Australian Diaspora

It may come as a surprise to many of us but we graduates of the Zionist youth movements of our day are not the only ones who left Australia’s sunny shores to live elsewhere. These days there are around one million Australians living outside the country, according to figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That's more people than live in Adelaide.
Maybe one million off shore Aussies constitute rather comforting statistics for some of us. That means there are lots of other freyers out there too. But dare I suggest that even for types like us it’s a hard phenomenon to understand? It was all very well for us to leave the land of the fair go; we had 2000 years of baggage to carry and an ideology to boot. But I’ve become Israeli enough to ask, “What red blooded normal person would leave all that?” The numbers now are so large in relation to the total Australian population that the Diaspora is gaining more attention.
You’re probably thinking, “Those bloody larrikins they’ve stolen our word”. The term Australian Diaspora appears to have originated in the 2003 Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) research report “Australia’s Diaspora: Its size, Nature and Policy Implications”. It’s not a well understood phenomenon.
One can rationalise the concern as being over a so-called "brain drain" from Australia. It’s argued by some that there is no brain drain. They argue that there is a net brain gain because that's what the raw data on migration says. Simply stated Australia brings in more skilled people than those that leave. But others think it’s a bit glib to simply state that Australia has a net brain gain so that one can ignore the outflow of skilled young Australians as a simple function of globalisation. Why can’t the nation attract skilled foreign people while also retaining the best of our own talent? It is not exchanging like with like.
Many Australians would think that there’s something sad about an Australian born and educated person leaving and never returning, except for holidays and perhaps retirement. If you still have close friends over there you’ve probably come across this sort of emotional bewilderment.
It turns out that the Australian Diaspora is far flung. In the 60’s it was considered adventurous to take a boat or a BOAC 707 to England and become an Aussie expat living in a London squat and in the last 6 weeks before heading off for home doing Europe in a Combie. These days over two-thirds of expatriate Australians are professionals, para-professionals, managers or in administrative occupations. One quarter are in the United Kingdom. A further group includes European migrants to Australia in the 1950s (and their children) who have now returned to their countries of origin to stay, but who still retain strong links with Australia. This group of expatriates, resident in countries such as Croatia, Greece, Italy and Lebanon, make up nearly one quarter of the Australian global expatriate community, and some Asian-Australians who maintain familial ties with Asian countries like India, China, Vietnam, and South Korea.
Many well-educated Australians, including scientists, find unique employment opportunities overseas, particularly in the U.S. Australian migration to the U.S is many times more than Americans going to Australia, though both countries have great deal of freedom and economic opportunity. Key factors influencing this phenomenon are seen to include the rise of a global labour market, more accessible and economical international transport, and increasingly sophisticated communication technologies, along with a growing interest in travel and the broader global community. Today, California attracts many well-to-do Australians and an estimated 100,000 live there including retirees. Other Australian retirees consider the "sunbelt" states of Arizona and Florida as choice areas for a new residence. It seems most of these off shore Australians are where they are to fulfil the lifestyle “ideology”. Not bad work if you can get it.
Probably the largest numbers in the Australian Diaspora are made up of neither the Earls Court mob nor the eminent scientists’ brain drain. They are engaged people curious about the world and many remaining at least mentally attached to their homeland. Many of them have no set plans to return to Australia but remain sentimentally attached to it “I suspect many of them are people like me who are seen as valuable in global business but not in their home country,” writes one Harry Heidelberg to the Sydney Morning Herald. That seems to strike a chord with me at some level or other, though I’m not part of the global business world.
Well that’s a bit of stuff for your general information. I guess lots of us would consider themselves a bit like the European migrants’ phenomenon returning to the country of origin, with all the appropriate changes. What do you reckon about it? Where do you see yourself as most valued?