The "Asian migration" controversy of the 1980s in Australia was reminiscent of that a century earlier. However, as this first major study of the "new" Asian migration of the 1980s illustrates, the circumstances and characteristics have been vastly different. The study places Asian immigration in a broader international context in which the emigration to Australia is part of a wider pattern of population movements with diplomatic ramifications and economic implications for both Australia and the emigrants' homeland. This study provides key Australian comparative data to set against the extensive Asian emigration in the 1980s to USA, Canada and New Zealand