I wouldn't really bother Garum-
Some people have absolutely convinced themselves that opposition to Islamic fundamentalism can only come from the conservative-christian-right.

Anything to the contrary will not register on their minds and they will simply try to reject it with a convenient excuse so their can continue believing what they do.

For example, the concept that some people are moderates or secularists who are concerned with all sources of fundamenalism (and not just the ones on "the right wing") is just too hard a concept for some to understand- because that requires independent rational thought, while the other requires being told what being "left wing" or "right wing" is supposed to mean, and following it like a doctrine because thinking for themselves is too hard.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11665#199335

Dear John, And the Closet Communist GAYLP has been intentionally bringing in large numbers of CARS, Communist, Anarchist, Radical, Socialists.

Ever since Comrade Hawke was elected in "1984" our immigration department has been giving asylum to terrorists from Northern Ireland, good Catholic Labour voters. Then the focus shifted to South America & again large numbers of Sandinista Communists were imported from Nicaragua, El Salvador & all over South America.

Yugoslavia, you name it, anywhere these idiots can find a good Communist the welcome mat has been out.

Need i remind you that Pauline Hanson got 49% of 1st preference votes as a dis-endorsed Liberal party candidate, in one of the safest blue collar electorates in the entire GAYLP history.

But let's really "bell the cat". I move in a wide variety of social circles, meet people from both sides of politics & 90% of them want the "White Australia policy" back.

Don't believe me, ask some of those white, educated, Christian, Greeks or Greek Cypriots in Melbourne, who came from a modern, western, capitalist, democratic, 1st world nation, how they feel about Turks &/or large numbers of Muslims coming from anywhere?

BTW, Multiculturalism was invented by CARS, Communist, Anarchist, Radical, Socialists for the specific purpose of destabilising, weakening, strong, healthy, stable, cohesive, Mono-cultural societies like Australia. Check out the proof, for yourself.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236#

We were growing to quickly, for the USSR, becoming progressively stronger, more powerful every year between 1945 & 1975. The last thing they wanted was for the US to have, as close an ally as Australia, becoming a nation of 80 to 100 million people & a permanent member of the UN security council or a wealthy, powerful, G7 nation.

Briar Rose,

You are no doubt right about the legalities of the situation, but this is hardly "end of story". Laws can be changed if they become counterproductive.

To see the problems with self-selected arrivals, you should take a look at Europe. There were only a small number of asylum seekers there in the 1970s, but numbers snowballed. The process is explained in Christopher Caldwell's "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe". People who are going to be starting with nothing in a strange country know that they are likely to need a support network, so prefer to go to places where there is already a community of their fellow countrymen. The first arrivals may be genuine refugees and pretty desperate, but the ethnic community that they form then acts as a magnet for other asylum seekers, who are not necessarily refugees, especially the friends and relatives of those who are settled already (chain migration). The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has admitted that by the early 1990s, the vast majority of asylum seekers in developed countries were economic migrants.

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/cib/1999-2000/2000cib13.htm

Britain got half a million asylum claims between 1997 and 2004, not counting dependants. Only about 20% of them were found to be genuine refugees, including after appeal, with another 14% given exceptional humanitarian leave to stay. Of those whose asylum claims were completely rejected, about 75,000 were deported and 239,000 failed, but were not removed. The costs of dealing with all these people were enormous, more than 2 billion pounds in 2002 alone.

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/10

Cont'd

Cont'd

So why are failed asylum seekers allowed to stay? And why would it be a bigger problem for boat arrivals than plane arrivals?

Hasbeen has explained some of the issues. Airlines and shipping lines can be held financially responsible if they bring people in without valid papers. A person with valid papers can, of course, claim asylum, but he/she can be quickly returned to sender if the claim is rejected. Countries cannot refuse to honour their own travel documents.

Very high proportions of boat arrivals destroy their travel documents, so it is difficult to prove where they came from. Countries may also refuse to accept back involuntary deportees, as Iran has done and Afghanistan has threatened to do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/aug/18/failed-asylum-seeker-iran-detention

Higher acceptance rates for boat arrivals are misleading. The burden of proof for acceptance of a claim is very low, because it is difficult to check stories, and no official wants to take the chance of rejecting someone who is sent back and then killed.

Amicus, you say “no one in the community feels” the way that Jennifer Does. Well she obviously does. So do I. Are we not “in the community”? The truth is that there are a variety of views on this issue, and your opinion is not universally held. And even if it was, this wouldn’t make it right.

You say boatpeople have “no intention of fitting in” and that being here is a “convenience only”. You offer no evidence for this other than saying it’s a “perception”. It may be the perception of some, but only bigots would take such “perceptions” to be true without testing the evidence. Surely the costs and risks that asylum seekers bear in the hope of coming here are evidence that it is more than a mere “convenience”

Illegials are legal to the extent that they have been found by our navy - otherwise they may well remain illegial, but what they definitely are is queue jumpers.

If Australia accepts a boatload of these refugees, particularly refugees that, as another poster points out, may well have destroyed their papers and made up uncheckable stories, that does not mean we get an additional number of refugees.

No, that means a load of genuine refugees in another camp will not then fit inside the set quota for refugees for the year - a quota set by Parliament. Immigration won't exceed the quota. Perhaps the author could explain why we should accept those devious, comparatively wealthy refugees arriving by boat (its takes money to get that far), and reject the truely needy still in camps.