What a breath of fresh air.

We live in an era of globalisation. Free movement of money goods and labour. It is time that the pollies woke up to it.

Unworldy nonsense from a youth who will live to regret his current immature beliefs.

Typical comment Leigh. No ideas of your own and no rebuttal of the author's challenging ideas. All you can come up with is name calling: 'unworldy nonsense', 'immature beliefs', 'a youth'.

Why not repect Philippe Legrain as a person but demonstrate by superior argument or better evidence that his views are mistaken?

I have missed Leighs vitriol - what on earth is "unwordly nonsense" what is "wordly"

In a crude sense people are commodities - at the very least they carry commodities with them - skills, innovation, usable body parts - all manner of things.

it is counter intuitive as the young author points out that if everything else is globalised why not people movement.

Then there is the fact places like Australia underutilise exisiting space - if we think we can keep the vast tracts of the hinter to land to ourselves we are fools - they will come.

Leigh, I'm curious - are you opposed to immigration the world over, or just immigration to Australia? I mean, do you have the same problem with Africans migrating to Europe, Americans to Canada etc?

There are two problems with immigration. One is that logic tells you that there is an optimum population for Australia, and that if we exceed that level we will have problems with resources (such as water?).

The second problem is that it is not good for a country to acquire a minority that does not integrate into the broader community. This is what sems to be happening with many of our muslim immigrants.

The example of the UK, where British born children of immigrants were responsible for the recent bombing outrage, shows that immigration can be a direct security threat when their cultural group is in conflict with us.

The real problem, of course, is world overpopulation. Until this is addressed, there will be continuing pressure on immigration.

The best way we can assist developing countries is to outsource our labor needs to them so that the work can be performed by people in their own countries without the need to migrate. This way everyone benefits; we get the cheap labor, they get the work.

Faced with the reality of the confrontation with the muslim world and the west that could last many decades, it seems prudent to limit our migrants from countries that are opposing us. After all, how many Nazis did we admit during World War 2?