Dear CJ,

You're the reason women love Aussie men!

Sancho, you claimed "while they howl over the arrival of a single leaky boat, none of them was even aware of the thousands of illegal, queue-jumping economic migrants pouring into Australia each year".

OK Sancho, where are the thousands pouring in each year. RUBBISH

Th links I posted, from the Dept of Immigration, clearly show you either have not got a clue or are deliberately lieing. My guess is that you are lieing. It is there in black and white. About 1500 illegals arrive by air each year and about 98% of these are sent away by the same airline that brought them here, within 72 hours. That leaves about 30 that go into detention.

You also try to confuse the issue by introducing overstayers. At the time that paper was written, there were 47800 overstayers and that figure remains fairly static at any given time, give or take a few hundred. This is because most are simply travelers who have stayed longer than their visa permitted. They leave and are replaced by other traveling overstayers. It is all there in the departmental documents I gave the links to. If the recession means less travelers, then I suspect that figure will drop. I think they state we currently receive about 10 million travelers per year.

This info simply discredits you Sancho, you are all bull.

Ahh, bugger, I posted to the wrong thread above. Anyway, while I am here...

Yabby, your point looks weak to me. I wonder if your main problem is Kevin's statement is obviously designed to resonate politicaly, not make any contribution to the immigration debate. Maybe you think politicians are supposed provide some leadership in debates like this, and are disappointed all Kevin has given us is cheap populism.

By my guess is making that point wasn't the real goal of your post. I think you always planned a segway into favourite topics of yours - immigration and population. There I broadly agree with you, but it was sneaky.

Sancho, I broadly agree with you too, but Afghanistan was invaded because they were harbouring the man who lead the 9/11 attack. The outcomes are as bizarre as you portray them, but sometimes it means the way we got there was convoluted, not via some obviously dumb decision.

Forrest Gumpp: "Australia's recent actions with respect to ... secondary movement asylum seeking are outworkings of a very responsible population policy"

Yikes! Forrest, where did that come from? You have it completely backwards. Our population growth rate is 1.2%, 12.55 births/1000 and 6.23 migrants/1,000 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/as.html. Maybe we disagree what a responsible population policy is, but nonetheless I fail to see when the population policy is evidently "grow, grow, grow" how strident efforts to restrict asylum seekers can be an outworking of it.

That said, I have trouble with outpouring of sympathy I see here for people that force their way across their way out borders yet I rarely hear a whimper for the African waits in a hovel while his application to our consul is processed. I hope both applications are handled in the exactly the same way, ie the African who applies from a refugee camp has exactly the same chance of success as a person who arrives on a plane or in a boat.

I get so sick of this "dangerous small leaky boat" bit coming from the bleeding heart brigade, when ever illegal boat prople are mentioned.

I know dozens, & there are many thousands of Aussies, who have spent their entire wealth on boats, just as leaky, of less than 10% of the capacity of the smuggling boats, to go sail around the pacific islands, & the world. The smuggler's boats are ocean liners compared to the average Aussie cruising yacht. The short sail from Indonesia to Oz is like a sunday sail on sydney harbour in one of them.

Yes I have done it, & yes she did leak, particularly when it got rough, but I managed 53.000 nautical miles around the Pacific, in 6 years, earning a living as I went, with out ever calling for help.

Why do we do it? Because it's fun, oh, & to get away from those bleeding hearts.

Sancho talks about 90% of illegals landing by plane.Yes but on a plane you must have a passport and a visa.Boat people land without any ID and just claim they have been persecuted.Why pay up the $10,000.00 on a leaky boat when a one way flight will cost less than $1000.00?

The world is over populated and with shortages of food,energy and resources things will only get worse.Do we want our pop to double in a few yrs and suffer all the political and social problems that these people have tried to flee? In Western Sydney we already have no go areas and police too afraid of the criminals to enforce the law.

*What's the big deal about a few hundred 'boat people'? *

CJ, at some point you have to turn your philosophy into law.
So what are you suggesting? That the first few hundred who
paddle here fastest are
accepted and that the rest are sent home?

The only way that Kevi and Co are keeping it at that number,
is to pay the Indonesians, to fight them off with sticks.

Fact is that the original UN 1951 convention was designed to
help people get over the border and live to tell the tale.
Now its being used for country and lifestyle shopping, quite
a different situation.

*Maybe you think politicians are supposed provide some leadership in debates like this *

Well that would indeed be nice, rstuart. Having a PM who is
rational would be handy too. I think the stress of the job is
starting to show. First he brings a hostie to tears, now its
a pure rave about asylum transporters. Kevi needs a course in
anger management :)