Australia’s Immigration Crisis

Australia is a big country. Big and open. Flying from Brisbane to Perth, you can stare out the window for hours at a barren landscape of patchwork orange and brown. But living space is becoming tight in the “lucky country.”

About 87 percent of Australia’s population lives within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of the coast. And the vast proportion of those are on the east, southeast and southwest coastlines.

Crammed around this idyllic coast, a massive shift is underway.

Established as a British colony, Australia has historically taken in a large migrant population. Scottish and Irish farmers permanently shaped rural Australia. You can also see German influence in rural communities or while strolling down the quaint streets of Handorf. You can’t escape the Italian presence as you dodge scooters on Melbourne’s famous Lygon Street. The same can be said of the Greeks. (Australia has the third largest Greek diaspora in the world.)

Lured by the gold rush of the 1800s and fleeing chaotic Europe into the mid-to-late 1900s, many came to make their own luck in the “lucky country.” They brought their own diverse cultures. But they came with the goal of becoming Australian. A man from Malta once expressed to me the challenges of arriving in the country knowing little to no English. Yet he still remembers his father, even in the privacy of his home, sternly proclaiming, “We are Australian. We speak English!” So they learned, and they became Australian.

Today, those European influences are still strong. But they have morphed and assimilated. The culture melded and became distinctly Australian. The vast and open land was cleared and cultivated, and the countryside flourished with the arrival of the nation’s new sons and daughters.

Today, the immigration that once shaped the national identity now threatens to destroy it.

In the 1800s, around 357,000 migrants arrived, assisted by the government. In the 1900s, it was 7 million. Today, more people arrive in just months than arrived in the entire 19th century. From January to May of this year, 447,620 migrants moved to Australia on a permanent long-term basis. The new figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics mark a much higher rate than last year’s government forecast. While net immigration levels in 2024 were on par with government projections, 2025’s influx marks a 33.6 percent higher rate than expected.

In 2024, approximately 580,000 new residents came to Australia. That was the third highest annual intake on record and represents one new person every 53 seconds. The Institute of Public Affairs found that in the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 financial years, immigration topped 1.1 million new migrants.

These numbers might not seem startling to an American who is used to millions of illegals pouring over the United States-Mexico border. But America’s population is 346.8 million. Australia has just under 28 million.

That means Australia increased its population with immigrants by 2 percent in five months alone. These are not illegal immigrants. These are migrants being brought in legally under current government policy.

The immediate question is, where do they go? The out-of-control intakes are outpacing the construction of new homes. The nation is deep into a rental crisis, as Australians struggle to find affordable homes. Yet the government insists on bringing in more migrants. Why?

Caught in a Snare

Simply, the economy needs them to stay afloat.

Australia’s birthrate is at an all-time low, an average of 1.5 babies per woman. That is well below the 2.1 average required to maintain the population. This trend has been on a negative trajectory since the 1970s. Australia’s population is aging, and there are few options on the table to reverse it.

The fear is that by 2050, more people could be dying than being born. An aging population means fewer people in the workforce and a greater proportion of the population retiring and accessing their superannuation (essentially a government-imposed 401K). It means fewer people paying taxes, which puts more pressure on the workforce to fund the government’s welfare and social programs.

Government is largely funded by the taxpayer. Less taxpayers mean less money. Less money means less funding. Less funding means goodbye Medicare, family tax benefits, National Disability Insurance Scheme (ndis), aged pension and many other government programs. The ndis alone will cost taxpayers $52 billion in 2025. That’s more than is spent on the military.

The government needs taxpayers to pay for the welfare state. And if none are being born, there is one immediate solution: migration. Bring in more workers, more taxpayers.

The other option is to reverse the declining fertility rate by making the prospect of having kids more appealing. The usual factors cited for the declining birthrate are financial woes and the uncertainty of our times. The only way for the government to counter those fears is to make having families more financially viable. In socialist-government-speak that means throw money at them: more government subsidies for school, childcare etc. That means more taxes to pay for it, which means more taxpayers. It doesn’t solve the problem.

“OK,” you might ask, “what if the government stopped migration?” The question is hypothetical, but most experts agree that the population would age rapidly, overstraining the bloated welfare system. To keep up, the government would need to levy higher taxes on an increasingly smaller workforce, putting more pressure on families and driving the fertility rate down. It would exacerbate the problem it set out to fix.

So long as Australians aren’t having kids, the government has one way to kick the can down the road: migration. But even this short-term fix comes at a high cost.

Here in Brisbane, you have neighborhoods like Sunnybank where you can play a game of “spot the white guy.” Many of the restaurants and shops display signs in Mandarin rather than English. A 2021 poll found that in Kuraby, a suburb of Brisbane, 21 percent of the population is Muslim, and just 46 percent of the residents were born in Australia.

In May of this year, police raided the homes of Somalian gang members in no less than 14 suburbs in southern Brisbane; 268 charges were made for various drug-related crimes.

This isn’t to say that all migrants are in gangs or that all natural-born Australians are right. Far from it. But there is no denial that mass immigration is changing the face of Australia. And like a botched facelift, despite the best intentions, the results are not pretty.

Why Has Migration Failed?

Why hasn’t migration worked? Why does Australia stare down the barrel of economic ruin? At the Trumpet you’ll get an answer found nowhere else in modern media: Australia has forgotten God.

Consider what God said to the ancient Israelites. He brought them out of slavery in Egypt. He gave them a land. He chose it and established its boundaries (Exodus 23:31). He intended Israel to be a model nation to the world, an example to follow (Deuteronomy 4:5-8).

The same can be said of Israel’s modern descendants. The peoples of America and the British Commonwealth have been given incredible blessings, including lands set aside by God. And how the world has benefited. It is understandable that many would want to leave their homeland to live in such places.

But God didn’t want this. That’s right—God didn’t want Israel to mix. They were to be an example for other nations to follow, not to join.

Notice Exodus 23:31-33: “[T]hou shalt drive them out before thee. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.”

If Australia had listened, it would not be caught in its current impossible position. It is a snare, not just economically. The migrants coming in have their own ways, customs, languages and religions. Christian Anglo-Saxon Australians are a dying breed. Australia is losing her connection to the God of Israel.

Man is trying to bless himself his own way, not God’s. And it is failing.

Do you know how God would solve this crisis? End migration. Reverse it. Return to the one true God. He has a solution!

Notice what He promised our forefathers: “You must serve only the Lord your God. If you do, I will bless you with food and water, and I will protect you from illness. There will be no miscarriages or infertility in your land, and I will give you long, full lives” (verses 25-26; New Living Translation).

If they obeyed, God promised them material wealth. With obedience came blessings: peace and prosperity. Life was good. That in turn would have the effect the Australian government is trying to create through welfare—an environment for families to blossom. God even promised to even bless the fertility of the people.

God loves marriage and family. He wants prosperous nations—but only when it is done His way. In an increasingly godless society, this point of view is not popular. For the immediate future, we can expect man to continue to reject God’s way and bring more curses on himself.

But if you want solutions to these nation-crippling issues, subscribe to our free monthly magazine, the Philadelphia Trumpet. It’s time to get God’s perspective on the challenges our people face.