Every illegal who arrives on a boat takes the place of someone waiting to be brought to Australia under Australia’s agreement with the UN. Nobody has ever said, and probably never will say, that Australia will take its agreed 13,500 UN-processed refugees PLUS self-selecting illegals arriving by boat. How apologists for illegals can think this is fair is beyond me and, I believe, beyond the grasp of any fair-minded person.

Yabby: << Let me tell you, if I came from
the third world and had genuinely feared for my life, I would
regard the place as a holiday resort. >>

Sure Yabby - but you didn't, did you? In fact, you wouldn't have a clue about the actual experiences of asylum seekers. Have you ever been jailed - some people refer to them as 'holiday resorts' too, and on the basis of well-documented accounts the experience is much closer.

Leigh: << How apologists for illegals can think this is fair is beyond me and, I believe, beyond the grasp of any fair-minded person. >>

How would you know what a "fair-minded person" thinks? At least you're not including yourself as one, I see.

CJ Morgan,

The boat people have paid the human traffickers money to commit a criminal act, they are not just associated with criminality, they are directly involved. They are not refugees wandering away from a war zone across a border.

Of all the 400 000 000 people that can be classified as refugees, these refugees are in the the top 1% as to being cashed up. Of the 400 000 000 legitimate refugees desperately in need Australia can only take a tiny fraction.

A comparison could be made with people on the transplant list for a new liver. There strict protocols and waiting list to ensure that those most desperately in need and who have a reasonable chance of survival are at the top of the list. And every year many people die on the waiting list because of the drastic shortage.

If a liver patient bought a liver through a trafficker there would be a outcry not because he did not need it, but because he rorted the system. You and the other "pro traffickers" are supporting this illegal trade in humanity and diverting resources from those desperately in need to those less in need.

If I had to choose which population group better for Aus, having had a couple of Tamil colleagues, they are generally very hard working, and from an ex British normally with some English and a reasonable ability to integrate. Far better than for example the Sudanese whose culture is so different that they struggle.

Perhaps the best way to meet our refugee quota would be to simply auction off the places in the boats to the highest bidders and get the traffickers to control the flow for a cut. That way the pro traffickers will be happy, as the stay on Xmas island will be short, and we will get a better class of affluent "refugees"

I have never made any secret of the fact that I don't believe in bringing 'refugees' to Australia at all; I believe that asylum seeking is the biggest rort ever to be perpetrated on Australia by the United Nations and the Australian Left.

However, if Australian politicians don't have the guts to tell the UN where to put their outdated Refugee Convention of 1951, which has nothing to do with the current situation of country shopping and rorting, then it should at least be FAIR and try to select from people who have taken shelter in the first available country to be assessed; people who have NOT destroyed their indentification papers as illegals have ONLY after they have made at least one 'plane trip to Indonesia, where they destroy all indentification on the advice of the criminal they engage to get them to Australia. That criminal also bones them up on a good story - a downright lie - which guarantees that they are a dead cert to be accepted as 'genuine' in weak old Australia.

It seems, though, that fair is a word no longer recognised as being Australian by the Rudd Government or by the seditious Left,who hate Australia enough to encourage illegals and rorters of the system.

Vale Australia, land of the fair go. Vale the Australia fought for by a lot of old codgers who will march if they can this weekend.

"It seems, though, that fair is a word no longer recognised as being Australian by the Rudd Government or by the seditious Left,who hate Australia enough to encourage illegals and rorters of the system."

Are we taking a holiday from reasoned argument? Or is it, in the words of Aerosmith, a 'permanent vacation.'

We get, you don't like refugees. But its not sedition for the Left to be sympathetic to refugees.

"people who have NOT destroyed their indentification papers as illegals have ONLY after they have made at least one 'plane trip to Indonesia,"

Did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason why they've done this is because they are extremely frightened of being returned to their country of origins for fear of being tortured or murdered? What would you do if you were in that situation? Is it that hard to have empathy?

CJ lol at the fair-minded person crack -- very apt.
Shadow Minister, I agree with you that the Tamils seem to adapt very quickly. Most of them go from being refugees or migrants to being middle or upper middle class within a generation. Thats pretty impressive. And they are genuine refugees

*Have you ever been jailed - some people refer to them as 'holiday resorts' too,*

CJ, I was locked up for years in a boarding school, with conditions
not as good as Christmas Island. I was in the army, in barracks,
if I had left the place, I would have been charged with desertion.
Once again, in conditions not as good as Christmas Island.

The problem with jail, as ex jailbirds will tell you, is not
being locked up, its the other prisoners who are in there, who
are the real threat.

As SM points out, all we are doing with our present system, is
selecting for affluent "refugees". That is hardly humane policy.

* And they are genuine refugees*

So you claim David, yet huge numbers of Tamils live in Colombo
and other parts of Sri Lanka.