By country · Asia-Pacific
Indians opened the Australian outback on the backs of camels — and then a nation founded on keeping them out spent seventy years trying to shut the door. From the 'Ghans' and the dictation test to a country where India is now the fastest-growing source of migrants.
The word 'girmit' itself comes from Fiji's cane fields. The Indians the British shipped there built the colony's economy — and have spent a century since being pushed to its margins.
Part 1 of Mother Tongues. When labourers from a dozen Indian districts were thrown together on Fijian plantations, their languages fused into something new — a tongue that is now the mother language of a people.
Indian study permits to Canada have collapsed from 188,715 in 2024 to 94,605 in 2025 — a 50 per cent drop in a single year. The approval rate for Indian applicants fell from 81 per cent to 28 per cent. Brampton's agent economy is folding; families in Punjab and Andhra are reassessing; the Canadian dream that Indian families spent two decades constructing is being quietly dismantled. This is what the data shows, and what it does not.
New Zealand's revised 2026 student visa framework adds a 25-hour-per-week work limit, post-study work pathways, and new skilled-migrant entries — positioning the country as a quieter alternative to the harder-to-access US/UK routes.
