Watching news footage we appear to see many young-ish, able-bodied males to make up the greater number of so-called boat people. Do they not wish to defend their countries by staying there & help their resistance fighters ? I mean the allies keep sending young men over there & many return in coffins. Would many of the boat people stay & fight for their country if the allies only supplied the machinery to help them rather then have our young people getting killed on their behalf ? Would they not leave if the west provided everything they need to regain control ? I just wondered how many would choose to stay & fight rather than leave their families.
Instead of sending our young people there to risk so much why doesn't the west just pay the young people of those countries to fight their wars ?

The reason we have no money for schools and hospitals is the billions of dollars that we waste on our refugee creation programs. There are 42 million refugees world wide and we have been part of creating
8 1/2 million of them in Iraq and Afganistan alone. Most of our refugees come from these two countries. They would much prefer to stay at home but their homes and livelihood have been destroyed by our very expensive bombs. Then when they seek asylum we lock them in concentration camps for indefinate periods while we pat ourselves on the back for being such humane people. We should hang our heads in shame. Blade

Individual,

We in the West started both "their" wars....

Read Blade's post - you might learn something.

Umm... what costs? Is this like if they are unemployed when they get here? I feel I’m missing out somewhere.

I’m trying to understand the politics. When we talk about numbers can we ignore where the numbers are coming from – their circumstances of departure would impact arrival and any costs associated with them.

So we can only talk in numbers if we know where the numbers originated. Like an immigrant who already speaks English and secured a job before arrival who is paying taxes from day one is hardly like to be in the numbers of those who add to these “huge costs”?

NORMAL AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN

Ludwig:“I simply mean citizens that are living as mainstream Australian citizens, That is; not homeless, not left in a position where they can’t get a job, social security of health benefits, not living as an underclass and not living in an enclave where they have very little contact with or understanding of wider Australian society.”

OR

Poirot:”It's obvious that the term "normal Australian citizens" encompasses anyone whose ancestors arrived on big boats during the nineteenth century (as opposed to those who've arrived in small leaky ones in the last few years)...or anyone who migrates from afar from the "right type of country" with the right economic credentials.”

Poor people are not normal? I wonder what ‘they’ do understand of wider Australian society. I think my own judgment would be a little clouded due to OLO participation.

On tonight's news we saw Libyans volunteering to work for the resistance to help oust the present leader(s). What is the main factor why others don't try the same ? Are they simply outnumbered & reject democratic percentage ? It would be useful to get some info on this. I can appreciate a dictatorship making it extremely difficult for some groups to succeed but why do so many choose to just leave & ask others to do the fighting for them & then accuse those fighters of invasion.

The basis of my original post is that Whine Swan is pleading poverty in spite of having the greatest revenue stream ever. The projections might be lower than expected, but the difficulty in creating a surplus is more to do with Labor's lavish spending on failed policies public servants and pork barrelling than a lack of fiscal income.