The next generation of immigrant children don't do much 'outperforming'. They soon learn our ways, and the author would know that if she got out into the real world and school rooms. What will be will be - in spite of the MC obssessives.

And, why should immigrants get a pat on the back for what they have contributed? All the hard work was done (OK, not by me) a long time before they showed up.

can the experts please tell us why so many migrants of non european descent prefer to come to australia which after all, was built on the very western values which some elements within some migrant groups appear to have a problem with. one never seems to hear of such migrants wishing to seek assylum in other non-western countries which could actually benefit from an influx of capable people.

There use to be an Australian race, being white Europeans. Aborigines were considered members of a beta race, and only the white Europeans an alpha race.

Since white Gentiles in Australia are now viewed as a beta race, a race that has to fear being racially conscious and be terrified at being racially aggressive -- I think true Australians are members of the sovereign races here: Jews, Muslim racial families, Orientals and aborigines.

All these people are expected to act in a racially conscious way and to openly promote the ethnic interests of their people.

Natasha, your essay is good to read, but too polite. It attracted the inevitable attacks: so far 8 out of 9 commentators have rejected your views. None have come up with any good arguments, but these are the internet equivalent of Cronulla rioters, and it’s going to be a long hot summer. One cannot reasonably debate their arguments point by point, one can only expose their stupidity and cruelty. I wrote early in September in this series.

Examples of academic prizewinners from immigrant backgrounds just makes these writers more insecure, more resentful, more xenophobic. I prefer sport. Take the four major football codes played in Australia. Look at all the non-Angloceltic names in Australian premier teams nowadays – Islander, or Italian or Croatian or Muslim names. True, many of these blokes speak broad Aussie and are apparently fully culturally “assimilated”, but look deeper. Every one will have an immigrant father or mother or grandmother or grandfather, someone he loves or whose memory he reveres, and would fight back fiercely if their dignity were directly insulted – even if these elder relatives don’t speak English so well after 30 years here, even if they know nothing about Henry Lawson or dogs that s*it on tuckerboxes.

All these boneheaded critics of essays like yours, mine, Tay’s or Hage’s misunderstand the key demographic fact. The issue here is the self-identification of a person to a non-Angloceltic family heritage. Whether we are (or are partnered with) a 25% or 50 % or 75% Anglocelt isn’t the salient issue here- it’s the other part of the mix that matters, because that is the part under attack by these aggressive xenophobes. Insult me, water off a duck’s back. Insult my mother or grandmother, you have a problem.

Howard understands this even if his dumber foot-soldiers do not. He dog-whistles his xenophobia, directing it at easy targets. He uses a Greek Australian community venue to preach his hate message against Australian Muslims. The unspoken message to his Greek Australian audience: “you’re OK, you’ve passed for now, but stay in line” … .
(end of part 1).

(Part 2 of 2 parts) This is how the politics of ethnic fear works in Australia – make everyone with a bit of immigrant heritage feel uneasy, asking themselves have they really “made it” yet as Aussies?

A partly immigrant family background is always a factor, whether a person affirms it proudly, as Natasha Cica and I do, or downplays it, intimidated by the politics of fear. In the latter case, it plays on the conscience and will eventually out itself in angry pride.

We can’t go back to the innocence of the 1950s and 1960s – Citizenship Conventions, Good Neighbour Councils welcoming ‘New Australians”, immigration officials who tried to help people settle into their chosen new country. Australia was another country then. A Citizenship Convention now would just be another cynical exercise in spin and fractionalization of targeted minorities, with Howard and Beazley competing to score focus-group determined zinger one-liners. There would be no sincerity or usefulness in it now – no more that Howard’s and Robb’s recent public meetings with Muslim leaders, spin exercises designed to remind TV viewers how “foreign” these imams look, and thereby to make Australian Muslims feel more intimidated and insecure than ever. We live in nasty times.

We have to find new solutions to rebuilding an integrated Australian community. Lawson and Paterson won’t help, they just aren’t relevant to Australia in 2006. The only possible solutions are inclusiveness, celebration (not just “tolerance”) of diversity, acceptance of the joy of “living together” (in Spanish, the word is convivencia – it’s a great word).

Almost everything I wrote here is as applicable to aboriginality as to immigrant heritage. People of partly aboriginal blood have had to deal with the same ugly assimilationism and exclusionism barriers, they have had to make the same hard personal choices of life strategy. It is time we all proudly stood up together, we sons or daughters of ethnics and people married to them. There are a great many of us put together, and we vote.

Multiculturalism AND assimilation cannot be both the requirement for new Australians. It has to be either - or.

Unfortunately for some ethnic groups segragation is the only viable option because their values and allegiances are at odds with our Australian values.

Assimilation for Muslems (from all over the world) is impossible because it will mean accepting our polytical systems and laws which contradict their Islamic polytical system and laws.

Three possibilities:

1. Create a new islamic state apart from our Australian democracy to accommodate our muslem citizens.
2. Force (not just take their word) all Muslems to submit to our democratic laws and freedoms.
3. Become all Muslems and live happily together in the New Islamic Republic of Australia.

This is an extremely serious issue and I would like our government to stop being hypocritical and attack the problem head on.

Islam is not just a race or ethnic group - It is a polytical entity that made it very clear that (it) will dominate our society given half a chance.