Marilyn I dont hate you at all. Your way too honest to be a poly M.
If I can gain political mileage to discredit your theory I will.

What do you think politics are all about.

I do not for one moment doubt much of what you say is true but I will argue with you until the cows come home about which injustice practises should be given attention first.

As far as you are personally concerned I think its a shame the Government did not take you on to work from home to do some research.

So I do not think you are an idiot.

Your someone had somebody else taken the time to educate could have held a position in which they could help folks.

Also M I work with the Islamic council and councils of Australia.

At the risk my MOU with them let me assure you these people have no idea of what a good old fashioned handshake means.

Remember that when you when a your taking the time to work for them. You should have and could have gone a long way in life.
The offer to work with Faiz still stands. He runs the migrant center in the city. Also remember we the tax payer fund that too so after you proove your worth ask to be paid. Mean while pardon me if I play politics and repeat if you are well enough to post as much as you do you are well enough to type out a report a get paid for it etc.
The other thing is M I at least speak with some track record and experience as well as personal so give me some credit for knowing some of these peoples attutide that come here and I promise you they would not do the same for you.
Look after your own health first and dont let people like me get to do because after all I really only care about the animals as a first ]true]
Happy Mothers day.

Numbers are an absurdity when speaking of refugees
David as we "accept" so very few of them. The slums of Lakemba are replicated in Elizabeth in SA only the slum dwellers are blue collar white workers. Not only that unless you are aboriginal you and your ancestors all came from somewhere else over the past 220 years so the "we" is who? Do you or I have a particular mortgage on the island for generations because we got here before someone else? I don't think so.

Now to numbers - check these out and then you make a rough yes or no to my suggestion at the end.

1. About 5 million tourists visit every year.
2. 165,000 foreign students live here for up to 4 or 5 years at a time and then qualify to be permanent if qualified enough.
3. 150,000 permanent migrants every year.
4. The last reports of temporary workers for last year were 700,000.
5. Refugees and humanitarian resettlement from other countries 13,000.

Now I suspect Australia could admirably handle it if 10% of the settlers each year were refugees, 5% of the overseas students could be special humanitarian settlers, and 5% of the temporary workers should come from places like Africa and South Asia.

That way there are no extra people, just a different mix.

What do you think?

Of course in the real world of the law - every person on the planet has an absolute right to come to Australia and ask for refugee protection if they so desire.

I think 13,000 refugees are too many. The overseas students, tourists etc all contribute and are welcome.

Leigh I am not ignoring you its just difficult given we only have limited amount of words to post on this.M is just someone who is outraged at mistreatment of people. I know i get REALLY angry with the public when they ALL watch 60 minutes for eg about live exports and intensive farming but after saying oh! its awful do nothing to help.

As for the students and business visa i say STOP them!. These ARE our highest risk . Numbers dont count when you onl.y need a few to blow up train stations and buildings. Why risk our own people.
Muslims need to go to Muslim countries and Saudi is not broke.

Thanks pickled herring and some others for showing empathy and imagination. Those of us who can't are interesting. We are all connected in some way or another but some cannot bear to think so. Despite our access to international networks there are those among us who cannot imagine that anything would happen to this country and there is even a tone of God-given right - to our great country - in many of our arguments.
Those of us who rest so lazily on such argument often describe refugees as already being poor and wretched or failing in the instinct to fight. This is completely inaccurate but what does it matter?
Natural disasters are not discriminate but we are hearing from people who cannot visualise such a real possibility. Rebellions or revolutions are probably unlikely even if some of these people present a decent cause.
Do we have the courage to think that we are in many ways, just like these refugees. Do we have the ability to picture something that wipes us out almost completely? A meteor, a piece of a satellite, an earthquake, a tsunami? I can already hear the "of course not, not here".
Can we picture our neighbours refusing to help, our Government failing to assist because it may no longer exist and other countries failing to drum up the aid because their own coffers are running dry. Not likely? Not in this lifetime - are you so sure? What about your children or theirs? Do you care?
A traveller once told me that he arrived in a famine-stricken African country and the people insisted he stay with them and share their one Aid-dropped portion of rice.
Nourish your loathe-my-neighbour xenophobia but know the lonely cost.

Oh no Leigh, you have really shot me down in flames.. "I'm not wrong - you are!". Yes, and black is white and up is down too, you just keep on sticking your head in the sand. One little problem though

It's still not illegal to seek asylum in Australia.

Why can't you deal with the facts? Why can't you admit you are wrong? How many of the other things you believe are wrong as well?