Vash the Stampede

2 million is totally unsustainable, mate. Absolute disaster.

Remember that 2/3 of Australia is utterly uninhabitable, and states are already feeling the pressure on existing infrastructure. You can't just absorb 2 million people per year without anywhere to house them or sufficient services to support them.

And that's without even considering the water crisis.

Australia can take in a healthy amount of immigrants, and she already does. There's no need to increase numbers just for the sake of increasing numbers. That way madness lies.

The most important aspect of any immigration policy (aside from humanitarian concerns) is its benefit to the nation as a whole. This is best managed by a system aimed at skilled workers who are least likely to be dependent upon the state. And that's what we have: the points system.

Vash the Stampede

You clearly know nothing about me, and you've obviously not done a search on my posts, which would have shown you that these petty insults are totally unwarranted.

Look around this forum and you will see that I am one of the pro-immigration brigade, very strong on humanitarian/refugee/asylum support.

But I don't want timewasters flying into my country (literally; on a plane) and falsely claiming asylum. Nor do I want timewasters on tourist visas flying in and then pretending to be asylum seekers in the hope of staying permanently. These are the people being addressed by the new proposal (not genuine asylum seekers), and these are the people who deserve to be kicked out. They clog up the system, wasting huge amounts of time and money in the process.

This only makes it harder for the real asylum seekers to be heard, and often has the unfortunate effect of turning popular opinion against them (because people assume that they're all the same).

Next time, don't slag someone off before you know where they stand.

hippyboy1

I have some idea where you stand.
Firstly, It isnt correct that two million migrants is unsustainable-you have been led or like leading others to believe this-two million is a stretch, however 1 million is highly do-able-water and all.
2-3 of Australia uninhabitable leads 1-3rd that is-thats still seven or eight times the size of the UK-and remember Tassie gets as much water as the UK.
I don't support immigration for the sake of immigration but for the sake of Australia's future.
'Time-wasters' as if some highly generalised and buearacratic system can really determine who they are. Where is your evidence that illegal immigrants turn out to be time-wasters or WHP overstayers-perhaps the next Einstein might be among them.
Funny how Australians love a larrikin who 'breaks the rules', but not when it comes to migration.
Answer this: What points system did the convicts have to go through, yet they, a bunch of petty crims, helped create one of the best countries on earth-think about it.

DunRoaminTheUK

Takes a seat and waits for the bell...seconds out......

Wol

I'd like some of what you're smoking.

BadgeIsBack

The first rule of reading any paper, infact, is to remember that the headline often has a slant that is barely alluded to in the narrative.

Never ceases to amaze me!

hippyboy1

Who would you prefer as an immigrant-a 'legal' entrant who has an IQ of 75 and a history of violence or a 'illegal' with an IQ of 140 and a history of contributing.

michael_w

My 2 cents ... you get a different view when you meet these "scrounging illegal immigrants" in person. We know a wonderful Iraqi guy, George, who has now become "legal" after a nightmare five years surviving hand to mouth, working illegally without any benefits including medical care - particularly cruel for his daughter who missed out on immunisations for things like meningitis because we don't want to be "soft on refugees".

Vash the Stampede

You say this, but then you go on to show that you don't.

Please prove this. Remember, you were talking about 2 million per year. That is unsustainable, and demonstrably so.

You seem to believe that infrastructure appears overnight, by magic - and that an appropriate level of employment and public services appears at the same time. Sadly, this is not the case.

Look at how long it takes to develop just one major land release. How would you accommodate 2 million people?

So do I! Immigration is the way forward; Australia must expand or stagnate. But that expansion has to be managed intelligently.

Do you believe we are utterly incapable of determining who them are? Is that your argument? Do you think we should just let in everyone and assume that they're all genuine?

The "highly generalised and bureaucratic system" (which is not "highly generalised" at all, but highly specific) works very well. It has successfully achieved repatriation of thousands upon thousands of asylum seekers and refugees over the past 50 years.

Here you are generalising and misrepresenting what I've said. I did not say that all illegal immigrants turn out to be timewasters.

I said I don't want timewasters flying into my country (literally; on a plane) and falsely claiming asylum. Nor do I want timewasters on tourist visas flying in and then pretending to be asylum seekers in the hope of staying permanently.

These are the people being addressed by the new proposal, and they are the people who deserve to be kicked out. They clog up the system, wasting huge amounts of time and money in the process.

We don't love people who pretend to be something they're not. We don't love dishonesty. We don't love false asylum seekers.

We do like genuine asylum seekers who have been driven by desperate circumstances to enter our country illegally, which is precisely why we have taken so many of them in the past 50 years.

What is the relevance of this question? It means nothing in the context of the debate.

