According to official figures from the DIAC, figures reveal a 68 % jump in the number of visas granted to Irish workers in the past year.
The wave of Irish emigration to Australia keeps growing, and Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported in 2011 that emigration among Irish nationals increased sharply, reaching 76,400 in the year to April 2011, a growth of 11,100 (or 16.9 percent) on the year to April 2010. That means roughly 1,400 people leave Ireland’s shores every week!
The steady stream of Irish immigrants, any of whom arrive in Australia armed with advanced qualifications, is helping to fill yawning gaps in the work force, particularly in mining and construction industries which are in large part fueling Australia’s prolonged economic boom.
After Ireland’s own building industry had been decimated in the economic downturn, leaving 300,000 new houses standing vacant, many highly skilled tradespeople joined surveyors, architects, civil engineers and other professionals in transferring their skills Down Under.
Jason White, a 25-year-old surveying graduate is unequivocal about his reasons for relocating to Brisbane with his Australian-born girlfriend in early March: “Australia’s become the new American Dream,” he said, describing how many of Ireland’s younger generation were looking Down Under for a chance at a better, more financially secure lifestyle, just as generations before them looked to Boston, New York and beyond.
In fact, the Irish have been heading to Australia for centuries.
Our Principal Migration Lawyer Zeke Bentley can claim Irish heritage stemming from his mother’s great great grandfather who come out to from Limerick to Australia in the early 1800s and discovered one of Australia’s largest gold fields at Kalgoorlie.
On his father’s side, Zeke’s heritage goes back to Joshua Bentley, who was the first born Caucasian in Australia – Joshua was conceived on the First Fleet following a romance between a convict girl, and a sailor, and he was born shortly after the First Fleet landed.
People are proud to be Irish, proud to know the Irish and, let’s not forget, proud to claim some form of Irishness in Australia!