Kmenta was enrolled as student of statistics at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1948. He left the university in September 1949 following the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, escaping to West Germany where he lived in refugee camps for more than a year. He then emigrated to Australia in December 1950 under its two-year 'indentured labor' immigration policy. Kmenta was assigned to breaking rocks in a stone quarry in Picton (near Sydney). Later, he went to Sydney and met a professor at the Technical College in Ultimo who tested Kmenta's statistics training and immediately hired him to do statistical calculations. However, an employment officer in Sydney prevented the hiring due to his status as an immigrant and instead assigned him to a metal-stamping plant in Balmain. Kmenta learned English by listening to the radio and through newspapers with an English/Czech dictionary. He later obtained a job emptying and steam-boiling bed pans in a tuberculosis hospital in Randwick. At this time, Sydney University was offering evening courses for servicemen in which Kmenta enrolled, joining other Czechs taking classes while working day jobs. Professor Charles Birch helped advise them regarding administrative procedures for admission to the university and similar matters.