Gladstone

[Changed from original title of "Quantifying 62,000 visa overstayers in terms of population impact and our history".] The Australian Immigration Department has released a report, "Migration Trends 2012-2013," in which it estimates that 62,100 people were unaccounted for in Australia during 2014 - roughly 1.2 per cent of the 5.5 million people who enter the country each year on temporary visas. Visitors (44,800) and students (10,720) were the largest cohort of visa holders to overstay their permitted time here, and people from China (7690), Malaysia (6420), the US (5220) and the UK (3780) led the field. In this article I try to quantify and qualify this number of people and their impact in the Australian system.