News
Immigrants a good influence
Recent research has found that despite the racial tensions that besieged Australia late last year a majority of Australians still believe that immigrants have a good influence on the country
An AP-Ipsos poll carried out in eight countries – Australia, the UK, US, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany – in May found that 54 per cent of Australians hold positive views of immigrants, with 40 per cent claiming that they are a 'bad influence' on society.
Ten per cent of Aussies went as far to say that immigrants had a 'very good' influence on the way things are going in the country, while the same percentage also believed they had a 'very bad' affect.
Of the eight nationalities surveyed Australians actually hold the second most positive view of immigrants behind Canadians, who were by far the most immigrant friendly bunch with almost 75 per cent of respondents describing foreign nationals as a 'good influence' – 25 per cent stating 'very good'.
The only other country to record a higher number of positive responses than negative was the United States, where 52 per cent agreed that immigrants had a 'good' influence and 46 per cent said 'bad'.
The UK had the lowest number of positive responses of any country, with just 43 per cent viewing immigrants in an affirmative light and 49 per cent holding negative perceptions of them. However, this still represented an 11-point increase in positive British attitudes toward immigrants compared to the last time the survey was carried out two years ago.
Among the survey's other findings were that 41 per cent of Australians believe immigrants work harder than people born in Australia, with almost half saying there wasn't much difference. Only respondents in America (51 per cent) and Canada (43 per cent) were more willing than Australians to believe that immigrants work harder than those born there.
The survey also found that 22 per cent of the Australians polled felt that immigrants were more likely to be involved in crime than natives, although 66 per cent believed that there was not much difference between the two.
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20 December 2006