Governments win power or lose it based on the state of the economy(the hip pocket nerve). Governments have also stated that the sale of houses drives the economy. People who buy houses need to also purchase all the white goods, furniture, carpets and hundreds of other fittings that go with a house without this the economy stagnates. No government is going to allow this to happen and be voted out. So politicians favour immigration.

The lack of skilled tradesmen in this country is a massive lack of foresight by government who should have been trading tradesmen and making it compulsory for businesses to do so. But they thought they could save money by importing people who had their training already paid for overseas.

The white shiny shoes seem to think they run the country but it is actually the tradesmen who keep everything running. I remember a doctor being interviewed who had spent 6months in the antartica who said that the most important one in the group wasnt herself it was actually the man who kept the generator running because if it failed they would have had no warmth and no food and would have died.

The same is true of our society. It is the tradesmen who literally keep the lights on and the airconditioning and the toilets functioning in our hospitals and so allow the staff to function and save lives.

The public service and white collar sections of our society need to keep this in mind that the tradesmen in an emergency could keep everything running, trains, buses etc. whereas when things started to break down the white collar workers wouldnt have a clue.
The tradesmen in this country have been grossly desrespected and underpayed by white collar pen pushers who overestimate their importance over the tradesmen.

correction to the above post.
I meant training tradesmen not trading them. A typing error. sorry.

Graham,

Regarding the 100,000 figure, I think you need to have a closer look at the post your referred to (http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cuse/analysis/immigration.htm). Further down, it states:

"Yet it should be emphasized that one quarter of the foreigners who have entered France since 1990 have since left the country (220,000 out of 850,000 entries since 1990)."

... and above it states :

"Since 1973, immigration policy in France has focused primarily on stemming and deterring migration. This contrasts with the United States, which welcomes large numbers of labor and family migrants. And unlike the United States, where organized business and ethnic interests have lobbied for expansive immigration legislation, France has no organized interest groups advocating greater immigration. Moreover, socioeconomic restructuring and economic downturns since the 1970s have meant that French employers have not needed (legal) foreign labor, ..."

Hardly "remarkably similar to Australia's" I would have thought.

If we were to substitute "Australia" for "the United States" in the above paragraph, I would suggest to you that this exactly confirms Sheila Newman's thesis. Your high-handed dismissal of her work that you appear not to have understood does you little credit.

You wrote: "In fact, you got several well-reasoned paragraphs explaining why you had breached the rules."

They were not well-reasoned as I have shown and you have not responded to the substance of my complaint.

You wrote: "But reason doesn't really seem to be something you're too concerned about. ..."

How about leaving your own value judgements of the quality of my contributions out of this and leave it for others to decide?

You wrote: " ...Your argument on GDP proceeds on the basis of anecdotal evidence, authority from someone's honours thesis and non-sequitur."

It appears that points about the GDP measure have gone right over your head. If you want to seriously maintain that we can say that we are becoming wealthier and more prosperous through immigration because the GDP 'proves' it, then I think it will reflect more poorly on your own credibility, rather than mine.

Sharkfin,

I haven't checked it myself but believe that I have read somewhere that if population had grown at 1% for the past 10,000 years (less than both the global growth rate and that of Australia) that humanity would now consist of a solid ball of flesh extending past the orbit of Saturn. Growth has to stop sometime, and it is better that we stop it while there is still something left to save. Some European economies manage very successfully with a stable population.

As one example, there is a unique species of lungfish in the Mary River in Queensland, a living fossil related to the first creatures to come out on land. The Australian reported yesterday that it is set to be wiped out when the Queensland government builds a new dam to accommodate the growing population of SE Queensland. Nearly 7,000 scientists have signed a petition asking for it to be spared, but that counts as nothing next to profits for the white shoe brigade.

We will either get control of the growthist population boosters or they will not only wreck our quality of life, but trash our environment, security, personal freedom, and social cohesion as well. Depriving ordinary folk of gardens, imposing permanent water restrictions, and introducing truth-is-no-defence religious vilification laws is only the start.