Asylum seekers

[Choccies]

What is the solution here folks ??

They seem to be coming in with the tide these days and then threatening to blow themselves up if we don't accept them... I feel sympathy for them and their individual plights but don't really know what to think about a number of issues including the large sums they pay to get here surely knowing that the chance of them not making it is so huge, the strain on our country's resources to house them etc...

I just don't know what to think here.... what's other people thoughts ??

[MightyEagles]

If Indonesia would help more often, this type of thing would happen less often. At least there isn't as many as there is in the US or Europe where they just walk across the border every 18 seconds or so.

[Gingernuts]

My gut feeling is that these people have usually payed out substantial sums of money to people smugglers to make this journey. This indicates to me that they must've had some assets, as well as some sort of employment/qualifications etc to reach a financial position where this is a possibility for them. Surely this means that they would also have the means to apply for residency via the official channels? Even if they are fleeing persecution or war within their own country, surely they fit within the legitimate refugee quota that Aust takes in every year from all over the world?

However, then I find myself asking the question - What if I had been born in a different country where I didn't enjoy the same rights I do here? What would I do? It's easy to sit back and say "piss off ya bluggers" but we've been born in the 'lucky country', the worst we may have been subjected to is some race based persecution in the playground or at the local pub. None of us have ever been the victim of out-and-out genocide/percecution based on race or religion in this country (yeah I know, White Australia, but we won't open that can of worms here!), so what would we know about what they are running from and how desparate their situation is?

I'm with you Choccies, in the end I don't know what to think about this one.

[Baron Greenback]

I say go with the John Howard method: Sink 'em.

[smithy]

Are these the same Indonesians that are preaching the same religion as those wanting to terrorise and blow up our country ?

Send them back and sink the boat.

[Dirko]

Send 'em back.

If they come in via Indonesia or elsewhere for that matter, there's a good chance they're involved / paid their way through a people smuggling
racquet, and therefore if so they're nothing but queue jumpers.

If they wish to seek asylum / refuge, do it in the proper manner, and follow the rules like thousands of other people do every year.

[Iron Fist]

I reckon we dont let no one in unless they speak fluent english and have skills that we need
otherwise these refugees are just stealing our jobs and costing our government money!

[Choccies]

I reckon we dont let no one in unless they speak fluent english and have skills that we need
otherwise these refugees are just stealing our jobs and costing our government money!

Yeah I agree.... Shame that theory doesn't apply on this forum !!

[Gingernuts]

I reckon we dont let no one in unless they speak fluent english and have skills that we need
otherwise these refugees are just stealing our jobs and costing our government money!

Yeah I agree.... Shame that theory doesn't apply on this forum !!

[ORDoubleBlues]

The people smugglers must tell them a lot of lies.

[Wedgie]

Things started going wrong when we let asylum seekers into the country in the 18th and 19th century.
At least the new ones don't whinge as much!

[Jimmy_041]

What is the solution here folks ??

That will stop them coming

[Psyber]

Peter Costello was wrong with "one for the country".
This country is already overpopulated and soon we shall lack both the water and the land to produce our own food.
This is because, as our population expands, we build houses all over the most arable and best watered land..

The "need" for an ever expanding population is based on the premise of paying pensions to an increasing aged population.
We really need is a system of adequate, compulsory, self-funded superannuation, with the funds kept safe from the clutching hands of governments, who will want to spend it "for the public good" now, and promise to put it back when needed, which of course they wouldn't be able to do if we didn't have the expanding revenue base we don't actually have the land and water to support...

[Thiele]

Send them back or blow up there boat with them inside

[Gozu]

"Ruddock takes us back up sh-t creek with a pipeline"

Crikey's Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

Ah, the return of the living dead.

Old habits die hard with Philip Ruddock. About as hard as Ruddock’s own progressive principles died when he had a sniff of ministerial power. He happily became John Howard’s go-to man in the demonization of asylum-seekers and the minister responsible for that high point in Australian public life, the reference to a boy locked up in Villawood Detention Centre as “it”.

The Government’s “softening” of illegal immigration laws has now, according to Ruddock, produced a “pipeline” of 10,000 people a year trying to get to Australia.

You know what goes through pipelines. Not people. Maybe water, at best, but more likely sludge, or some highly unpleasant chemical. Sewage, perhaps.

Those 10,000 pipelinees, we know, are of course not white people.

Ruddock, like some of its colleagues, must be thoroughly flummoxed that Australians have thus far greeted the rise in boat arrivals generated by the Sri Lankan civil war and other regional conflicts with a reasonable amount of equanimity. It’s not like the good old days, when a single boatload of asylum seekers could be guaranteed to tap into that deep-seated Australian fear of invasion from the north by different-coloured hordes.

