LouiseD

I just cannot see the problem here at all. If someone pays taxes and contributes to a country for the required number of years to gain citizenship then it's their right to apply for it for whatever reason they choose.

Why should it matter to anyone else if they don't love the country? There are people all over the world who take out citizenships in other countries, not only for "just in case" scenarios but for work reasons, sporting reasons, family reasons and probably many other reasons but it's too early in the morning for me to think yet.

Westralia

More than happy to see the back of you and those of your ilk.

Don't come back.

Westralia

Have a cry, petal.

Westralia

You call yourself "kiwi_child" then lament about feeling out of place in Perth.

I'm surprised that Perth is the destination of choice for as many English immigrants as it seems. I've travelled throughout Asia and Europe and have always held that if I had grown up there, then there would be no way that I could live in an isolated place like Perth.

What do people think isolation breeds combined with a resources-based economy? It's like migrating to Texas and expecting San Francisco. People here complaining are embarrassingly naive, ignoring common-sense principles such as evaluating what they had in their place of origin and what they would sacrifice living here. A fool and their money are soon parted and the Australian Government and the citizens of Perth thank you for your kind donations.

Westralia

Fantastic example of arrogant stereotyping if ever I've seen it.

I form my own opinions, thanks for asking (oh, that's right, you never bothered to ask, you simply assumed since all "ockers" are the same and have their views spoonfed to them by the town shockjock).

You're pathetic.

toandfro

oh please I'm wounded your hurtful words cut to the bone I don't know how I'll bear it I wounder who those of my ilk are and if they can live under the crushing weight of your loathing and harsh words ....alot of godzoners over here the last few days must have run out of things to talk about in the barbie I might slip over and have a look ...

chance to be

i had no idea Perth was in New Zealand. God Im thick!


PS: (she uses that name cos shes NOT a pom!)

FPM

Because unlike you coming down here constantly trying to defend your prozac induced view on dingo life, perhaps they are smart enough to let their kids decide.

Lane

What I'm having trouble understanding is the anger of some posters/posts.

Obviously, if this or that poster departs Australia for wherever, the Australian public will survive.

In fact, it wasn't the Aussie public who enticed Mr. or Ms. Angry Poster to Australian shores.

People, for whatever reason, may dislike a particular country or lifestyle. They're free to depart, unless prevented from doing so by law.

The Australian public does not stand, shoulder to shoulder on the shores of Australia to prevent unhappy migrants from departing.

So why the anger? If Australia isn't to your liking, depart with my blessing. Hope you're happier elsewhere.

A common element within posts seems to be one of entitlement; a belief that Australia is obliged to fulfill the various wish-lists of thousands of individual migrants and has somehow failed.

Australia however is not a holiday resort; it's not Disneyland; it's not British Isles in the Pacific. It's Australia. It's not required to satisfy migrants' unrealistic expectations or function as therapy for malcontents.

The anger betrayed by some posters is counter-productive and seems desperate for a target.

It's to be suspected that some migrants were not happy in the UK. They discovered they were not happy in Australia either. Very possibly they will not be happy after their return to the UK. Is that because their ambitions re: lifestyle exceed their resources and capacity to achieve?

Many migrants claim they enjoyed a higher than average standard of living and earning capacity in the UK. They state that both have decreased markedly since arriving in Australia. Yet higher than average standard of living and earning capacity hints at higher than average intelligence and ability, so why didn't such people adequately research Australia (lifestyle, economy, salaries, etc.) prior to leaving their claimed 'comfortable' situation in the UK?
Did they all just close their eyes and leap into the unknown, often with children in their arms?
Did they imagine they could make that leap with UK family and friends in their pockets?
Did they somehow manage to overlook the vast distance between the UK and Australia?
Did they neglect to find out about the climate, population, insect life, etc. in Australia prior to departing the UK?

Or did they allow their egos to convince them that Australia was desperate to add them to its population and would grant them special favour should they add to it?
Did they imagine they would all become Big Fish in a Small Puddle?

