One quarter of "us" were not born here, what does that mean? Nothing of itself but in context it is disastrous.

This nation was born of immigrants that usurped the previous occupants. Two major immigration initiatives, one directly post WWII that brought a social and cultural diversity that integrated with the existing stagnant mono racial society and one in the seventies.

The first intake secured the labor we required to build a nation in the post war economy, and fortunately we also gained the inteligencia from war torn Europe with that intake. The second intake from the seventies onward could be called the "melding" intake; it was driven by UN agreements based on self serving "social engineering" ideals presented as humanitarian ideology. We did not need labor in the seventies; we had just signed an agreement that would see all manufacturing disappear in the next thirty years, as it did.

So we have received a steady stream of unskilled second and third world immigrants into an economy that has shed labor over the past 40 years, not to mention ownership of everything to overseas investors, it's all gone including the AWB yesterday, and now one quarter of us do not share the same birth language or birth culture, and I will not expand on the religious chasm. It is a tough economy for the educated and socially secure let alone the one in four next to us that is a stranger to this land.

A social time bomb, with a short fuse. We’re on the road to nowhere, come on inside.....prophetic.

SOG... I like that post and subject.

1/ "This nation was born of immigrants that usurped the previous occupants." Yes indeed..and if we cannot learn from OUR behavior.. can we learn 'anything' about non traditional Aussie racial/cultural stock?

2/ "Shedding labor and importing unskilled"... *time bomb*

Oooooooh YEAH.. we better believe that.

As more and more low skilled jobs go off shore to China, 'what' will those unskilled immigrants 'do' ?

It won't happen overnight, but the rumblings will increase in fervour and you can abso-bladi-lutely be sure that there will be a small but dedicated band of communist fanatics ready to jump in and tell them how evil capitalism has failed them!

Re the Quarter who don't share ? I think actually many of those come from families where "at least one parent" was not born in Australia doesn't it? In such a case they will still pick up being 'Aussie'.

cheers

How did they do it Gloin because I am having a horrible time? I can’t get residency here because I don’t have an employer and I am not in any form of schooling.

My husband can’t be a sponsor for me although he is a resident for highly skilled “tax purposes” but at least his boss can sponsor him.

We bought our two children after NZ educated and raised them and they are employed – just as well since none of us are allowed a benefit here.

I have fostered 20 little Aussies to date in our mortgaged home in paradise so no one minds me doing my part in raising other young citizens. We're all insured, life, medical, property, we have super going. So far I think we are kinda respectable. :P

We moved here with no intention of returning and all I hear about is immigrants, I don’t want to be one, I want to be a citizen and I can’t. Or even if I manage it I will be considered an immigrant forever more in the eyes of those with an Aussie birth certificate?

I am part of a social time bomb?

Umm… I thought bringing in over a million orphans from the UK post WWII was about keeping the population here rather mono – in the white sense?

Silly me.

>>This nation was born of immigrants that usurped the previous occupants<<

I thought for a moment that we were going to discuss the extermination of aboriginal tribes in the early nineteenth century.

I should know better by now.

And I certainly know better than to believe this line:

>>one quarter of us do not share the same birth language or birth culture, and I will not expand on the religious chasm.<<

You will, sonofgloin. Or if you don't, Boaz will.

Oh, look. There he is now.

Have fun with your mozzie-bashing, people. I know you love it.

p.s. where does it say that the 25% does not "share the same birth language"?

Pericles the link is for you, re the show me the birth language bit.

"At the time of the 2006 Census, Australia's population was 19.9 million, with nearly one in four people living in Australia born overseas. Some 45 per cent of all Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas." http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/04fifty.htm

Welcome to our country Pied Piper, as an immigrant in a land of immigrants your family profile obviously does not fit the UN humanitarian profile of a "deserving" recipient of Australian residency. The only consolation I can offer is that under the "guidelines" our immigration service abides by they would not give me and perhaps half the current population residency if we were outside trying to get in.

This afternoon it was reported that detainees in Villawood detention centre have set fire to the place, you can bet they will let them in to placate them. PP I can only suggest that you begin burning things

sonofgloin, the figures don't add up when you are suggesting that a quarter of Australians don't share 'our' birth language or culture.

According to the ABS, at the last census there were 4.83 million people born overseas living in Australia. Of these:

1.13 million were born in the UK.
0.45 million were born in New Zealand.
0.11 million were born in South Africa which, admittedly, is multilingual (but English is one of the official languages and I have yet to meet a South African - even a staunch Afrikaaner - who doesn't speak English fluently).

That means that approximately 35% of overseas-born Australians come from these three English-speaking countries alone. That's nearly 9% of Australians being born overseas but hailing from an English-speaking country, leaving only 16% coming from a non-English-speaking background - or at least from outside one of these three countries.

Add in the various English-speaking Pacific Islanders, the various English-speaking Southern Africans (from outside South Africa), the various Americans and Canadians (who, I have heard, speak a strange variant of English) and you're looking at quite a sizeable portion of overseas-born Australians who speak English and have done so since birth.

As for culture, well, I'm not so sure there. It depends how you define culture. Having lived in Zimbabwe and New Zealand, and having much to do with rellies in South Africa, England and Wales, I would say that our cultures are remarkably similar.