WHAT WAS CLAIMED
There have been more migrants from India in five years than from Greece and Italy in 100.
OUR VERDICT
False. Migration from Greece and Italy over the past century is much higher than migration from India over the highest five-year period.
AAP FACTCHECK - The organisers of a recent anti-immigration rally spruiked their protest with a false claim about migrants from India, sparking a wave of false posts spreading across social media.
Promotional flyers circulated by March for Australia organisers claim more migrants from India have come to Australia in five years than came from Italy and Greece in 100 years.
The claim is wrong.
AAP FactCheck analysis of more than a century of publicly available migration data has found the combined number of Greek and Italian migrants over the past 100 years far outnumbers those from India over the largest five-year period in history.
The combined cumulative net migration (migrants arriving minus migrants departing) of Greek and Italian nationals between 1924 and 1971 alone was 517,883, which is far higher than the cumulative net migration of people from India between 2015/2016 and 2019/2020, which migration data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows was 279,450.
The claim was used to promote the anti-immigration protests held across Australia's capital cities on August 31, 2025.
"MORE INDIANS IN 5 YEARS, THAN GREEKS AND ITALIANS IN 100," the pamphlet reads, continuing: "This isn't a slight cultural change – it's replacement plain and simple."
AAP FactCheck approached March for Australia organisers for evidence, but did not receive a response.
It has sparked a series of false claims across social media, with one Instagram user describing it as "one of the most striking migration statistics in living memory".
Public migration data exists in multiple forms from the ABS, stretching back more than a century.
Demography bulletins, published in various formats from 1924 to 1971, provide statistical breakdowns of migration to and from Australia by nationality and racial origin.
On these numbers alone, the combined net migration from Greece and Italy far exceeds net migration from India over the highest five-year period, which was between 2015/2016 and 2019/2020.
Cumulative net migration from Italy and Greece over this period was 517,883, compared to net migration from India over the five years to 2019/2020 of 279,450 - this was the largest single five-year period for net migration from India on record.
When net overseas migration figures for Greece and Italy from 2004/2005 to 2023/2024 are included into the analysis, the cumulative figure rises even further, reaching 552,873.
The claim is also wrong when just measuring arrivals, although such a method would be misleading, Australian National University migration expert Alan Gamlan told AAP FactCheck, because it fails to account for departures to generate a net migration figure.
Cumulative arrivals from Greece and Italy between 1924 and 1971, as well as 2004/2005 and 2023/2024, were 728,898 compared to 350,140 from India between 2019/2020 and 2023/2024 (the largest five-year period for arrivals from India on record).
Migration data broken down by nationality between 1972 and 2004/2005 is inconsistently reported and was thus excluded from the analysis.
Professor Gamlan reviewed the analysis, saying the claim is false and also provides a misleading picture about migration levels.
"There is no truth to the claim that more Indians have migrated to Australia in the past five years than Greeks and Italians in the past 100 years," Prof Gamlan told AAP FactCheck.
"Far more Greeks and Italians migrated to Australia in the 55-year period from 1916 to 1971 alone, than Indians have migrated to Australia in the past five years."
Prof Gamlan went on to explain that because Australia's population has grown over the past century, migration from India now is a smaller proportion of the total population than waves of migrants from Greece and Italy after the Second World War in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Relative to population size, the scale of Greek and Italian immigration from 1916 to 1971 is "much larger still" than the scale of migration from India more recently, Prof Gamlan said.
"The wave of large-scale post-war Greek and Italian immigration occurred when Australia's population was around seven million," he said.
"Today's Indian immigrants are welcomed by a total Australian population of more than 27 million. So, when we compare these two groups, it makes sense to measure net migration as a percentage of total population - not raw figures."
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