This paper objectives to find whether wage differentials exist by the country of birth controlling such individual attributes as sex, age, occupation, industry, educational attainments, working hours and marital status. I use individual samples from the ABS 1990 Survey of Income and Housing Costs and Amenities for this objective. First, I estimated a wage function by all samples. I obtained the results that UK-born and Oceanian-born immigrants earn by 3% to 6% higher than natives and Italian-born, other European-born and Asian-born immigrants earn by 3% to 7% lower than natives. Next, I estimated wage functions by eight occupational groups. As a result, English-speaking-background (ESB) immigrants earn by 9.3% higher in the occupation of managers and administrators, by 5.5% higher in tradespersons, by 6.2% higher in clerk and by 5.7% higher in labourers than natives. On the other hand, Non-English-speaking-background(NESB) immigrants earn by 8.3% lower in operators and drivers and by 3.8% lower in labourers than natives. Estimating occupational status function, natives tend to obtain higher status occupation than immigrants. Although ESB immigrants do not have any problems on language, they have some disadvantage on occupational status. However, if they obtain same occupation as natives, their wages are higher than natives because they have better ability for the occupation. If NESB immigrants obtain occupations except for operators and drivers or labourers, they do not have any disadvantage on wages. NESB immigrants tend to be engaged in the occupation of operators and drivers or labourers, even if they have high educational attainments or occupational experiences. Since their overseas education and experiences are not enough recognized in these occupations, NESB immigrants have negative wage premium.