Did they allow themselves to indulge in Happy Ever After expectations when they applied to come to Australia, rather than appreciate that Life is Life wherever we are, problems and disappointments occur, everywhere contains great and not so great, etc.

So why be angry? Why not simply work towards your future (wherever that's destined to take place) and make the best of it in the meantime.

It's worth accepting and remembering that Australia owes you nothing.
Whatever it will take to make you happy is your responsibility.

Eric Hitchmo

Speaking personally,it was the constant one-upmanship and rubbishing of my country of origin's achievments in the media, continually being asked what I thought of Aus where only one answer was acceptable and forever being told how lucky I was to be in the best country on the planet. *Really* cheesed me off that did.
Australians routinely rubbish the UK and tell us how wonderful Aus is, so yes it was.
Never seen that. Most posts are on the lines of missing family and friends, and/or things that annoy people. Never seen anyone post a wish-list.
No. Not at all.
Nonsense. How on earth can you "research" living somewhere?
There's lots of different situtations and emotions you're confronted with and you can't possibly anticipate them until you live there for good.
Yeah right.
Nah, it's not worth remembering anything about Australia.

LouiseD

Nice essay. Pity it's a complete load on nonsense. For someone who bleats about other people's intelligence, you don't seem to have much of it yourself.

You talk about researching life in a new country. For heavents sakes, there is only so much research you can do - there are no practice runs at this you know. We researched by talking to agents, people who'd lived here, written articles, Internet, rang employers, visited the place etc. The annoying thing we found is that many people lie here. Yes they lie - blatent bloody lies. They tell you that you will earn a fortune, give prices for work and it's all exagerated as we found out too late.

I work for an employers association and the tales I hear every week about workers being inticed here on promises of a fantastic lifestyle would make you weep (well maybe not you because you are obviously totally deviod of any compassion). You talk about anger - yes that makes me angry that these people are being exploited - they want a better life for themselves and their families and buy into the lies that they are told to get them here, only to find out that it's a complete nonesense.

Not all jobs have the luxury of written contracts or advertisements that you can check out - many still operate on word of mouth. It's very much like seeing a job advertised at $100,000 pa, you get the job, sell up, move and when you arrive they say, sorry it's only $40,000 pa now - tough!

And why on earth do you arrogantly assume that people who are not happy in Australia won't be happy elsewhere - many people may return to Oz, but many stay very happy and contented in the UK, there have been loads of people on here who've agreed that it's only after they left the UK that they can appreciate what they had.

There are too many people like you, who just assume too much. You don't know what people have been promised and by whom. You don't know what's going on outside your own life, so you just judge people and categorise them as idiots. Well wake up - there are things going on around us all that we don't know about - the really ignorant people are the ones who assume too much about things they know nothing about.

HiddenPaw

Have to agree with you Louise. Why is it that you can't voice your likes/dislikes, or discuss what's not working well, without being accused of "blaming" Australia? Now it looks like we should all be "blaming" ourselves.

How about Lane takes a step back and looks at this forum as people sharing experiences, discussing disappointments, venting frustrations rather than going down the road of assuming we lack intelligence, knowledge, judgement, wisdom and common sense. What is the point of apportioning blame in any direction?

Lane

There's that anger again :-)

Children deny responsibility for their own mistakes.

As justification for your continual denial of responsibility for your own mistakes (in the UK and Aus) you cite 'newspaper' articles which enticed you here.

No ----- YOU chose to leave UK and move to Australia.

Can't you see? What you are doing is what in other realms, you would claim to despise; as with the rapist who claims to the judge that the girl 'asked for it' and 'enticed' him with her clothing and manner. 'She led me on, Your Honour !'

How childish ! How despicable !

YOU came to Australia because you THOUGHT that YOU were going to gain from it. That's why you came.

As with the rapist, your decision didn't take a mere 2 seconds.

You had PLENTY of time to think about what you were doing, every step of the way.

So don't waste your time or anyone else's claiming now that it was 'Australia's' fault, because you make yourselves appear ridiculous.

You came to Australia for YOU.

When YOU failed for whatever reason to adapt to or succeed in Australia, you blame the country. Like children.

