Few debates in Australia run hotter on less data than this one. One side says the country is being changed without consent. The other says any question about who is coming is prejudice. Both sides tend to skip the official numbers.
This page sets them out. How many people are coming, which countries they come from, how they are checked, where the checks have failed, and how they fare once they are here. Where a popular claim is wrong, we say so. Where it is right, we say that too.
How many migrants has Australia taken under Labor?
The headline measure is net overseas migration (NOM). It counts people arriving to stay 12 months or more, minus people leaving for 12 months or more. It includes students, working holiday makers and returning Australians, not just permanent migrants.
538,300
net overseas migration in 2022-23, the record
ABS, 19 Dec 2025
305,600
net overseas migration in 2024-25
ABS, 19 Dec 2025
292,100
net overseas migration, year to March 2026
ABS, 17 Sep 2026
The ABS says NOM was 538,300 in 2022-23, 429,200 in 2023-24 and 305,600 in 2024-25 (Overseas Migration, 19 December 2025). Its quarterly figures put NOM at 292,100 in the year to 31 March 2026 (released 17 September 2026). Before the pandemic, in the year to June 2019, it was 241,300.
So migration under this government peaked at more than double the pre-COVID level, and is still about 50,000 a year above it. The fall since then is real: about 46% below the 2022-23 peak. But the level remains high by historical standards.
Fairness requires one point here. The surge began before the May 2022 election. The ABS records NOM of 107,500 in the March 2022 quarter alone, as borders reopened and students returned. Labor inherited the rebound. It chose how long to let it run.
How big are the permanent and humanitarian programs?
Inside that NOM figure sit two planned programs the government controls directly.
The permanent Migration Program delivered 195,004 visas in 2022-23, 190,000 in 2023-24 and 185,001 in 2024-25 (Home Affairs, 2024-25 Migration Program Report). In 2021-22, the last year of the previous government, it was 143,556. The planning level is 185,000 for both 2025-26 and 2026-27, about 71% skilled and 28% family (Home Affairs, planning levels page, updated September 2026).
Many of these visas go to people already here. In 2024-25, 61% of permanent skilled visas and 39% of family visas went to people already onshore, Home Affairs says. For 2026-27 it has set aside 129,590 places for people already in Australia.
The Humanitarian Program was 20,000 places in 2024-25, fully delivered, and stays at 20,000 for 2025-26. Of the 2024-25 places, 15,999 were offshore resettlement visas and 4,001 were onshore protection visas (Home Affairs, Offshore Humanitarian Program 2024-25).
Which countries do Australia's permanent migrants come from?
Mostly South Asia and China. In 2024-25 the top five countries of citizenship in the permanent program were:
- India: 48,326 visas (26.1%)
- China: 20,405
- the Philippines: 10,972
- the United Kingdom: 10,205
- Pakistan: 9,557
Sri Lanka, Nepal, Vietnam, South Africa and Afghanistan complete the top ten (Home Affairs, 2024-25 Migration Program Report, table 1.4.2).
Now the question many readers want answered. How much of the permanent program goes to citizens of the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Home Affairs groups countries using the ABS standard classification. In 2024-25, citizens of "North Africa and the Middle East" received 7,956 places. Pakistan received 9,557 and Afghanistan 3,474. Together that is 20,987 places, or 11.3% of the program.
That share has risen. On the same method it was 8.7% in 2019-20, 7.7% in 2022-23 and 10.9% in 2023-24. But the rise is not coming from the Middle East. North Africa and the Middle East took 4.7% of places in 2014-15 and 4.3% in 2024-25. The growth came from two countries:
- Pakistan more than doubled, from 4,136 visas in 2019-20 to 9,557 in 2024-25. About three in four were skilled visas.
- Afghanistan rose from 2,279 to a peak of 5,556 in 2023-24, then fell to 3,474. Almost all are family visas: 3,437 of the 3,474 in 2024-25.
Citizenship is not religion, and these figures say nothing about anyone's beliefs. They measure where people hold passports.
Where do Australia's refugees come from?
