Major source countries of migrants:

July 2005 to June 2006 settler arrivals, by country of birth

United Kingdom 23 300 17.7%

New Zealand 19 000 14.4%

China (excludes SARs and Taiwan Province ) 10 600 8.0%

India 11 300 8.6%

Sudan 3800 2.9%

South Africa 4000 3.0%

Philippines 4900 3.7%

Singapore 2700 2.0%

Malaysia 3000 2.2%

Sri Lanka 2400 1.8%

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/02key.htm#c

My respects;- FrankGol and Rhian. Very much so; because I'm not going to spend the time and energy on stating the obvious. Bravo to you!

The major problem with multiculturalism isn’t the fact that foreigners are migrating to our country. The problem is ‘multiculturalism’ as a policy encourages these people to develop their lives separately from the rest of the community. It creates ghettoes.

Until recently people who support assimilation have been labelled as racists. I do not care what race or colour a person is if they want to become Aussies. I think these people should be encouraged to come to Australia.

One of the basic tenets of multiculturalism is that all cultures, and therefore all cultural practices, are equally valid. One spin-off of this idea has been the self determination debacle for aborigines. This has been an appalling disaster.

I have a problem with people who want to come to Australia but aren’t prepared to integrate themselves into our way of life. For example, there is no place for people who think women are second class citizens. Or for migrants who don’t want their children to be associated with Australian children.

I accept that what it is to be Australian is a changing concept. However there are some immutable characteristics. For starters, speaking English fluently should be a goal all migrants work towards.

In short, a migrant who wants to live in Australia should be comfortable with Australian values and be prepared to embrace them. Anyone who thinks the west is decadent and cannot abide our values should look for their new home elsewhere.

Bushbred,

Your irresponsible support for a stronger counterbalance to the US in the form of the three autocratic states, China, Russia and Iran is astounding in its naivete. How can you honestly think the world would be a safer place if these three had more power? If Iran had more power they would attack Israel directly, rather than just showering Hezbollah in funds. A powerful Iran would also scare the bejus out of the sunni nations in the region. It would be a recipe for disaster.

I won’t even mention the problems this could cause Taiwan and South Korean.

Col Rouge

I agree and disagree with you.

Multiculturalism will disappear in time when our culture changes and stabilizes, but not for now. We are too cosmopolitan at the moment.

And when you ask for assimilation I ask you, to what. Are we all to become aborigines, or Irish, or English, what? With a melting pot some core values will change new ones emerge some disappear. Historically tolerance was not exactly one of the traditional values.

At the moment I argue that multiculturalism at its best asks for tolerance and sharing. I would like it to develop like that. To stick to Anglo Australian Christian values would be too limiting and deny us of what we could have.

Cornflower: "Picky, picky, but time to wake from your 'coma'.

Commas are more usual in punctuation."

Er, that's precisely why I pointed out that "coma" was obviously a typo. Clearly, in the context of the sentence he meant to write "comma". In your haste to score a snarky point, you obviously missed both the sense of the sentence and of the typo. Did you actually read the article?

As I predicted, this article has brought many of our resident wingnuts out from under their rocks. Such unhappy people, living in arguably the most dynamic and rich society on the planet.

Oh well, at least they've got Pauline to vote for again (if they live in the right State).

NO TABBOULEH!

Reluctant as I am to join the free-for-all, I nevertheless shall.

I recall Paul Hogan, as his alter-ego 'Hoges', once making the observation in an interview that in all the world, the two places to which people from all over strove to go TO, as opposed to get away from, were the USA and Australia. (His observation probably does not do justice to Canada, New Zealand, or the UK, but let's not split hairs; it was 'Hoges' after all.) Given this, I asked myself why this might be so. I have also asked various people who have migrated here, both directly and indirectly, why they chose Australia as a new home, including some once Iraqui, now Australian, (yes, Islamic) friends.

Apart from, in some cases, very simple reasons like being executed if they returned to the land of their birth, it seems a lot of the reasons for choosing Australia revolved around an ability to trust in the continued rule of a corpus of law the nature of which was fairly well understood in advance of migration, in anticipated circumstances of long term political and economic stability. The sort of place where you could build a family and a future without being shot at or caught in a crossfire.

How could they have been so confident in, and in outline knowledgeable of, that corpus of law? The general answer, variously expressed, was that our law was essentially British law, and that there had been hundreds of years of most recent history during which that law in operation, and the society it moulded, could be observed, and that they had observed its history and migrated accordingly. The climate and the laid back lifestyle were but a bonus.

Most of these newer Australians are astounded, perplexed, and appalled at seeing, under 'Multiculturalism' the major cultural component of the population in the country they chose for their family's future security being 'dissed' and robbed of its identity. Most Australians are British, they say, and yet, for some strange reason, are not officially permitted to be recognised as such!