Australian residents are fleeing Australia at a record rate, according to new data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
In the last three months of 2017, nearly 85000 people officially left Australia-nearly 9000 more than in the same period in 2016.
But experts are not sure what led to growth.
ABS defines residents as those who have lived in Australia for 12 months in the past 16 months, so it includes many international students and temporary visa workers.
ABS`s director of demographics, Grabb (Anthony Grubb), said the "preliminary" figures showed a "significant increase" in the number of international students leaving the country.
In the past three years, nearly 1/3 of departures have been made by Australian citizens traveling abroad, and nearly half have ended with temporary visa holders such as international students, foreign backpackers and 457 visa workers.
Nick Parr, a demographer at the University of McCorey, doubts that the school-out rate may reflect the increasing number of students leaving the school at the end of the school year, but it is too early to draw a clear conclusion.
"in the past, the number of temporary arrivals has also risen, and I expect a bit of a lag between long-term departure and arrival," he said. Professor Parr said.
The number of international students enrolled increased from about three hundred thousand five years ago to five hundred and forty thousand in February, according to the Ministry of Education.
Immigrants changed their minds.
Professor Parr speculates that there may be other reasons.
"it may be that with the tightening of employer nomination standards, fewer people previously held 457 visas and then transferred to permanent residence visas, and fewer other temporary residents were granted permanent residence visas through this channel," he said. He said。
Last April, as part of a broad immigration reform, the number of jobs on permanent residency routes was cut.
Steven IV (Leanne Stevens), (Migration Institute of Australia) `s vice-president at the Australian Immigration Institute, said the reforms were "limited in clarity," which she said could have an impact.
"people from countries with a decent standard of living can choose to go back to another good job, and maybe some of them have formed the view that they don`t want to stay in Australia with unclear residency status." She said.
The government plans to reduce the intake of permanent immigrants by about 20, 000 in 2017-18.
The increase in outbound arrivals at the end of 2017 meant that Australia`s net overseas migration figure for the whole year was slightly lower than in 2016.
Throughout the year, two hundred and forty thousand more people came to Australia than they left.