Here the picture is different, and the official numbers are plain. In 2024-25, of the 15,999 offshore humanitarian visas:
- Afghanistan: 6,700 (41.9%)
- Syria: 2,804 (17.5%)
- Iraq: 1,624 (10.2%)
- Myanmar: 1,546 (9.7%)
- Stateless, mainly Rohingya in Bangladesh: 733
By region, 52.3% went to people from Asia (which Home Affairs defines to include Afghanistan), 28.7% to the Middle East, 12.8% to Africa and 6.2% to the Americas. Afghans plus the Middle East come to 70.6%, about 7 in 10.
This is by design. Successive governments have directed the program to the world's largest displacement crises. Demand far exceeds places: 89,737 people lodged offshore applications in 2024-25 for about 16,000 places, and 49,077 of those applicants were Afghan. Home Affairs states that the government weighs "Australia's capacity to facilitate the entry and settlement" of entrants when setting the program.
What happened with the Afghan evacuation?
Kabul fell on 15 August 2021, under the previous government. Between 18 and 26 August, the ADF evacuated more than 4,100 people on 32 flights (Home Affairs, Offshore Humanitarian Program 2024-25).
Since then, more than 7,300 temporary subclass 449 visas have been granted to Afghan evacuees. Over 6,300 had arrived by 30 June 2025. Around 5,800 of them have since received permanent humanitarian visas. The government has set aside 26,500 dedicated places for Afghans through to 2025-26. Priority goes to certified former locally engaged employees who worked with Australian forces, and their immediate families.
Between 2020-21 and 2024-25, more than 27,500 humanitarian visas went to Afghan citizens. That obligation to people who served alongside the ADF explains much of why Afghanistan tops the list.
What happened with the Gaza visas in 2023 and 2024?
After the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and the war that followed, thousands of Palestinians applied for Australian visas. Most of the visas granted were visitor visas, which normally go to tourists and require no finding of refugee status.
3,041
visas granted to Palestinians, 7 Oct 2023 to 15 Oct 2024
Home Affairs at Senate estimates, via SBS, 4 Nov 2024
7,252
applications refused over the same period
Home Affairs at Senate estimates, via SBS
2,601
visa holders referred to ASIO after grant, 16 Mar 2024
Senate documents, via The Australian, 21 Sep 2024
To 12 August 2024, 2,568 of the visas granted were visitor visas. The rest were mostly family, skilled, student and other temporary visas (SBS, 19 August 2024). About seven in ten applications were refused. By August 2024 around 1,300 Palestinians from Gaza had arrived (SBS, 15 August 2024).
The government said the checks were sound. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said a process involving ASIO "applies to every single visa". He also said every applicant was checked against a watch list updated every 24 hours.
The documents tell a more complicated story. Papers tabled in the Senate, reported by The Australian on 21 September 2024, show Home Affairs sent ASIO a list of 2,601 Palestinian visa holders on 16 March 2024. That was after the visas had been granted, and some holders were likely already in Australia. An update on 9 April showed:
- 12 visas cancelled offshore after security checks, with five people judged a direct or indirect risk to Australia's security
- 15 more cancelled for incorrect or non-genuine information
- 7 applications refused while the person was in Australia
A ministerial briefing note quoted in the same report said ASIO had so far found "no adverse information" on the rest of the list.
Later figures from Senate estimates showed 44 visas cancelled offshore to 15 October 2024, though 21 were reinstated. One visa was cancelled onshore on character grounds, and that person was held in immigration detention. That contradicted Burke's statement to Parliament on 9 October that all cancellations had "so far been offshore" (SBS, 4 November 2024). Officials cited privacy in declining to give details. Refugee lawyers noted that a character cancellation does not by itself mean a security risk.
ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said in August 2024 that "rhetorical support" for Hamas was treated differently from financial or material support. He later said his comments had been "distorted", and said endorsing the 7 October attack would "be a problem" (SBS, 3 September 2024). Many of those who arrived then sought to stay. By 31 May 2024, 422 of 1,120 arrivals had applied for a protection visa (SBS, 4 August 2024). From March 2025, a temporary humanitarian stay visa (subclass 449) was offered case by case (Victorian Government guidance).