Of COURSE Australians are proud of their country !

But THAT is not what's angering you.

YOU are angry because Australia has failed to 'recognise' how special YOU imagine YOURself to be. It didn't lay out the red carpet. It didn't hold your hand. In short, once you were here and settled per your individual means, Australia left you to get on with it --- in exactly the same manner it leaves everyone ELSE to get on with it.

YOU had unrealistic expectations of this country, that's obvious. If not, you wouldn't be complaining now.

And YES, it was up to YOU to do your homework before coming to Australia.

It was up to YOU to research every possible element of life in this country AS it would affect YOU, once you were here.

As said: Australia is not a holiday resort. It's country. How you live in that country depends on what YOU bring to it, in full awareness of what awaits you.

Did you spend more than you should have done upon arrival; on material possessions, for example? Did you assume you would immediately find the job or career that you wanted and that would support you in the lifestyle you'd chosen? Did you imagine that you would cope with separation from your support network in the UK ? Did you believe you could easily adapt to such a change in climate? Did you imagine you could go from being member of your established community in UK to being a virtual stranger in a new land?

Obviously you did. And just as obviously, YOU overestimated your abilities and willingness to adapt. YOU did that. And you KNOW it.

But in the process of learning you're not as adaptable as you once believed, you may have been inconvenienced. You may have lost money. You may have lost face. You may have lost the chance to return to UK.

So you're angry.

And like children, you're lashing out at and attempting to insult and wound Australia and Australians.

It's Grow Up time, and you know it. And it's long overdue.

As far as whining like children that Aussies defend their country and lifestyle, even promote them. Well of course they do !

And like children lying and denying to their parents after the fact, why don't you come clean at the same time you start growing up?

Why not admit that Aussies only retaliated AFTER you'd tried to dump your anger with yourselves onto those Aussies.

Why not admit that you criticised Australia (for failing to provide you with your childish Disneyland dream) and Aussies told you some long overdue truths about the UK ?

Do you think it's your own little secret -- all those chavs and unemployed and ghetto towns and cities over there in UK ? Do you imagine no-one else knows about them? Where have you been? The situation in UK was so ghastly even several hundred years ago that the UK couldn't hold its disenchated, desperate unwashed and exported them -- in the guise of criminals or migrants -- to Australia and the US.

So it's pointless coming to Australia and expecting deference simply because you're from the UK. That doesn't make you special or 'entitled'.

People have been coming to Australia to escape the UK for a couple of hundred years at this point. Some get stuck in and make a go of it. Some don't.

And no-one is going to make a success of a complete lifestyle change IF they're going to continually 'look backwards'. That will doom you to failure. The only sensible, intelligent way to succeed at anything is to look forward and work towards that.

If you're not prepared, for whatever reason, to do that, then by all means go back to where you came from. And while you're about it --- have the grace and maturity to accept that you failed Australia. It did not fail you. Australia will continue after you're gone. And right now, there are thousands of people just like you, desperate for a chance to come to Australia. That's the way it is.

by the sea side

Eric you have made my day. I could kiss you.XXX

by the sea side

I agree with every word of this post.I saw emigrate to Australia fairs regularly advertised and the spiel that went with it.GMTV and it's regular Australian segment,I wonder how much they are paid for this? It (Australia) is always being sold and like any other country it has it's problems,though usually ignored for the Look I am great mob.

The sun shining alot more than some countries ie Britain ,NZ, etc beaches and bbqs are enticing.You have to work to pay all the usual bills that we have each month no matter where we are,and some wages are alot lower some higher or the same,the IR laws here are terrible and have set us back more than a hundred years and no gives a damn about the impact this is having.

Where I live a guy I know is here on a sponsored visa.They sacked him last week because he fell a sleep on night shift having worked through 9 hours and no break and this is a regular situation at this company.This isn't the so called lucky country.

I knew many Australians who had lived and worked inthe Uk for years with no intention of returning and I knew a few that couldn't stand the place and openly said so.Why is there one rule for them and a different one for everyone else?