Dear onthebeach,

There may be many things with which taxpayers are
going to disagree as far as the spending of money
is concerned- not only the issue of asylum seekers.
We know how expensive it is - we learned that from
the Howard government - who spent a fortune on
asylume seekers - and they ended up in Australia anyway.
However, as long as we retain and are signatories to
the Refugee Convention - our governments are under
certain obligations and are forced to continue to maintain
certain conditions. What you can do though is - elect
who you think can do a better job at the next election.
I don't approve on the huge sums of taxpayers money that's
being spent on former PMs for the rest of their lives
(and that's aside from their generous pensions and other perks).
But
there you go - there's nothing I can do about it - unless we
change the legislation. Taxpayers money is being spent
needlessly in many areas - including middle-class welfare,
and other tax benefits for the already wealthy. The next
election is very important - to weigh the pros and cons
of the type of direction in which this country needs to go.
That will be your chance to do something about it.

Cheers.

Lexi,

What you are really saying is that refugees are not your priority at all. First come, first serve and if economic migrants have the deep pockets and are prepared to deal with criminals, then fine they can jog real law-abiding refugees down the queue.

You are defending the fraud of the quick-witted middle class (they would certainly qualify as middle class where they come from) and a brutal industry that delivers millions to criminal gangs (who care naught about their human cargos) and damages the chances of genuine refugees finding asylum.

Why do you do that? Do you have employment in the industry somewhere, or is it simply that you follow what (say) the Greens or Green Left tell you is right?

Why wouldn't you want to put refugees first? How would you explain your stance to them?

A couple of comments on the responses to my post yesterday.

1. Were my ancestors postWW2 migrants? No. I have roughly 10 separate ancestral arrivals, between 1793 and 1927 (the last from NZ, but dating back there to the 1860s). Yes, the first were convicts, all the rest economic migrants.

2. Do I want everyone to 'sing from my hymnbook'. No. But I find many comment repetitive, predictable and not based on facts. Then when other people request evidence or provide counter evidence, they get attacked. I dislike the patronising tone of some posters - using terms such as sweetie or dearie. On the other hand, resorting to condescension is a pretty good sign that you have lost the argument!

I have a challenge for posters: how about playing devil's advocate occasionally? Take a topic on which you have strong views and argue the opposite case. This is a standard procedure in formal debating, and it's also a useful tool - a good way of testing the weaknesses in your own beliefs.

Same old, same old, onthebeach.

I'm sure your heart bleeds for the "real refugees".

The only difference between those in camps elsewhere and those who turn up here, is that those who are in camps elsewhere "aren't here".

But they're so convenient to reference when one is trying to take the moral high ground, whilst simultaneously demonising their brothers and sisters.

What's wrong with economic migrants?

We need to be a country which is smarter, more innovative and more entrepreneurial. Who are likely too be the smarter, innovative and entrepreneurial migrants? The ones who sit around patiently in a refugee camp for decades waiting to got through the bureaucratic hoops to maybe get here? Or the ones who risk everything - beg, borrow or steal enough to get on a boat, or whose families sell everything they have to risk their children's lives? If you've lived all your life in the mountains of Afghanistan or similar and never seen the sea, what nerve does it take to get on a leaky overcrowded boat? And what do we do with these entrepreneurial risk-takers when they get here? We should take advantage of their energy and set up work projects, language and skill training. (Indeed, we need to do the same to energise our own unemployed and underskilled people.)

There are millions of refugees in the work, and there will be millions more in the future. We cannot take all the millions of people who deserve help (and there needs to be a coordinated global program of resettlement) - our 'legal' refugee program picks out a mere handful of the deserving millions. Maybe we need to be more pragmatic - maybe the ones we really need for the future of this country are those who are prepared to risk all to get here.

Lexi,

Stop Lying.

You keep repeating the Labor mantra, even when proven wrong.

Only 43% of those sent to Nauru came to Australia, which is not even close to "most"

Labor is spending more than 10x as much as Howard ever did, with more illegal immigrants arriving every day than every year under Howard.