The history of immigration policy in Australia is full of yes-no contradictions: fear jostling with hope, exclusion with openness.

Australia has been pulled in different directions by the strength of its British ties and the demands of its Asia-Pacific geography. The British and their descendants, never meaningfully reconciling with the original sin of having invaded a continent, then constantly added people to it, most of them in their own image.

Writing about the Immigration Restriction Bill, commonly known as the White Australia Policy, being debated in the federal parliament in late 1901, Alfred Deakin said that Australia should:

tolerate nothing within its dominion that is not British in character and constitution or capable of becoming Anglicised without delay. For all outside that charmed circle the policy is that of the closed door.

tolerate nothing within its dominion that is not British in character and constitution or capable of becoming Anglicised without delay. For all outside that charmed circle the policy is that of the closed door.

The exclusions, the door closing first on one group, then another, are well-known: saying no to convicts (1840s); saying no to Chinese migrants (1855–1900); saying no to South Sea Islanders as indentured workers (1901); saying no to “coloured peoples” more generally (1901-73) saying no to European aliens (1920s), until the “populate or perish” imperative forced an abrupt reversal after World War II; and finally saying no to “boat people” (1989–present).

But obsessing about the closed door misses the main story: how 12 million people born overseas came to arrive in Australia to commence new lives over the past 200 years.

Migration is the most debated public policy issue of the current moment, both in Australia and overseas. In this five-part series, we unpack........

© The Conversation