FACTBOX: Australian immigration a hot political issue

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Immigration has always been a hot political issue in Australia, a nation built by immigrants and which continues to rely on settlers for economic development.

Around one-in-four Australians were born overseas, including current Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who moved to Australia from Wales when she was a young child.

Here are some facts on Australian immigration and political developments.

HISTORY

* Immigration has been at the center of Australia's modern economic development since the first European settlers arrived to set up a Sydney penal colony in 1788.

* Australia's modern immigration wave began after World War Two, under a "populate or perish" policy to boost security and address labor shortages. Around 6.9 million people have settled since 1945, lifting the population from 7 million to 21.8 million in 2009. The government expects 35 million by mid-century.

* A long-running White Australia policy discriminated against Chinese and Pacific Islander settlers in favor of white Europeans. The policy was gradually dismantled from 1949 and formally ended in 1973.

REFUGEE BOATS

* The first refugee boats to land on Australian shores arrived in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. Between 1976 and 1981, 2,059 Vietnamese boats arrived in northern Australia.

* About 300 boats a year landed in a second wave between 1989 and 1998, mostly from Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China. * The latest surge, organized by people-smuggling operations and with mostly Middle East asylum seekers, began in 1990. Australia works with Indonesia to crack down on people smugglers.

RECENT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* Firebrand politician Pauline Hanson and her nationalist One Nation Party attracted almost one million votes at the 1998 election, after warning the country risked being swamped by Asians and calling for tighter immigration rules.

* In 2001, then-Prime Minister John Howard ordered commandos to stop a Norwegian freighter, the MV Tampa, carrying asylum seekers rescued from a sinking refugee boat, from docking at Australia's Christmas Island. That led to the "Pacific Solution," under which boats were intercepted at sea and sent to detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

* Howard, struggling in opinion polls, won his third straight election in late 2001, campaigning on a tough border stand and mandatory detention for illegal arrivals.

* Current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd won election in 2007 advocating a more humane asylum policy and ended the Pacific Solution, closing detention centers on Nauru and PNG. Arrivals are now only processed on Christmas Island.

LATEST IMMIGRATION, BOATPEOPLE FIGURES

* In the year to June, 158,021 settlers arrived from more than 200 countries. New Zealand accounted for 16 percent, Britain 13.6 percent, India 10.9 percent, China 10 percent and South Africa 4.5 percent. Australia also accepted 13,507 refugees.

* The migration programme for 2009-10 is set at 168,700, down about 11 percent, due to the slowing economy.

* Two rickety boats carrying 40 asylum seekers were intercepted by Australia's navy on Sunday. A total of 1,640 asylum seekers have arrived this year on 28 boats, exceeding the total number of boats for the past seven years. Sources: Reuters; Australian Department of Immigration; Australian Bureau of Statistics.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Michael Perry and Ron Popeski)