The Bhutanese Leading the way.
According to the Department of Home Affairs of Australia a total of 25,339 Bhutanese were granted education visas to Australia in the last two financial years (FY) of 2022 July to 2023 June and 2023 July to 2024 June end.
This is comparable to two full Changlimithang stadiums during events like National Day.
The Changlimithang stadium due to the plastic seats has a seating capacity of around 8,000 and then around 2,000 more on the extreme right side with no plastic seats and other areas and another 2,500 sitting in tents and on the sidelines of the ground coming to a total of around 12,500.
Two full stadiums would lead to 25,000 plus people.
The 25,339 people who left make up 3.26% of the projected total population of Bhutan in 2024 at 777,224.
The majority of these people who went are from the economically productive age of 20 to the mid 30’s.
If one looks at the total number of student visas issued between FY 2005-06 and 2023-24 the total number is 45,266 which is 5.82% of the population.
The above explains the tremendously negative impact on the country’s economy with many local businesses from clothes shops to restaurants seeing 50% to even 70% dip in business.
The impact is all the harder as the people who left are the younger crowd that likes to shop and eat out and kept the local economy running.
While there was some initial signs of record breaking remittances from Australia during the pandemic years the remittance has also dropped sharply as Bhutanese invest there in real estate etc.
15,552 Bhutanese left in the FY 2022-23 and another 9,787 left in the FY 2023-24. These are also the highest and second highest numbers of Bhutanese leaving in these two FYs.
To get an idea of the scale of what happened in the last two FYs, the third highest number of Bhutanese had left in FY 2019-20 when 2,933 Bhutanese got education visas.
There has been a belief that the increased migration from Bhutan to Australia is part of a global trend, but while that is partly true the growth from Bhutan is much higher than the global trend.
In FY 2005-06 only 138 people from Bhutan got educational visas to Australia while the global total was 211,382.
In FY 2018-19 while the global numbers doubled to 405,742 the numbers from Bhutan increased 21 times to 2,906.
Australia saw the peak global student visas at 577,295 in FY 2022-23 but in Bhutan’s case it was a sizeable 15,552.
The other argument being made was that Bhutanese students are so less in number compared to others that they would hardly be noticed.
This is not true as Australian media outlets in April 2024 pointed out that the second largest number of foreign students in Western Australia (WA) after Indian students are Bhutanese students.
In FY 2022-23 out of the 15,552 Bhutanese who got education visas 11,371 opted for WA and in FY 2023-24 out of the 9,787 who got education visas 6,584 opted for WA.
Another way in which the migration from Bhutan to Australia differs from the rest of the world is the high number of dependents going from Bhutan.
In FY 2023-24 of the 376,731 Australian education visas issued globally 331,775 were the actual students with only 44,956 dependents.
In the case of Bhutan of the total 9,787 educational visas issued in the same year 4,693 were students and 5,094 were dependents.
This has been the trend in past years too.
However, it is not all bad news as while the FY 2023-24 saw the second highest numbers of Bhutanese leaving it is also the year in which the breaks to the Australia migration was applied by a change in policies in Australia that aimed to reduce migration to Australia and particularly targeted international students.
Initially, it looked like that the FY 2023-24 would even exceed the record FY 2022-23 as the number of students getting visas from July to October 2023 was higher than in the same months in 2022.
However, a big change came when the Australian government came up with the Migration Review and announced the hard steps it is going to take to control numbers.
There was a small dip in numbers in November 2023 and then declining steeply in the months after that in December 2023 and January, February, March, April, May and June 2024.
In 2023 May, a total of 1,710 got students got visas but in 2024 May only 341 got visas. In 2023 June, a total of 1,687 got visas but in 2024 June this was only 474. In short migration has become more normalized.
When one tracks the migration numbers (see box) the FY 2005-06 to 2008-09 were the normal years when numbers were below 200 or 300 per year.
The first slight bump was seen in FY 2009-10 when 354 left and there is an increase till FY 2012-13 when it reached 625 a year.
The Australia Rush heated up from FY 2013-14 onwards when numbers touched 2,062 and there was a steady stream with the next high being in FY 2019-20 with 2,933 visas.
The pandemic was a dampener for two FYs but significant numbers still went until the big years of FY 2022-23 and FY 2023-24.
The Prime Minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay recently said in the State of the Nation Address that migration is the biggest existential threat faced by Bhutan.
One of the key aims of the Gelephu Mindfulness City project is to provide quality jobs and growth to reduce this migration and also attract Bhutanese back with investment and business options.
