Welfare Recipient Patterns Among Migrants
Background
The following comments provide a setting for the analysis to follow. Our data represent a cross section of welfare need as indicated by the proportion of persons in receipt of the various pension and benefits paid by the Commonwealth Government as of late 1996. As such it represents the outcome of a series of administrative decisions, which in turn reflect many debates on the appropriate form of services to migrants.
The need for welfare services for incoming migrants was recognised from the earliest period of assisted passages, especially through the voluntary (but state-aided) work of Caroline Chisholm in the 1840s and 1850s. This was mainly directed towards the settlement of women and children in country districts of New South Wales.
Public welfare was very modest at the time, but the colonial authorities did maintain temporary residences for new arrivals, such as the former convict barracks in Macquarie Street, Sydney or the Yungaba Hostel in Kangaroo Point, Brisbane which remained in use for a century. Assistance with employment and with transport to bush locations was also a common feature of the various assisted passage schemes in the 19th century.
Much welfare was delivered through voluntary organisations, often at the Australian end of migrant recruitment work by charities and religious bodies in Britain. The great majority of immigrants until 1947 were from the United Kingdom. As British subjects they were entitled to public welfare services also available to the Australia-born. Generally speaking such services were not available to aliens and this continued to be true until well into the 1960s.
The major welfare requirements of immigrants were usually seen as temporary accommodation on arrival and assistance with finding employment. In times of economic depression, such as the 1890s or 1930s, immigration was suspended.
Unemployed immigrants in these periods received very little public assistance other than that available through public works and private charity to all Australians. Because aliens were not eligible for public assistance, some ethnic groups, such as some members of the Chinese and the Greek communities, founded their own private charitable organisations confined to assisting members of their own background. The Catholic church also had an important role in assisting those immigrants from Europe who were Catholics, such as Italians, Maltese or Croatians and Jewish charities also assisted their co-religionists.