The numbers do not show a permanent intake tilting towards the Middle East. They do show that, for Gaza, ASIO saw the names after the visas were issued.
Is the protection visa system being gamed?
Yes, and the government's own review said so. But the data points away from where many people look.
In March 2023 the government released Christine Nixon's review of visa system exploitation. It found long processing times were "motivating bad actors" to lodge "increasing numbers of non-genuine applications for protection". In 2021-22 the department refused 89% of onshore protection claims. On review, the tribunal changed only 7% of those decisions. Its backlog of protection cases grew 340% in five years, to 37,025 by June 2022.
The latest figures show little improvement. The Administrative Review Tribunal had 37,503 protection cases on hand at 30 June 2026. The median wait to finalise a case was 149 weeks, almost three years. Only 8% of decisions it finalised in 2025-26 were set aside (ART caseload statistics, 2025-26).
Who is in that queue? The largest groups on hand at 30 June 2026 were citizens of India (5,924), China (5,405), Vietnam (3,047), Indonesia (2,632), the Philippines (2,544), Malaysia (1,876) and Fiji (1,652). Citizens of all Middle Eastern and North African countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan together had about 1,300 cases, roughly 3.5% of the total. Pakistan alone accounts for 807.
The Nixon review found the same pattern years earlier. In 2018-19 the top two sources of protection claims were Malaysia and China, with grant rates of 1% and 4%. Claims from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were granted at rates between 71% and 90%. Abuse of the protection system is mostly a story of claims made to buy time, not of Middle Eastern applicants.
How are migrants checked, and where have the checks failed?
Every visa applicant must pass the character test in section 501 of the Migration Act. It covers criminal records, associations and conduct. Applicants are screened against alert lists. Cases that raise flags go to specialist character staff. Some go to ASIO for a security assessment. ASIO does not assess every applicant one by one. It assesses cases referred to it, and it can issue an adverse assessment that blocks or cancels a visa. Humanitarian applicants also face identity and health checks before the grant.
Where have audits found weaknesses? The most recent Auditor-General report on the character test is old: Report No. 55 of 2010-11. It found a "sound framework" but "shortcomings in the implementation". Staff focused narrowly on "substantial criminal record", so cases of concern that fell short of that threshold were "not routinely assessed". The ANAO found cases where assessment "may have been warranted". We could not find a newer ANAO audit of visa security screening. That gap is itself worth noting.
The Gaza episode shows the same weakness in a new form. Visitor visas are built for speed and volume. When used for people leaving a war zone controlled by a listed terrorist group, the routine checks were followed by a bulk referral to ASIO weeks later. Grants then fell sharply: between 27 May and 12 August 2024, 236 visas were granted and 2,467 refused (SBS, 15 August 2024). The process caught some problems. It caught them late.
How do migrants fare once they are here?
The best data is the ABS linkage of the 2021 Census with visa records. It covers 3.0 million permanent migrants who arrived from 2000 (ABS, Permanent Migrants in Australia, 29 March 2023). Employment rates for people aged 15 and over were:
- Skilled: 81.2% employed, 3.8% unemployed, 15.1% not in the labour force
- Family: 62.1% employed, 4.5% unemployed, 33.4% not in the labour force
- Humanitarian: 42.9% employed, 7.5% unemployed, 49.6% not in the labour force
Median weekly income was $1,234 for skilled migrants, $724 for family and $478 for humanitarian. The figure for the whole population was $805. Iraq was the top birthplace of humanitarian migrants (62,400), followed by Afghanistan (30,700), Myanmar, Syria and Iran. About 36% of Iraqi-born and 37% of Syrian-born permanent migrants were not proficient in English.
Read these numbers with care. Humanitarian migrants are younger, with a median age of 34, and 11% are children. Many spent years in camps without schooling or work. The census was taken in August 2021 during lockdowns. And it measures everyone who arrived since 2000 together, so it cannot show how fast recent arrivals find work.
