Are immigrants overrepresented in the Australian social security system?

"This article discusses the statistics commonly used for judging whether immigrants are more or less likely than those born in Australia to receive social security payments...[taking] into account the eligibility conditions applying to different payments, and the effect of differences between the age distributions of different birthplace groups....The article presents estimates of social security receipt in 1989....The statistics discussed here do not prove that immigrants are either overrepresented or underrepresented in the social security system.... This article has, however, supported the view that Australians born in Vietnam and in Lebanon do have higher levels of social-security receipt than other immigrant groups.... This result implies that after Aborigines, these groups are likely to have the lowest economic status in Australian society." excerpt