The Bhutanese Leading the way.
This paper in the first week of February wrote that in the last six months of 2022 from 1 July to 31st December 2022 a total of 6,497 Bhutanese got visas to go to Australia.
However, when one includes the updated figures for January, February and March 2023 then the total figure is now 10,755 Bhutanese getting visas to Australia in the last nine months from 1 July 2022 to 31st March 2023.
A matter of concern for Bhutan here is that this number for the last nine months is more than the total migration in the last four financial years of 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 which comes to 10,250.
Of the 5,767 doing courses, 5,016 are for the higher educational sector which is masters and under graduate courses and then 590 are for vocational education and training courses. The rest are for other courses.
The data once again shows that people are taking their children with them. 210 who got visas are 4 years and below, 260 are between 9 and 5 years old, 246 are 10 to 14 years of age.
606 are from 15 to 19 years old of which 496 are going as students while 110 are going as their dependents.
2,057 are from the 20 to 24 age group who are mainly college graduates.
A matter of concern is that 3,074 are from the age group of 25 to 29 which would constitute the entry level or young professionals. This is also the largest group.
The next largest group is also in the professionals age category of 30 to 34 of which 2,340 got visas.
This is followed by the mid level professionals of ages 35 to 39 of which 1,335 got visas.
The senior professionals of 40 to 49 make up 597 people.
23 people of ages 50 to 54 and only 7 of 55 and above age got visas which shows that the parents and older people are getting left behind.
Of those who got the visas 5, 533 are females while 5,222 are males showing that slightly more women are heading out.
The largest group are for Western Australia which is Perth with 7,837 people headed or heading there.
1,187 are for Queensland whose capital is Brisbane, 687 are in Australian Capital Territory which has Canberra, 259 in Victoria whose capital is Melbourne, 311 in New South Wales which has Sydney, 114 in South Australia which has Adelaide, 13 in Tasmania while data for 332 is not listed.
13,273 Bhutanese had lodged their visa of which 10,755 got it.
When one looks at the total number of students and dependents headed to Australia and compared to Bhutan then certain things stand out.
In the 2021-22 financial year a total of 263,737 people came to Australia on student visas and their dependents and this increased to 428,496 in the last 9 months which shows both a rush and also that a pandemic backlog had built up which is now being released.
However, in the case of Bhutan in the 2021-22 financial year there were 2,583 who got visas and this increased to 10,755 in the last nine months.
Even when it comes to dependents the ratio is much higher in the case of Bhutan compared to other countries.
Of the total 428,496 who got visas in the last nine months they had 371,974 doing courses with only 56, 524 dependents.
In the case of Bhutan of the 10,755 Bhutanese who got visas in the last 9 months 5,767 are going for various courses while 4,988 are going as their dependents.
As per data from the National Statistical Bureau (NSB) Bhutan has 763,250 people in 2022 and of this 10,755 got visas in the last nine months making them 1.40 % of the population.
Bangladesh has a population of 171.186 mn people but only 6,874 people got student visas in the last nine months.
Sri Lanka with a population of 21.83 million and an ongoing economic crisis sent only 10,246 people.
Maldives at 523,787 people in 2022, sent only 124 people to Australia in the last nine months.
