Moreover, Australia is able, and does, select who migrates to the country and who does not.

The Wikipedia table about net migration to each country isn't the whole truth, however. For instance, it shows a significant negative net migration for Greece (-12.34 per 1000 pop) although in reality there are lots of migrants all over in Greece.

> Australia is able, and does, select who migrates to the country

Australia selects its own immigrants through only one of its two immigration systems (its DIBP). Because they allow all New Zealand citizens (through a reciprocal arrangement) to live and work in Australia, they don't select immigrants who go in that other way. As the Chinese say "新西兰是澳大利亚的后门", i.e. "New Zealand is the back door into Australia".

Typically takes at leat 7 years to get NZ citizenship (except for Peter Thiel) -- 2 for Permanent Residency then another 5 years for citizenship. 6 years of which you have to actually live in NZ . That's a fairly long-winded "back door".

When I lived in New Zealand in the 1990's, I met many Chinese immigrants who lived in NZ for 3 years then after becoming NZ citizens went straight to Australia to become Australian citizens after a further 2 years there. That's where I heard that expression.

That's still quite selective immigration. The cost and visa requirements of travelling to NZ (legally) before immigrating to Australia from there is already a factor that changes the migration pattern completely.

Around 2002, Australia stopped New Zealanders getting automatic Australian citizenship after residency. Also then, New Zealand changed the residency time to become a citizen from 3 years to 5 years. I haven't heard about the extra 2 years mentioned by amatix.

Until then, it was easier to get NZ permanent residency than Australian, and many people, especially from China, took that "back door" to Australian citizenship. During the 1990's, I met many who spent the 3 years in NZ unemployed, learning conversational English. After becoming NZ citizens they'd go to Australia and get a job within months.

Especially given that you can go from zero to Australian citizen in four years. (I did.)

It's data from 2012. Following the citation on Wikipedia: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.NETM?year_high_de...

Not willing though. We have "Customer Service Managers" on skilled visas waiting on tables.

Lots of people left Greece because of tremendous unemployment still being an issue.

Absolutely. Lots of migrants, however, also come to Greece all the time and can't move on. Nobody seems to know the actual numbers, although the incoming flow has reduced after the EU migrant deal with Turkey.

The mechanism works e.g. so that a family runs a tourist hotel on an island; plenty of migrants arrive and there is a camp next to the hotel; tourists feel that the holiday environment at this hotel isn't nice and they no longer come; the family is without work and emigrates to Germany to work there. And also the people who supplied food, cleaning services etc to the hotel are out of work and emigrate.

The family is not racist, they help the needy migrants that arrive on their shores, but they lose their livelihood and have to become migrants themselves.

The situation may now be helped by souring EU-Turkey relations. There are not many tourists from Germany going to Turkey any more. Therefore the tourist industry in Greece could recover.

Is there any data to support the idea that tourism collapses due to a negative effect on the holiday environment caused by emigrants ...? How was tourism doing during the height of grexit (and before immigration became the global problem du jour ...)

Based on the number of tourist areas that depend on/benefit from cheap labor -- there's not a lot of me that believes this is a real mechanism...

I've just seen what some Greeks wrote about losing their livelihood and then emigrating, but recent statistics are hard to come by. I would think that the overall tourism in Greece is alive and well (particularly with EU tourism to competing Turkey collapsing due to Erdogan's arbitrary and autocratic appearances) but the Aegean islands affected by migration have suffered and people who lived and worked there go elsewhere.

It's mostly highly skilled immigration. V diff from the US where most immigration is low skilled.

There are some legitimate highly skilled migrants. But for the most part is just a abused to employ unskilled people, or to underpay skilled ones.