Thursday, May 30, 2019

Post World War Two Immigrants :: history

Post World War Two ImmigrantsDuring World War Two Australians ultimately realised just how vulnerable they were to enemy attacks. The reality of this possibility hit home hard when the Japanese attacked Darwin and when Japanese midget subs penetrated Sydney harbour. We now realised that our island was non an impenetrable fortress. They government also realised that our country was dangerously under-populated. The fact was that we had too much space and moreover 7 million people liveness in it which once again made us very vulnerable to attack. The government realised something must be done. In 1947, during a historical dustup made by the minister for immigration, Arthur Augustus Calwell announced that Australia was opening its doors to European immigrants, preferably British. Refugees and immigrants from all over Europe rushed to apply for visas. While many distinct cultures migrated to Australia the two we are going to focus on are the Italians and the British. At the conclusi on of the war Italian soldiers and POWs returned to a destroyed Italy. The only thing worse than the immense destruction was the human suffering. The displaced Italians sought refuge in communal camps while dreaming of escape to countries such as Canada, the the States and Australia. Italy had been looking for an overseas country that would accept its unemployed, homeless Italians and when Australia opened her doors to them Italys President encouraged his people to learn a foreign language and emigrate. Meanwhile the Britain was also in ruins and although they had won the war, it had come at a big loss. Luckily though for the British, Australia was very keen for British refugees to make up a large part of Australias refugee take-in. In Arthur Augustus Calwells initial speech he said, It is my hope that for every foreign migrant there testament be ten people from the United Kingdom. So from the start it was obvious that White Australia was the cornerstone of the immigration policy. Australia established schemes to attract immigrants from post war Britain and they created Australian Citizenship in 1948 so that Australians were no longer British subjects. Meanwhile, much stronger and stricter restrictions were imposed against the Italians. They were only permitted to immigrate if they already had close family already resident in Australia. The Italians suffered because they were not a priority group. The British had been given assistance and had been allowed to bring their families with them into Australia.

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