Julian Burnside started it all with this little quip:
“ It would take about 20 years to fill the MCG with boat arrivals”

Then the Protagonist tried to parrot it, but couldn't quite the get words right:
“The few refugees who make it to our shores, on rickety boats, make a small dent in the immigration programme, therefore we can continue honouring our humanitarian obligations without any significant burden on Australia's carrying capacity”

But what they both don’t seem to know is -- it takes a only few boatloads to create a no-go area in some of our suburbs -like this:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/angry-crowd-turns-on-police-in-four-hour-standoff/story-e6freuy9-1225770832587

and even fewer to produce this:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-army-base-suicide-strike-was-imminent/story-e6freuy9-1225757788303

But of course it couldn't happen again--all our boat people are now poor, hard done by, genuine refugees!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/asylum-seeker-linked-to-al-qaida/story-e6frg6nf-1225891385695
“We learned from Detachment 88 (Indonesia's specialist anti-terror police squad) that at least one mobile phone held by this group of 11 Afghans had been used to contact senior al-Qa'ida figures,"
http://www.isria.com/pages/16_July_2010_76.php
“In an interview with a group of Tamil asylum-seekers, an Indonesian community worker said, they confessed that they are members of the Tamil Tiger guerilla fighters. They left their country to seek political asylum in Australia, The Jakarta Globe reported”

Or, could it?

"The poms fitted in immediately & the Europeans were from Modern, Western, Christian, Capitalist, Democracies, so they only had to learn English & then fitted in immediately."

No, not all Formersnag. A high number of ‘poms’ returned to the UK after their mandatory two year stay, unable to withstand the Aussie taunts.

“The Muslim Terrorists will never fit in until "Whitey" has been bred out of existence or enslaved.”

Well hellooooo….- nor will the Utasha, Nazi fascists, Moonie, Ku Klux Klan, Christian extremist etc etc terrorists fit in until the 'enemy' has been obliterated.

Christians and Capitalists ‘fitted in?” Ah that must be why Australia let in the war criminals - Gestapo informers and junior ministers in Nazi puppet governments. Liberal Senator Abetz acknowledged too that his great uncle, Otto Abetz was a Nazi superior, convicted in France of war crimes in 1945, having sent thousands of French jews to their deaths.

Then we had the roots of Utasha, a Fascist organisation in Catholic Croatia, infiltrating Australia in the ‘50s. An enthusiastic partner of the Nazis in the Jewish holocaust, the Utasha sympathisers entered post-war Australia with ease.

So political terror came not from the Left but the Right. On New Year's Day, 1967, an explosion ripped through the Yugoslav Consulate in Sydney, the climax of a wave of attacks on Yugoslav property going back to 1963. By 1970, bombs had torn through the Melbourne consulate, Yugoslav clubs, businesses, churches and homes too.

The very Catholic Calabrian Mafia and their hit men have been operating in this nation for sixty years – murder, mayhem, graft and corruption!

Aum and Mahikari sects (sarin gas nutters), who managed to infiltrate outback Australia are offshoots of covert Japanese God-Emperor worship groups and their terrorist actions are to aid their particular Japanese brand of world hegemony.

It was revealed that Jo Court, the wife of then Liberal Premier Richard Court, had been a member of the Mahikari sect for fifteen years. How embarrassing and for you too Formersnag since none of these cretins happened to be Muslim terrorists.

[Deleted for abuse. Poster suspended.]

I am still curious about the assertion that the 50,000 overstayers not being brought to account is an issue of racism. What we need is some breakdown of the nationalities of these overstayers. Seaspray, as you have clearly done a bit of research in this area, could you please help us out? It seems to me that it could only be an issue of racism if we are turning a blind eye to one or two groups while ousting the rest.

Leigh raised this issue, noting that many of the overstayers who are deported are white Europeans - these are, however, the ones who are deported, not the ones who get away with it. It was disappointing of briar rose to misquote Leigh with this statement:

<<"Many overstayers are white Europeans" - exactly. Proves the author's point that they aren't being pursued and deported like the non-white, non-Europeans.>>

This runs against Leigh's point - these are the people who ARE being pursued and deported.

Nonetheless, I'm interested to see more. While your article was interesting, I don't think you have demonstrated with any clarity how the overstayers/boat people issue constitutes racism.

<< While your article was interesting, I don't think you have demonstrated with any clarity how the overstayers/boat people issue constitutes racism. >>

Agreed Oto. Jennifer’s racism slur is totally out of place.

The repeated use of this word knocks the stuffing out of what would otherwise be a much more interesting article. It gives the reader the strong impression that the author is quite unbalanced and therefore very likely to be presenting her views with a strong bias. The racism slur works very strongly against Jennifer’s integrity in this article.

Having said that, of course Jennifer is right - our government should be tackling the issue of visa overstayers decisively.

They could do it so easily and at much less expense than building a new processing centre in East Timor for example, I would think.

It is terribly sloppy for our government to abuse our national rule of law to such blatant and ongoing extent as they are with visa overstayers. In fact, this is the main issue here. We’ve got a discreet set of rules, but our authorities are just allowing them to be infringed enormously.

Visa overstayers are not a huge problem, as the number in the country is more or less constant. It is not as if we are getting 50 000 per annum in a cumulative manner. They spend money and contribute to economic turnover. They are not costing us a huge amount of money to process or to catch and deport or anything.

But yes, the policing of our visa rules needs to be much improved, or the rules need to be brought in line with accepted practice, or some combination of these things.

And it would be appropriate for Gillard to hop to it, as her [hopefully] decisive dealings with onshore asylum seekers certainly does sit in strong contrast to the non-action on fly-in overstayers.

Oto,
I posted this link before but here it is again.

http://www.news.com.au/national/no-detention-for-visa-dodgers/story-e6frfkvr-1225708050188

You will notice that there are many nationalities which puts paid to Jennifers claim of racism. It is simply incompedence by this government.
More info on DIAC webbsite if you care to look.