Students, tourists and workers to take up Five MILLION visas to Australia

More than five million Australian visas are expected to be issued to students, tourists and workers this year - the biggest amount since World War II.

As many as 1.9 million foreigners travelling on short term visas are predicted to be spending time Down Under at any one time throughout this year.

While a record 185,000 permanent migrants moved to Australia in 1969 - this figure is likely to be exceeded in 2015 as people are moving to the Lucky Country in droves.

Secretary of the Immigration Department  Michael Pezzullo revealed these figures at a speech at the Australian National University on Tuesday night, Fairfax Media reported.

Mr Pezzullo said the challenges were on par to the high numbers in the aftermath of World War II.

He said there were more east and southern Asians than Europeans moving to Australia in what has been a quick and significant shift as the number of Chinese-born Australians had tripled in the past 20 years.

'This is equivalent to a migrant-to-population share of almost 28 per cent,' Mr Pezzullo said.

'And the composition of that population is changing in ways that the proponents of 'White Australia' could never have imagined.'

'Migrants enjoy high levels of economic participation as distinct from high levels of social exclusion and welfare-dependency, he said.

'Immigration has beneficial impacts in terms of growth in the demand for goods and services, increases in national income and living standards, improved labour participation, expansion of the economy's productive capacity and growth in household consumption and public revenues,' Mr Pezzullo said.