Remove Religion, you remove problems.

They fight amoungst themselves for trivial reasons often regarding religion.

If it is inside them to achieve, they will. Many just want an opportunity. But it would be fixed by a bit of after sales service, parole if you want to call it that. They have a 2 year review and based on their contribution to Australian Society, they get approved to stay or go.

What is wrong with this. Forget race, religion and the like, put the runs on the board and you can stay. Aussies come from everywhere and the general consensus is that we bond through exposure to eachother, toiling together and by the removal of migrants choosing to isloate themselves by living in ghettos.

A Simple solution that will never be implemented due to lefties who dont like the fact that these poor people will be subjected to 2 nmore years of government monitoring. This is how we fix the current problems that have derived, and ensure all migrants are in line with what we value here in Australia....'having a go'.

Oh well, another useless but pracitcal proposition ignored.

Dear BOAZ-DAVID,

Of course there are justice issues in places such as Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Rwanda. These led to mass genocide and civil war.

Surely you are not suggesting that we need a bloody civil war here in Australia as a way of resolving a few perceived migrant issues?

The various migrant groups in my area abide by the laws of Australia, appreciate our culture, watch TV like us, love their children like we do...... Yes, some dress and eat differently to me, but that adds colour to an otherwise rather bland suburbia.

There may be a few dysfunctional people around, but there are plenty of dysfunctional anglo saxons around too. Serious cases.

The law and social services need to deal with such problems, but not via using race or ethnicity as an overtone.

Bronwyn keeps telling us that there will only ever be a few thousand asylum seekers, implying that the rest of us who worry about this question are mean-spirited, paranoid, or simply rabid xenophobes. The problem is that numbers don't stay small without mandatory detention, as we can tell from looking at Europe and North America. There were only a few thousand asylum seekers in Britain too in the early 1970s, and it took years for them to build up. Your average illegal immigrant or asylum seeker isn't a top scientist or opera star, with highly paid work and an adoring public just waiting for him. He knows he is likely to need a support network, so avoids going to places where his ethnic community isn't represented. Once a critical mass is reached, though, numbers really explode. Timothy J. Hatton of the ANU has written on this. You also get problems with increasing numbers of ill-founded claims.

Britain had 490,000 asylum claims between 1997 and 2004, not counting dependants (spouses, children, and in some cases parents and grandparents). Up through 2002, 21% were granted asylum, including after appeal. 16% were given extraordinary leave to remain, some for humanitarian reasons but mostly because there was no realistic prospect of removal. 13% were deported, and all the rest stayed on illegally. These are Home Office figures from the Migration Watch site (www.migrationwatchuk.org). 70% destroyed their travel documents so that it is often impossible to prove where they came from or get the home country to cooperate with deportation. Then there are those who tie up the system in endless appeals or hide with the aid of corrupt businessmen and officials. The picture is similar in the US and Canada. Bronwyn is effectively asking for open borders.

I agree with redneck (who gave me a good laugh on a bad day) about refugee advocates who walk over homeless schizophrenics while looking for a good place to hand out their leaflets.

I read that 18 million people could die in Africa because of drought caused starvation. What can the world do to help a nation always trembling on the brink? Africa is like an expanding black hole, there should be some way of setting it on a path that will sustain the population, but I do not know what it could be.
As a contrast on television last night there was an extremely violent muslim with two wives, complete with separate families, all including him,living off the tax payer and three state supplied homes. He has one just for himself.
Never in Africa.

Mickijo,
"18 million people could die in Africa because of drought caused starvation."
To those numbers of premature deaths could be added the ones which are due to malaria, dysentery and water-borne diseases in general, inadequate nutrition rather than starvation alone, warfare directly and indirectly. And so-on.
"There should be some way of setting it on a path that will sustain the population." But is there any prospect of ever sustaining a population of current size (let alone one atttempting to expand at a doubling-time of less than thirty years)? And one in which those listed death rates can be negated?
The more realistic approach of using humane methods of altering the population size to match its prospects for a more civilised existence was aired in 1994.
Why is it that people who raise the issue of human suffering in Africa refuse to enter into consideration of the opportunities presented that year at Cairo? Is it to do with nothing more than religious dogma? If so, it should be enough to put genuinely caring people off religion altogether.

It's immensely sad what is happening to people around the world--but the solution isn't as simple as opening our borders and letting refugees in. I agree with BD on this that the trickle we have at the moment is negligible and we aren't in a position to take them all.

Some suggestions that the west could do to ease some of the problems for Africa:

African nations have been forced to agree to Free Trade Agreements with the west that don't favour them. Particularly farm and export subsidies in Developed nations have a devastating effect on their food production. They are not allowed to subsidise their farming or exports but get the cheaper goods from the west dumped on them. They are also forced to open their markets to western goods while the west closes their doors on many of theirs-developed countries need to open their doors to more of Africans commodities.

Their economies are not diversified enough and this needs to be addressed. They also need a system to tackle crises in commodity prices--to manage over/undersupply considering how many of their economies are reliant on two few commodities.

They are exploited for their natural resources where not enough of the wealth is returned to the people--they need to be protected from this abuse and western companies need to be regulated on this.

Stop Arms trade-An International Arms Trade Treaty to regulate breaches of international humanitarian law and human rights in Africa.

Global warming: it is the sub sahara area of Africa that is the first inline to suffer from the drying effects of this.

Discourage oppressive dictatorships.

Obviously issues like AIDS, 50% of the people only have access to dirty water (which is responsible for 80% of the world's diseases-WHO), and financing their debt need to be tackled. Debt relief and Aid to address this is needed.