Once again, a biased piece from someone who wants to denigrate Australia and tell us how mean we are through a selective use of data.

This from the Refugee Council in early 2012, despite it also noting that “Refugee resettlement to Australia is now at one of its lowest points ... since introduced in 1977. The 2010-11 resettlement program was the fourth smallest in 34 years – and on a per capita basis was the second smallest program in 35 years..

“However, when all these measures are looked at together, it is reasonable to say that Australia is in the top 20 or so for the number of refugees afforded protection and in the top 25 on a per capita basis.
Among the 44 industrialised countries UNHCR includes in its asylum trends analysis, Australia was third overall in 2010 for refugee recognition and resettlement and sixth on a per capita basis behind Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and Austria. When the same statistics are viewed over eight years, Australia was fourth overall (behind USA, Canada and UK) and eighth per capita (behind Malta, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Canada)”.

http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/resources/intakesub/2012-13_IntakeSub.pd

< Australia received only 23,434 refugees in all categories under UNHCR mandate in 2011. This is puny compared with other rich countries. And nowhere near as generous as many poor countries. Almost 10 million refugees were relocated worldwide. Australia ranks 47th in the world. >

Eh?

We are supposed to have an annual intake of about 13 000, as part of our formal immigration policy. And any onshore or fly-in asylum seekers that are accepted as refugees displace the same number of people waiting in refugee camps.

Isn’t this the way of it? This is what we have been told. So what’s with the extra ~10 000??

Australia ranks 47th in the world on a total numbers basis. But it is very different on a per-capita basis. The number of refugees accommodated compared to the number of established citizens is a much more meaningful measure. Australia ranks very well by this measure.

"The second is that the problem is partly one of Australia's own making. Australia has contributed to the destabilisation of several countries through its support for US efforts to secure Middle East oil through destructive invasions."

The importance of this observation by Alan cannot be stressed enough. Not only is Australia more a target for terrorism but we are also more a target for asylum seekers.

The gigantic capitulation by Gillard this week is breathtaking. That she is using the findings of a six-week report to justify her stubborn refusal over four years to change course on refugees is typical of her cunning.

Saying sorry for her endless incompetence is something you'd better not hold your breath waiting for.

The sooner Australia sees the back of Gillard the better.

http://dangerouscreation.com

There are a lot of debatable assertions in this article; for instance:

"It disputes Opposition leader Tony Abbott's assertion that refugee boats can safely be turned back to Indonesia"

It does so because it is assumed the occupants of these boats will scuttle the boat; other than this bit of calumny about Abbott, as usual, there is no reason why boats can't be towed back to Indonesia, bearing in mind a lot of these boats send out distress calls from WITHIN Indonesia's coastal territory.

And these just about sum up the "asylum" racket:

"It offends Greens leader Christine Milne who claims the report advocates a return to 'the bad old days of offshore processing'.

It disappoints refugee support groups by recommending removal of family reunion concessions for arrivals by boat.

And it criticises the role of the High Court. 'Currently, scheduled and prospective involuntary removals are impeded by an impending High Court decision raising issues of procedural fairness ...'"

The Greens, refugee activist groups, and activist, opportunistic and creative lawyers are the groups promoting a manufactured crisis to which this article adds a faux moral dimension; that moral dimension ignores the over-riding factor of the need for Australia to have control of its borders and for there to be a criteria for rejection of those "asylum" seekers.

That criteria should weed out criminals, extremists and anticipate future social issues such as the demand for Sharia law being made by Islamist "asylum" seekers.

This article and others made by advocates of the refugee industry ignore this right and need and as such are doing this country a big disservice

< The second is that the problem is partly one of Australia's own making. Australia has contributed to the destabilisation of several countries through its support for US efforts to secure Middle East oil through destructive invasions. >

I’m not so sure that this is true. Australia in its support of the US could be viewed as being part of an international effort to try and bring unrest in the Middle East and elsewhere to an end or to stop it from getting out of control.

If Australia is being viewed as part of the cause of the flight of asylum seekers from this part of the world to its shores, then it is surely not a good thing to be accommodating these people, if they harbour a huge grudge against Australia for causing them such upheaval in the first place!

I am generally supportive of Angus Houston's asylum seeker review committee recommending an increase in refugees to 20,000, rising to 27,000 over five years. They did not recommend a concomitant cut in skilled immigration, however, and have even recommended an additional 4000 to family reunion. All this causes a further blowout in population size which is already growing at an unsustainable rate (300,000 or so last year). As a semi-arid country, we do not have the capacity to keep on absorbing ever-growing numbers of people. For the author of this article to compare France's and Germany's intake on the basis of relative geographical size is sheer nonsense. You don't put people in the Sahara Desert, not do you put them in the Simpson Desert. It's a question of resources, not least water, that determines carrying capacity.
By all means increase the refugee intake but there has to be a proportional cut in skilled immigration. And let us not forget that there are 42 million refugees or displaced people in the world. A cut off point has to be made somewere - we can't take them all. And we can really only take as many as we can provide services for, not least educating children who don't speak English