in a changing international migration environment. That environment has changed again and there is now massive international interest in the movement between nations of highly skilled workers. This interest was in its beginnings at the time of the earlier report but now all of the OECD nations and many outside the organisation have active immigration policies to attract and retain highly skilled workers. This has given the whole issue of emigration a much higher profile internationally than was the case in the earlier report (Hugo 1994). The attraction and retention of highly skilled workers is now seen as a key to success in the new economy. This volume has summarised the results of analysis of a number of sources of secondary data available in Australia for the study of emigration. Australia is one of the very few nations with a comprehensive data base on all people who leave Australia through official channels. This has allowed us to detect some substantial changes in emigration from the nation – the upswing in the out-movement of the Australia- 110 C E DA – Emigration from Australia: Economic ImplicationsJune 2001
Page 1 and 2: 4 Emigration of recent university g
Page 3 and 4: In 1991 female graduates overseas o
Page 5 and 6: Within the recent graduate emigrant
Page 7 and 8: Table 4.5 Main fields of study of 1
Page 9 and 10: There were lower proportions of per
Page 11 and 12: Recent graduates working overseas w
Page 13 and 14: In 1996 nearly a quarter of recent
Page 15 and 16: Table 4.12 Income levels of recent
Page 17 and 18: A significant proportion of the rec
Page 19 and 20: There are an estimated 3 million US
Page 21 and 22: With the growing emphasis on the ec
Page 23 and 24: Despite increases in Australia-born
Page 25 and 26: Currently there are 61 224 persons
Page 27 and 28: The policy implications of the patt
Page 29: Australia is experiencing an overal
Page 33 and 34: G l o s s a r y ABS DETYA DEETYA DI
Page 35 and 36: Department of Education, Training a
Page 37 and 38: McGurn, W., 1996. The Lucky Country
Page 39 and 40: C E DA Office Bearers President J B

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