The flow of arrivals via boat of course remains an entirely trivial immigration problem. If you’re obsessed about border control, you should be picketing our airports, where illegal immigrants and future visa overstayers arrive every day by the hundreds. In July last year there were 48,500 people in Australia unlawfully, and nearly all of them got off a plane.

Philip Ruddock will tell you the Howard Government stopped the boats. But how’d it go stopping the other 95+% of people who aren’t supposed to be here?

Well, turns out, not so good. In fact, so badly its Department stopped publishing the statistics in its annual report, and only properly resumed when the numbers started coming back down again after it had been replaced as Immigration Minister.

There were 45,000 people in Australia unlawfully in 1996, when Ruddock first applied its tender ministrations to the Immigration portfolio. The following year they shot up to 51,000. A good start for Ruddock, but it was just warming up. Immigration stopped reporting the numbers for a couple of years, but when we next see them, in 2000, they’d climbed to nearly 59,000.

And as we learn from the Department’s 2004 annual report, they’d peaked at 59,800 in the last months of Ruddock’s stint as minister. So it presided over a 33% increase in illegal immigrants. Nice work, and it didn’t even have a pipeline to help it.

More from Eva Cox on The Stump:

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/200 ... he-caused/

[Gozu]

Send them back or blow up there boat with them inside

You and the other rednecks on here are vile specimens indeed.

[FlyingHigh]

However, then I find myself asking the question - What if I had been born in a different country where I didn't enjoy the same rights I do here? What would I do? It's easy to sit back and say "piss off ya bluggers" but we've been born in the 'lucky country', the worst we may have been subjected to is some race based persecution in the playground or at the local pub. None of us have ever been the victim of out-and-out genocide/percecution based on race or religion in this country (yeah I know, White Australia, but we won't open that can of worms here!), so what would we know about what they are running from and how desparate their situation is?

I'm with you Choccies, in the end I don't know what to think about this one.

I will preface this by saying I'm not 100% sure about these, but:
Weren't the Tasmanian Aboriginals virtually hunted into extinction?
Ask any Aboriginal about how "Blackfellas" at Elliston got it's name.
Around the time of WWII, children in some parts of SA, particularly German townships, being forced to write right handed because it was felt left-handedness was a sign of being complicit with the Germans

[FlyingHigh]

Peter Costello was wrong with "one for the country".
This country is already overpopulated and soon we shall lack both the water and the land to produce our own food.
This is because, as our population expands, we build houses all over the most arable and best watered land..

The "need" for an ever expanding population is based on the premise of paying pensions to an increasing aged population.
We really need is a system of adequate, compulsory, self-funded superannuation, with the funds kept safe from the clutching hands of governments, who will want to spend it "for the public good" now, and promise to put it back when needed, which of course they wouldn't be able to do if we didn't have the expanding revenue base we don't actually have the land and water to support...

[JAS]

Send them back or blow up there boat with them inside

You and the other rednecks on here are vile specimens indeed.

I reckon it's the like ex-smokers being the ones who scream loudest about those that still smoke.

Unless you come from somewhere in the highlands of Ethiopia then we are ALL immigrants or descended from them.

I'm sure the BNP would be so proud of you all...shame they don't stop to think that Anglo is from around Denmark and Saxon is from Germany.

We (the 1st world) go around constantly boasting about how fabulous our countries are and how we're all living the dream in the land of plenty and then we are all so stunned and shocked when people, who our greed helps keep in unimaginable poverty, are willing to risk their lives and more money than they could never hope to payback to try and have a piece of that fantasy world.

If we want to blame anyone for the immigration problem then maybe we should start with ourselves and our own greed and ignorance.

Regards
JAS

[Dog_ger]

Send them back or blow up there boat with them inside

You and the other rednecks on here are vile specimens indeed.

I reckon it's the like ex-smokers being the ones who scream loudest about those that still smoke.

Unless you come from somewhere in the highlands of Ethiopia then we are ALL immigrants or descended from them.

I'm sure the BNP would be so proud of you all...shame they don't stop to think that Anglo is from around Denmark and Saxon is from Germany.

We (the 1st world) go around constantly boasting about how fabulous our countries are and how we're all living the dream in the land of plenty and then we are all so stunned and shocked when people, who our greed helps keep in unimaginable poverty, are willing to risk their lives and more money than they could never hope to payback to try and have a piece of that fantasy world.

If we want to blame anyone for the immigration problem then maybe we should start with ourselves and our own greed and ignorance.

Regards
JAS

WHAT...? I think you are lost in your castle JAS

Maybe lets send all boat people to JAS's Castle...!