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The Forum > Article Comments > Migration isn’t just for the birds > Comments

Migration isn’t just for the birds : Comments

By Philippe Legrain, published 19/2/2007

It’s time for fresh thinking about immigration.

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It's great how an article like this - diligently researched, carefully expressed and largely full of Christian charity - brings out the SIFs, isn't it?

SIF: Single Issue Fanatic

Primary Symptom: to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This one roused the population SIF - "...fails to address the real issue in the world: World overpopulation"

Closely followed by the anti-Muslim SIF "...2/3rds of Swedes believe Islam is not compatable with Western Values" (stretching the bounds of relevance another mile or two there, eh?).

I haven't seen the "we are all rooned 'cos there's no water" SIF yet, but he's bound to be just around the corner - plerdsus managed to work all three into one post, which possibly makes him a TIF.

Nothing wrong with being a SIF, I hear you say. It's good to be passionate about something, no?

Except that it leaves absolutely no room to actually discuss the views that were patiently and cogently constructed and argued in the article.

But I guess that doesn't matter much, so long as you give that ol' nail another big whack, eh?
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 19 February 2007 4:33:53 PM
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Migration to Australia: Less about birds and more about lemmings.

World population in 2025 will top 8billion and in that time oil reserves will be almost certainly insufficient to give 3billion of those people a satisfactory existence. That means class warfare across and within national borders and a simmering overpopulation Armageddon that will rage till human numbers fit energy resources. some 5 billion people are likely to be purged across the planet, roughly the population befor the discovery of oil.

People in Our cities are aleady fighting over scarce resources like water, road space and harbour access, rentals and homes due to overpopulation pressures. When it comes down to energy wars it will be nothing less than civil war.

Our Author apparently seeks to cement some kind of power and fortune in talking up immigration at this time before the rot sets in. But a word to the wise, Howard, Iemma and their corporation bosses already have cornered that market. You are too late. But alas power corrupts and in the case of Howard and Iemma their brains have started to rot. They actually BELIEVE that by immigrating 140,000 foreigners a year into a drought stricken continent that it will ease drought conditions and stop bushfires. The only way it will ease drought is to intimidate citizens into lowering their water use, their standard of living so some foreign twits can come here and write articles on how they are better suited to this country than Australians and thus deserve the water and other scarce resources we have to relinquish.

The net winners: You guessed it. Investment bankers, developers and corporate CEOs who get bigger markets and more panicky and desperate customers who will spend and gamble their last cents to survive the ugliness created. I mean this is already happening, certainly in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

And the Howardesque, Iemmaesque politicians? They still think THEY are the winners but they are perhaps the biggest losers. For what history is left of the country before the 2025 overpopulation armageddon, they and their families will be shamed as history's scapegoats.
Posted by KAEP, Monday, 19 February 2007 5:00:25 PM
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“So just think how opening our borders to migrants could transform our world for the better in the 21st century”

Legrain’s brave new world is as scary as anything Huxley or Orwell could create:In its mature form , it would have a world where countries become little more than factories, populated by state-less workers who move in & out –like shift workers .

It takes no account of social incompatibility/costs , environmental costs or long-term political consequences.

As long as the workers produce the most economical widgets & have comparative wage justice –that’s all that matters.

A better title for the book would have been “Migration isn’t just for LOCUSTS”
Posted by Horus, Monday, 19 February 2007 5:53:50 PM
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The is a debate featuring Phillipe on You Tube and it can be found here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFg7wVETAjk&mode=related&search

The man Phillipe is debating is Andrew Green. Andrew suggests that the overall benefit of immigration to the host population is minimal, the equivalent of a third of a mars bar per month per capita. Phillipe suggests merchant bankers benefit by immigration because of the supply of nannies that allow them to return to work. Bit of a wacko rationale if you ask me on Phillipe's part.

Humans are not goods to be traded, but the likes of Legrain would drag us back to the days of slavery if they could, pity they can't, so they push multiculturalism instead. If the population is ageing and the birth rate is decreasing do something about it to reverse the trends. But perhaps self destruction is what they desire, and rationalise in the name of "good for the economy". Losers
Posted by davo, Monday, 19 February 2007 7:34:59 PM
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If people are successful in their own countries, they have no reason to leave. That should tell you something about immigrants
Posted by Leigh, Monday, 19 February 2007 8:00:46 PM
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Oh good grief Leigh.

Never mind the dictators who conduct ethnic cleansing: it's the people's fault they're getting massacred. Silly them.

Never mind the wretched poverty and lack of opportunity available to these people: it's their own fault right Leigh?

Never mind the fact that there may be people out there suffering from circumstances beyond their control.

I can understand some people being concerned about integration; I can understand some people being afraid of change; but your total lack of compassion towards these people is truly frightening. I honestly am much more afraid of that kind of attitude than I am of immigrants... but then again, I'm an immigrant myself, so I suppose I don't have any right to comment on your utopia.
Then again, I was moved here by my parents, so even if I could have decided not to come, I didn't have all that much choice.

Then again, that doesn't matter either, does it Leigh? None of these circumstances could possibly be beyond the control of the evil immigrants.

I can't help but feel you would be a better person if you actually spoke with some of these migrants who you seem to hate so very much, better yet, visited their worlds and lived among them.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Monday, 19 February 2007 8:42:04 PM
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