Graham Thom is a social worker, which a cynical person like myself might accuse of touting for business.

Planet Earth is now hideously overpopulated, and if it were not for immigration, the world's successful societies would have a sensibly negative population decrease. The worlds expoloding population centres are all in the priest and mullah infested third and fourth world, and every one of the billions of people from these areas would just love to flee their failed states and come to succesful societies.

I find it ironic, that all of these failed states were once well run colonies who's people once screamed that white people should get out. Well, we did just that, and now that they have proven that they can not run a country without a white or Asian to tell them what to do, they now all want to live with the white people again.

Graham Thom thinks that we should just let everybody who wants to come to Australia just turn up and ask directions to the nearest dole office. And we should not stop them because these people might commit suicide or do self harm to themselves.

Look, Mr Thom. I am an Australian. As an Australian, my compassion and charity is primarily directed at my own disadvantaged people, who because of ill health or circumstance, may not be able to fend for themselves without government assistence. I know that every penny that people like you give to these illegal immigrants is money misdirected from our own increasingly bankrupt welfare system, as well as from other worthy projects like education, scientific research and hospitals.

The world's population is increasing by millions every day, and I prefer that my country is not swamped by people who through lack of intelligence or religious faith, are unable to control their breeding, and who wish to declare their undying allegiance the the Australian Social Security system.

I don’t think you’ve thought this through properly, Graham Thorn.

There is no mention in your article of the need to stop onshore asylum seeking or at least stop it from increasing and wind back the rate of arrivals somewhat. You seem to have no problem with the numbers that are currently here awaiting processing or the rate of arrivals or the possibility of this increasing greatly if Australia is seen to be a soft touch, or of the cost of all of this and the stress it places on Australian social and political stability, or on the arrivals.

You seem to bear no thought of the pull factors that would be created by quick processing and permanent residency.

These are pretty huge omissions in your thinking!

We need to stop the boats and stop subjecting people paying people smugglers and then undertaking very risky, long and uncomfortable journeys.

There are other ways of doing our bit for refugees. One is to considerably boost our international aid effort, directed at the causal factors of refugeeism, as part of the global effort through the UN. The other way is to considerably increase our annual intake of refugees, as part of our formal immigration program.

Tanveer Ahmed, doctor, psychiatrist and OLO author, used to be a strong critic of Howard’s Pacific Solution, but he has realised that strong deterrence factors resulting in a cessation or large-scale wind-back of onshore asylum seeking is more humane than having thousands of people continually arriving and being processed, no matter how that process is conducted. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3198458.htm

TPV’s would be a big deterrence factors to further arrivals.

Yes of course asylum seekers are going to object to this, as are their one-eyed supporters. But come-on, if we just hand out permanent residency, along with no detention and quick processing times, which your like-minded ilk are also calling for Graham, then we could expect a further escalation in arrivals, with more trauma and stress for everyone involved.

And here’s another interesting point – if there were to be a further escalation, the chances of hardline policies being implemented in order to stop the boats would be increased, and ultimately a greater number of people would get caught in the middle of it.

Lego & Ludwig

Do I understand you?

If we stop boat refugees, the world will not become overpopulated?

Graham, this will not wash.

First you must address what has changed. There are now more boat arrivals, more people “dying” to get here, more detention centers, more in each detention center, more unrest, more violence, more misery, more public concern and more public division.

What has changed? It is Government Policy that has changed.

You can mitigate and excuse as much as you like but the cause and effect issues will not go away. You know what will fix it but you would rather not go there and would rather fiddle whilst Rome burns.

The saddest thing in all this is we are inflicting even more distress and pain upon those we seek to help. How does that work Graham? Is this some new form of denial that is totally immune to reality

Graham Thom is trying to square the circle.

There are two approaches we can take to asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

(1)Welcome them. This means they get incarcerated for a short period while their bona fides are checked – eg we’d want to be sure the “asylum seeker” is not a paedophile on the run from the constabulary. After that they get released into the community.

(2)Deter them. As in make it clear that coming here by boat is not worth the risk.

Both would work though I suspect that the former would be a hard sell.

What will NOT work is to say “We don’t want you but we don’t have the stomach to be sufficiently harsh to deter you from coming here.”

That seems to be the policy of the current government. That is why detention centres are overflowing. And it is the worst policy of all both for Australia and for asylum seekers.