For Christ sake, Kerry, of course there's a queue - not a simple, straightforward, put your name down and take a number, queue but with forty million refugees in the world, sone people (most likely in Aftrica) have had their 'name down' and have 'taken a number' for many years. I have to say I don't see too many Sudanese on the boats.

Of course people are desperate. Of course it must be miserable waiting and waiting in some dreadful camp, say in northern Kenya or Palestine or Malaysia or, these days, along the Turkish border. Of course people will do what they can to get out of those situations - some will put their name down, take a number and wait to get processed; some will pay whatever the market demands to short-cut the process, particularly if their applications are a bit more difficult, and time-consuming, to process. I don't begrudge anybody giving it a try.

But there is an annual quota of refugees, which the Houston Review recommended eventually doubling. Even so, we will never exhaust the queue, given the political instability in the world. For the foreseeable future, there will be a queue, even if we doubled the annual intake again, to 55,000. In fact, possibly the higher the intake, the more people may quite legitimately put their names down and take a number. And mostly wait their turn, in dreadful circumstances.

Joe

“On a positive side, the report recommends an increase in the annual program from 13,750 to 20,000 and even higher numbers in five years if the boats stop. This is something that the Refugee Council of Australia has called for, for many years and in fact, was the program back in the early 1980s during the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ period.”

How about this being a negative, lets look at the per capita increase in numbers, I think you will find Australia is pulling more than it’s weight as previously noted and your obvious conflict of interest in this outcomes smacks of complete hypocrisy, and as to:

“They are all refugees, but only a few will ever be resettled. This is a fact unlikely to change unless the causes of forced movement stop or countries like Australia vastly increase their resettlement programs. Neither of these points seems likely in the medium term.”

…perhaps you can explain how all and I repeat all the refugees sent to Nauru in the Howard years managed to be resettled, either in Australia or other First World countries…answer me that one and I will be satisfied that you don't have an immorally professional and pecuniary interest in seeing the onshore processing of these so-called 'refugees' eventuate.

There is no queue, different people arrive and move in and out of countries every minute of every day, it is not possible to predict who will be there from one day to the next.

Ludwig, you remain as disconnected from reality as you always have.

We already assess the claims of refugees in 36 off shore embassies, the problem is we do that so we can deny protection to almost everyone.

The criteria for this is that refugees have to be referred by the UNHCR, we decide then we only want those who can benefit us so we give them a massive advantage over everyone else.

Except they are always those in the safest situations living in big cities who can afford the shocking fees they have to pay and are safe enough to wait.

And we have to be the country of absolute last resort before we accept anyone under this voluntary program.

To apply for asylum though people have to be in a country that has laws that protects refugees.

Why do you so emphatically believe you are right? What is the point of letting people get all the way here - because we have zero legal right to stop them and less right to punish them - then spending $5 billion over a few years to build jails illegally in other countries to colonise them?

Those countries don't belong to us. Would you like Pakistan to decide to build refugee prisons in Australia?

I sincerely hope they send us the 3 million Afghans they are booting out of the country, that will give you something to whinge about.

Hi Marilyn,

Hmmm .... three million, when our annual intake is twenty thousand, suggests a queue of 150 years.

But there is no queue ? So some people didn't put their names down, let's say, ten years ago ? Five years ago ? A year ago ?

If some people put their names down before others did, then there's a queue, let alone UNHCR referral time, specific complications, ID hassles, irregularities, etc.

When demand exceeds supply, that's how it goes. Dreadful, but there it is.

If only political problems could be resolved at source ? Yes, indeed.

Cheers,

Joe

Marilyn, that's just crazy talk, why are you so angry?
Support for refugees is a "Chick thing", it's a feelgood issue for sensitive White women, you're angry because your own self esteem would be threatened or you'd feel humiliated if we stopped Third World immigration.
If there were no sensitive White women in public life this issue would have been sorted out years ago and you could all go back to sending money off to Oxfam and Save The Children, you'd still be living in a fantasy world but at least people wouldn't be dying.
Don't feel bad and don't be angry, you've just been given bad information and you've been shielded from the truth about the overwhelmingly negative impact of Third world migration upon your own ethnic group. Marilyn do you realise that anyone who seriously tries to oppose Third World migration and the multi Billion dollar refugee industry is dragged before a tribunal or sued in order to silence them, now is that fair?
Here's one such article:
http://www.ironbarkresources.com/articles/fraser2005rethinkingwap.htm
Here's what happened to it's author:
http://ausfirst.alphalink.com.au/fraser/fraser5.html

Marilyn you are being manipulated because you are a sensitive and good hearted White woman, they're literally pulling at your heartstrings, now I'd like to give your conscience a little prod, ask yourself this question:
"Will my Children be safer if they live among Third World people?"

A chick thing? Old white women? What a cretin.

Malcolm Fraser was not an old white chick last I looked.