India is poised to overtake the United Kingdom as the leading country of origin for overseas-born Australians as soon as 2025.
On Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published annual data on migration, showing Australia is increasingly a nation of migrants.
More Australians were born overseas - 8.58 million, or 31.5 per cent of the total population measured at June 2024 - than any point since federation.
That is up from 8.2 million or 30.7 per cent last year, and 6.6 million or 28 per cent a decade ago.
"The demographic markers of the nation's white Australia policy are well and truly coming to an end," ANU demographer Liz Allen told AAP.
Behind the rise is a huge uptick of Indians calling Australia home.
A decade ago, the ABS counted 411,240 India-born Australians, but that number more than doubled to 916,330 by June 2024.
Vasan Srinivasan, the president of the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria, said today's community was a far cry from when he migrated in 1987.
"Back then, if you saw an Indian at Flinders St Station you'd take them home to have lunch or dinner," he tells AAP.
He says Indians feel trusted and respected in Australia, with each migrant passing on good reviews of their life to friends and family back home.
"Australians are much more easier to work with and understand ... Australians trust you and that doesn't happen in UK or USA," he said.
"Australians are much more tolerant and easy-going, and they respect you.
"Plus, it's peaceful here and far away from troubles."
The leading country of origin in Australia has traditionally been the UK, but migrants from Old Blighty are trending down.
There were 1.01m Australians born in Britain in 2014, but last year, that number fell to 963,560 - meaning, that on current trends, Indian migrants could leapfrog the UK as soon as 2025.
The four countries with the biggest rises of migrants in the past five years are India (505,000 people), China (234,000), the Philippines (164,000) and Nepal (155,000).
Dr Allen said the shift "from European roots to more localised nations in the Asia Pacific" was occurring as ageing countries - like the UK, Canada and Germany - compete with Australia for skilled migration.
"Younger populations outside the world's most pronounced ageing nations are increasingly becoming sources of Australia's migration to help maintain a healthy economy," she said.
"Australia's local population age structure is insufficient to meet the needs of the workforce. Migration is essential to Australia's economic health."
Other countries to register noticeable rises include Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Colombia and South Africa.
New Zealand, for some time the second-biggest country of origin for Australians, is now fourth, behind the UK, India and China.
This dataset is one of the few managed by the ABS that pre-dates Federation, with records going back to 1891.
It was in that year (32 per cent) that the proportion of the overseas-born population last outstripped today's rate (31.5 per cent).
The lowest rate across that 133 year-timespan was in 1947, when just 10 per cent of Australians were born overseas, owing to two world wars and the Great Depression.
The rate has climbed in almost every year since.