The Continuous Survey of Australia's Migrants tracks recent arrivals, but only skilled and family migrants. Its latest published report covers 2020. It found skilled primary applicants 91.3% employed at 18 months, against 61.5% of the general population. Partner visa holders had an unemployment rate of 14.4%, against 6.3% generally. Home Affairs has not published a newer cohort report.
What about welfare? We could not find a current official series that reports income support by visa stream or birthplace in a way we could verify. Claims online that quote a precise welfare rate for a nationality should be treated with caution unless they cite a source.
The strongest case for the government
Put its defence at its best
- Migration is falling. Net migration is down about 46% from its peak. The permanent program is now focused on people already living here, which adds little to population.
- The source mix is skill-driven. India, China and the Philippines dominate. The Middle Eastern share of the permanent program is lower than a decade ago.
- The refugee mix reflects obligations. The Afghan places honour people who worked with the ADF, a commitment that began under the previous government. Syria and Iraq are among the world's largest refugee crises.
- Gaza applicants were mostly refused. More than 7,000 applications were refused, and visas were cancelled when checks found problems.
- It commissioned the Nixon review. The review exposed protection visa abuse, and the old tribunal was replaced by the Administrative Review Tribunal in October 2024.
Most of this is true. It does not explain why 2,601 Gaza visa holders reached ASIO only after their visas were granted. Nor does it explain why the protection backlog is still about 37,500 cases with a three-year wait.
The verdict: what holds up, and what does not
Claim: "Labor brought in record migration." Supported. NOM of 538,300 in 2022-23 was the highest on record. The surge began under the previous government as borders reopened, but the permanent program was lifted and the peak came on Labor's watch.
Claim: "Most new migrants now come from the Middle East." Not supported. North Africa and the Middle East got 4.3% of the 2024-25 permanent program, no higher than a decade ago. India alone got 26%. Including Pakistan and Afghanistan, the share is about 11%.
Claim: "Most refugees come from the Middle East and Afghanistan." Supported. About 7 in 10 offshore humanitarian visas in 2024-25 went to Afghans or people from the Middle East, by deliberate policy choice.
Claim: "Every Gaza visa was checked by ASIO before it was granted." Not supported. Applicants were checked against watch lists. But 2,601 visa holders were referred to ASIO in bulk after grant, and some visas were cancelled on security grounds later.
Claim: "The protection visa system is being gamed." Supported. The government's own review said so. But the bulk of the backlog comes from Asian and Pacific countries, not the Middle East.
Claim: "Humanitarian migrants mostly don't work." Partly supported. At the 2021 Census, 42.9% were employed and half were outside the labour force. The data is five years old, covers arrivals over two decades, and does not separate recent arrivals from long-settled ones.
Your questions, answered
How many migrants is Australia taking in 2026?
Net overseas migration was 292,100 in the year to March 2026 (ABS). The permanent program is 185,000 places for 2026-27 and the Humanitarian Program 20,000 for 2025-26.
Where do Australia's permanent migrants come from?
In 2024-25: India (48,326), China (20,405), the Philippines (10,972), the UK (10,205) and Pakistan (9,557). North Africa and the Middle East received 4.3% of places, and about 11% including Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Where do Australia's refugees come from?
In 2024-25, 41.9% of offshore humanitarian visas went to Afghans and 28.7% to the Middle East, mainly Syria and Iraq.
Were Gaza visa holders checked by ASIO?
Applicants were checked against watch lists. But Home Affairs sent 2,601 Palestinian visa holders to ASIO after their visas were granted. Twelve visas were cancelled offshore after security checks, and five people were judged a risk.
Do humanitarian migrants find work?
At the 2021 Census, 42.9% of humanitarian migrants were employed, against 81.2% of skilled migrants. Age, English and years in camps explain part of the gap.
For how the same questions play out in Europe and the United States, read Europe and the US turn on mass migration. For the vetting record of the Bondi attackers and the royal commission, see Islamist terrorism and the migration program. For the student intake and the per-person economy, see International students and the rental frontline and The per-capita recession.
For the effect of migration on rents and home prices, read The migration surge and the housing collision. For roads, schools and hospitals, see Migration beyond housing.