The convicts (and the colonists who arrived with them) helped to create a great country because the alternative was to die miserably in a foreign land. Faced with such a choice, they made the only rational decision.

They did not enter the country illegally, under false pretences.

Your question is moot, since the "IQ 75" guy would not get past the points system. He would be refused entry on two grounds: (a) unskilled worker, and (b) criminal record.

But to entertain your hypothetical... yes, of course I would prefer the illegal - provided that he could prove he was a genuine asylum seeker.

If he turned out to be a fake, I'd kick him out and rap his knuckles for wasting time and resources by trying to jump the queue ahead of genuine asylum seekers.

Do you believe that everyone has the right to live and work everywhere else, regardless of how they enter their country of choice?

I think you need to brush up on the facts. A good place to start is here.

Vash the Stampede

I admire his tenacity and I have every respect for his work ethic. But he seems to have made it harder for himself by deliberately avoiding due process.

Why did he arrive illegally? Was he an asylum seeker? If so, why was he working? Asylum seekers are not permitted to work while their cases are being examined. I suspect this is done to help determine which of them are genuine asylum seekers, and which are economic migrants.

The irony is that if he had arrived legally and applied for asylum upon arrival, he wouldn't have needed to work illegally for 5 years in the first place. Was he ever housed in a detention centre? I suspect not, if he was able to work for 5 years. This also suggests that he had escaped detection by the authorities, and had made a conscious decision to avoid them.

So I can only ask: why did he do this, and why was he working illegally? I suspect that he was not an asylum seeker.

I believe that asylum seekers should be covered by Medicare. The current system is grossly unfair, though I don't think it has anything to do with not wanting to be seen as "soft on refugees". Remember, not all illegal immigrants are refugees, and not all refugees are illegal immigrants. They are not equivalent terms.

But again... was this man an asylum seeker, or merely an illegal immigrant?

hippyboy1

No, however I think the point in which we differ boils down to me thinking that although someone came in under false pretenses, 'broke the rules', queue jumped....whatever, I believe that person should be given a chance to stay. I also believe that allowing queue jumpers to stay fulfills an important role-this place needs labou, people who qualify for little else other than a factory job are in fact in short supply.

DunRoaminTheUK

Are you in this position?

This is the only reason that I can think of that would explain your desire to let all-and-sundry in when there is a stringent yet fair immigration filtering scheme in place?

What you are proposing is almost anarchic.

hippyboy1

I am both a UK citizen and an Australian citizen. Actually there are many people that think like me and many of them actually work in the immigration department or the Home Office.
I work in my own business, but lets just say I worked for immigration, I would keep my ideas about immigration more or less to myself but try and subvert the system to allow maximum illegals and doubtful asylum seekers through the door whenever I could.
Believe me, the system teems with people like that-both in the UK and here-hence all the 'blunders' and lenient decisions.
Heres the thing, my attitudes are not naive lefty stupidity at all but a deep suspicion of the validity of current immigration trends.
When the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans etc felt like coming over to the UK-they got on a boat and did so-they didn't exactly worry about immigration procedure. Same with the Brits to Oz. While I am completely and totally sympathetic to the plight of Aboriginals and support land rights to the nth degree, although I don't believe everyone has the right to live everywhere I DO BELIEVE if someone has already gone to the trouble of rocking up somewhere with the intention of living a productive and contributing life (regardless of their initial 'crime' of rocking up uninvited) we should be looking at ways of including them not excluding them-thats all.
Heres the truth-very few asylum claims are genuine...very very few indeed. often its the bad guys that rock up and claim to be the very people they were persecuting. The flaws in the system that Vash has so much faith in are amazing-white bread public servants haven't a clue how to ascertain genuine refugee status-and the idea that 'time-wasters' clog the system is nonsense. Australia needs people from the third world and I don't feel it matters whether they are claiming victim status or not-or what their skill set is either.
Look at the Greeks and Italians or even the ten pound Poms, they were let in with no particular skills at all-they all have done really well.
American for hundreds of years essentially let in anyone at all and it hasn't held it back.

Wol

Giving you the rather dubious benefit of doubt that you're not winding us up your posts suggest that you don't believe in the democratic system. That is, one whereby the proletariat select for right or wrong a group of people who make and enforce the law of the land.

You infer that breaking the laws on immigration is a good thing.

There are laws against burglary. Should I feel that they are oppressive perhaps, using the same logic, you would agree that I am entitled to break into your home and make off with whatever I choose?

Or are your views on immigration somehow different?

If you are an anarchist then please let us know: it would save a lot of time ,g>

MattW82

Are you sure you're not working for immigration in the UK? We seem to have a huge number of dubious asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. How you can possibly think this is a good thing is totally beyond me.