Interesting article.
Pity you made the statement "Today's boat-people are illegals."
So untrue!

Is it right or wrong that someone can pay a people smuggler thousands, destroy their ID and then take the place of someone who has been waiting in a camp for years to come here? I think that question has a lot more reality to it.

'they would be willing to work hard to contribute to the country that gave them a second chance'

Three things: Firstly, can you point to the source and statistics for support of this assertion. Secondly, Australia is not the country that gave them their second chance ... that would have been the country into which they first fled.

Finally Mary wouldn't have caught a great big jet plane to get herself comfortably to Indonesian for a short, and now mostly Australian navy assisted, passage to Christmas Island followed by another, taxpayer funded, flight on another great big jet plane to mainland Australia, then given free smokes, phones, accommodation, welfare and eventual family reunion.

To compare these modern day immigrants in the same terms as Mary, simply cheapens Mary's courage and ordeal.

Why do you need fundamental dishonesty to support your argument?

The lack of empathy in the previous comments is a sad reminder of how far removed most Australians have become from the ways in which the lives of our ancestors still affect our lives today.

Australia pays lip service to the Irish Famine, but rarely acknowledges its implications in today’s world – which has come to bear an uncanny resemblance to the British Empire of the nineteenth century. The Irish Famine was totally avoidable, just as today’s imperial wars and globalised economic policies, which have driven millions of people into refugee exile, are totally avoidable.

While one can nitpick about the similarities and differences between Mary’s story and the passengers on the asylum seeker boats of today, the essential human story is the same. People all over the world, in every generation, and through little fault of their own, become victims of the politics and economic policies of the times in which they live. Those who choose to leave often find they have simply left one unforgiving world for another.

...Brian; for the Marys of Australian history I have the utmost respect: For a throng of opportunists arriving by the illegal boatload, issuing demands which extend beyond those afforded to the vast majority of the local population, I have no respect at all.

...All the bleating and sympathy seeking emanating from the microwaves of the ABC towers is, frankly, obvious for what it is; propaganda, and as such is unconvincing and unbelievable in its simple omission of all the facts concerning boat arrivals and their conniving demands; for what is simply not theirs to demand. The current open free one way trade in illegal boat arrivals, needs to stop urgently

>>Finally Mary wouldn't have caught a great big jet plane to get herself comfortably to Indonesian for a short, and now mostly Australian navy assisted, passage to Christmas Island followed by another, taxpayer funded, flight on another great big jet plane to mainland Australia, then given free smokes, phones, accommodation, welfare and eventual family reunion.<<

Not if she were alive today she probably wouldn't: she would probably have done what the vast majority of illegal immigrants to this country do and avoided the boat altogether - obtain a valid visa under false pretences, fly on a great big jet plane direct to mainland Australia and once here either disappear into the community and get up to God knows what or make a formal claim for asylum which gets processed onshore: a much better way to jump the queue than hopping on some leaky tub in Indonesia and hoping it doesn't sink before the Navy intercepts them.

But never mind the teeming hordes of plane people: we should focus our attention on the boat people instead. It may not be the best allocation of priorities but it's a much smaller problem and more easily solved. Why would politicians want to wrestle with a problem that may be too big to fix when they can be seen to be finding solutions to smaller ones?

Cheers,

Tony