Introduction In this paper I isolate the policies and acknowledge the sentiments that most impinged on the shift in status of postwar immigrants from Aliens to Australian citizens and the sense of belonging this should engender. In their publication, Citizenship and the politics of belonging , Stephen Castles & Alastair Davidson (2000:vii) 1 note that the membership of individuals in modern democratic societies is marked by the status of citizenship and that those who belong in a given nation-state: Have documents certifying their membership - generally a certificate of birth or naturalization and an identity card or passport. Possess a wide range of civil, political and social rights and a series of obligations to the community and state; and that The democratic state needs the participation of all its members: everybody is meant to belong. Ann Mari Jordens claims that 'a nation's understanding of itself is revealed by the categories of people it regards as foreign, as alien, as 'other'. 2 The Macquarie dictionary defines an 'alien' as 'one born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization and is not entitled to the privileges of a citizen.' The Aborigines and the Chinese on the goldfields were among the first peoples branded aliens by Australian authorities. The anti-Asian attitudes that first manifest on pastoral properties and other places of Chinese indentured employment, evolved on the Goldfields into an intense and escalating xenophobia against Chinese credit-ticket holders who came in their tens of thousands to compete