[vacri]

It's worth noting at this point that Australia welcomes migrants with open arms (excluding, for some bizarre reason, refugees). If you exclude city-states (like San Marino), the only western democracies with higher immigration rates are Norway and Spain (Canada is also neck-and-neck with our migration rate). In 2014, 28% of Australia's population was born overseas - if you exclude the British and the Kiwis, it's 21%. This compares to 14% from all sources for the US and 12% for the UK. Australia's population barely has a replacement birthrate, yet it has increased in population from 19M in 1999 to 24M this year - a 25% increase in 17 years, pretty much all due to inward migration. The #1 source of migrants for the past few years has been China. You're also 100% free to move to anywhere you want once you're inside the country, and there's no land travel to any other countries to make something like Schengen work anyway.

Painting Australia as difficult to migrate to is patent nonsense, given the actual numbers. Yes, there is a political problem with refugees at the moment, but we're absorbing non-refugee migrants faster than almost anyone else and have been for years.

The reason why the US and Australia are migration targets for the UK is that they are English-speaking countries with decent climates and economies. Anglos all over the world are monoglots and generally uninterested in learning other languages; it makes sense that they'd prefer to move somewhere that's nice to live and they speak the language.

[dingaling]

> Painting Australia as difficult to migrate to is patent nonsense

From experience, it is difficult. When worked on this a few years ago there were only two options for moving to Australia from the UK.

One was skill-based employment, a points-based assessment scheme for which two-thirds of immigration slots are reserved. Applicants must be under 45 and meet the requirements of the Skilled Occupations List. I've worked in a compatible job for 20 years but didn't qualify because I didn't have a suitable university degree. Why that was relevant after two decades wasn't clear, but terminated my application.

The other option was inward-investment business migration but even that didn't give guarantees of residence, just 'possibility'.

[vacri]

Have you compared the process with that of other countries? I hear similar stories from folks looking to move to other wealthy, stable western countries.

I once had a friend that worked in American universities doing high end coding, supporting academic staff. It took him twenty years to get his residency. Western democracies in general will only take in younger people, because older people are a direct drain on the healthcare system (without having helped to fund it via taxes).

Australia is a popular destination, so they can pick and choose a bit I guess. I guess that makes it difficult to migrate to in terms of competition, but when you look at the overall numbers, there's huge amounts of migrants arriving in comparison to contemporary nations.