Actually, Master's quite right about fly-in illegal immigrants. The 97% rejection figure is misleading. Certainly, 97% of people who arrive at an airport without the right documents and claim asylum are sent straight home, but those that have the right documents and then overstay make up an estimated 500000 illegal immigrants.

According to this report (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25424350-421,00.html), most illegal immigrants are from China, Malaysia, and - get this - the US and Britain. Would anyone like to guess how the rhetoric would change if the government wanted to crack down on white, English-speaking illegals?

Newer posters, such as Master, will eventually notice that many of OLO's fiercest critics of asylum seekers are even fiercer when it comes to birth control and population management. The third world is told that it must choose between going to hell after death or living there during life.

*Until last week, illegal foreigners were immediately detained at detention centres and put on planes home within weeks.*

Sancho, sounds to me like all colours were treated the same,
according to your link.

*The third world is told that it must choose between going to hell after death or living there during life.*

The third world is told that breeding like rabbits is likely to
lead to hunger, poverty and overpopulation and Australia cannot
solve the world's problems.

Third world women should have access to family planning services
like Western women do. Hey presto, many of their problems would
go away.

But yes, the Catholic Church still threatens those in the third
world with going to hell and other Catholic jokes. Being less
educated, many of the gullible tend to believe the old Papa's
rubbish. I too suffered from Catholic nuns trying to brainwash
me as a 5 year old.

We all know that the Catholic Church is anti condoms, anti the pill,
anti anything which might stop more little Catholics from being
born. It is high time that third world women had the same rights
as first world women, despite those old farts in Rome.

I like to know what aborigenes say about more refugees.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

I would hope that they're treated the same, Yabby. But how often do we hear bellicose calls to jail or deport these freeloaders, versus the crescendo of attacks on boat people?

Immigration and asylum are important issues, but so rife with hypocrisy and racism that the signal is hard to distinguish from the noise.

I think the pull factor is real.
I don't know what proportion of boat people are sent back.
I suspect very few as they arrive having thrown their passports
overboard and so the Australian government has no proof of their
nationality and other governments will not accept undocumented people.
The government needs to publicize how many are sent back.
This figure would be a deterrent.

You will notice the boats are getting larger and the number on board is
increasing. How long before they are buying small tramp freighters at
the end of their life and putting one, two or three thousand on board ?
That is what happened in Italy.

If they are sent back to their port of departure without documentation
the Indonesians, if that was where they came from, have every right
to refuse entry.

I would fuel them up and send them away. They will get tired of
going around and around and claim citizenship in their home country.
Don't forget how they got to Malaysia and Indonesia, they didn't
walk or paddle a canoe, they bought plane tickets.

Belly said;
>It is said Howard stopped them, he did but at what cost to our good name?
In whose view, just the mad trendies who say come one come all !
There is more at stake than our good name.

CJ Morgan; The Indonesian and Malaysian governments would rather wave
them goodbye on leaky boats than sort them out in their countries
and leave the rejects there.
They have enough already hanging around waiting for a boat now.

The problem is unsolvable in a be nice way.
It is going to require a brutal solution. Live with it.

With energy depletion and falling food production, it could happen
this 10,000 could rapidly turn into 10 million.
Where do you all stand then ?

The problem of overpopulation is a fascinating impasse. There is no ethical solution to dealing with the sheer numbers, the refugee crisis and the projected exacerbation caused by climate change. We're headed for utter chaos and death on an unprecedented scale. We cannot diplomatically afford to refuse refugees, given our precarious geopolitical stance, and we cannot possibly accommodate the probable numbers. So my "modest proposal" is that we stage a "humane cull" that will stabalise populations. I should think we'd have to go quite a bit beyond mere decimation, and in this "post-biblical" intervention, in the interests of equality all countries would naturally sustain the same percentage loss of population. It would be a relatively simple matter to design a nano-virus or something that randomly selected say seven in ten for a painless exit? The remainder could then have a go at creating a decent world. This would be a far more humane way to deal with the problem, just as it is when Kangaroo populations become unsustainable, than waiting for the chaos, famine and murder of crunch time. The plan obviously needs a bit of tinkering, but I'd be surprised if there were not a few think tanks around the world doing just that.