Indians among highest visa rule breachers in Australia

From Business Standard:

Indian students have been placed in the high risk group for visa breaches in Australia along with Bangladeshis and Cambodians, a development that may result in tightening of immigration rules for them.

Based on a review of the student visa programme by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship across all applicant countries, Indians were bracketed with Bangladeshis and Cambodians as a ‘level-four’ risk, which is the second highest risk category.

The student visa programme assessment level was raised from three to four after last year’s review by the Immigration department. No nationalities have currently been placed at level-five, the highest risk category.

Experts say the upgrade may result in significant tightening of rules for Indian students and can affect the demand for their enrolments.

Under the new measure, Indians seeking education in Australia, will now have to prove they have enough funds to survive for the duration of their study and pass more stringent English language tests.

Immigration risk levels for Indian students were upgraded after a department audit that found that in 2006-07, 4.66 per cent of the 58,268 Indian nationals granted visas breached their conditions, compared with an average rate among foreign students of 1.32 per cent, an Immigration department said.

The number of Indian students studying in Australia has risen dramatically in recent years, from 11,313 in 2002 to 96,739 last year, Immigration department spokesperson added.

In 2007-08 the unlawful rate among Indian students was 1.48 per cent of a total 87,145 Indian visa-holders, compared with 0.99 per cent for the average foreign student.

While in May this year offshore applications for Indian students grew by 20 per cent as compared to last year, statistics for this month have till date remained the same as compared to June last year despite the attacks on Indian students being widely publicised.

The number of Indian students enrolled in Australia stood at 47,639 in the period between July 2007 to June 2008. The number was 38,162 in the period between July 2008 to February 2009.

Original article

"The number of Indian students studying in Australia has risen dramatically in recent years, from 11,313 in 2002 to 96,739 last year, Immigration department spokesperson added."

Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the changes made by the former Howard Government which made it easier for foreign students to apply for permanent residency after they graduate?

As Monash academic Bob Birrell explained in a 2006 article:

In 1999, the Australian Government introduced a suite of reforms to its skilled migration selection system. Among the most important of these was the granting of incentives to former overseas studentsto encourage them to obtain permanent residence on completion of their courses. These incentives included additional points for Australian training and the waiving of the job experience requirement that skilled migrants applying offshore had to meet.

Policymakers thought that persons who had been trained in Australia, in English, would be more attractive to Australian employers than their counterparts trained overseas, especially if the overseas training had been conducted in a foreign language in a non-western educational setting. In mid-2001 new onshore visa categories for overseas students were introduced which permitted foreign students to apply for permanent residence without having to leave Australia, as long as they applied within six monthsof completing their training.

...

In a numerical sense these policy initiatives have been spectacularly successful. There were 5,480 onshore visasissued to principal applicants who were former overseas students under the three student visa subclasses in 2001–02. By 2005–06, this number had grown to 15,383.

These changes, quietly introduced without any public consultation, have effectively transformed Australia's higher education institutions into "visa factories" for foreigners seeking permanent residency. Australia's universities, starved of public funding, have welcomed and encouraged this influx of full fee-paying foreign students. As Dr. Peter Wilkinson noted in his book The Howard Legacy (2007), "the universities market themselves as providing education but they know, and certainly their prospective applicants know, that they are marketing permanent residency visas."

Educational standards have predictably dropped as the universities prostitute themselves for foreign cash. As several reports have pointed out, many of the foreign students granted permanent residency are largely unemployable in their particular fields due to poor English. This means that Australia loses out both ways by accepting sub-standard foreign workers while also degrading the quality of its domestic degrees. Worse still, the selling of permanent residency to foreigners also degrades the value and undermines the meaning of Australian citizenship, given that permanent residency provides an almost guaranteed path to naturalisation.

The cost of mass immigration

From Australia.To News:

Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration

By Frosty Wooldridge

While I write about degrading conditions in the United States, the Internet allows my work to travel all over the planet. As you know, relentless immigration endangers America, but also Australia.

Incomprehensible forces push for more population additions in both our countries. Those ‘growthists’ at the power positions operate in a mindless vacuum. They create a Faustian Bargain with the only outcome manifesting in Hobson’s Choice.

Yet, a glimmer of hope exposes average citizens to their dilemma. Mark O’Connor and William Lines wrote Overloading Australia to give everyone an idea of the calamity engulfing Oz.

In the USA, I wrote a piece, “America Losing its Language & Culture without a Whimper” for my fellow citizens. It appears that an Aussie picked it up from the Internet. You may appreciate his response:

“Frosty, you are absolutely spot on! Unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happening in Australia, most of my country men are either walking around in a "fog" or are too caught up in materialism or have been sucked in by the crap being pushed by the multi-cultural/multi-racial industry,” Robert said.

“Over the last two weeks in Melbourne & Sydney there have been large protests (several thousand strong) by foreign Indian students claiming lack of action from government and police to protect them from violent attacks. There have also been protests in India where effigies of P.M. Kevin Rudd were burnt. Indian newspapers have been running stories about Australian racism and saying that the attacks could threaten the income Australia gets from foreign students. The funny thing is: video surveillance tapes and recent arrests have identified the culprits as being of Middle Eastern identity.

“Large groups of India students have taken to the streets of Melbourne armed with clubs and attacked young men of Middle Eastern appearance. The Middle Eastern community is now asking for protection, meanwhile our politicians and self appointed ethnic spokesman are claiming the attacks aren't racially motivated. The average Aussie of European decent is sitting back scratching their head wondering what the bloody hell is going on?

“Regarding fee paying foreign students, I noticed that this is just another back door scam for residency in Australia for Third Worlders, once they complete their University or a basic Cooking, Hairdressing or Assistant in Nursing course at a ”shonk" so called Technical School they get bonus points towards residency status as they are considered skilled workers. At the same time local kids can't get placements at University, the management of Universities prefer the foreign students because they pay higher fees.

“On other matters Sydney's first Water Distillation Plant will be online soon to cope with our demand for more fresh water, the politicians are still blaming Global Warming as the reasons for building the plant, they refuse to acknowledge the demands that an increasing population is placing on our environment, health care system and life style.

“Since retiring, I have been doing a bit of casual work in a hospital, I can't believe the number of elderly people from Third World countries who are using our system and costing the taxpayer a bomb! Most of them have come here under the Family Reunion Program, the taxes their children pay could never cover the cost of providing health care and welfare for their parents.”

Australians must ask themselves if they wish to import the poor of the world to become the new entrenched poor of Oz. In the USA, we’re importing two million poor annually and they are breaking our medical, educational and prison systems. They cannot be educated as their numbers overwhelm our educational systems. Additionally, every poor teenage girl becomes pregnant faster than a hummingbird can flap its wings.

Additionally, those poor immigrants seeking a better life in the U.S. cost our taxpayers $346 billion annually in housing, food, medical, educational and resettlement costs. Immigrants must be costing Oz a bundle of cash too!

Australians may well look toward a total moratorium on all immigration before they find their country devolved into a multi-cultural and multi-lingual polyglot of incoherent mush.

One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon-all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.”

Kant said, “Religion and language are the two great dividers.”

The fact grows more apparent daily: multiculturalism and multilingual societies cannot and do not maintain a cohesive or viable future. Australia will become a nation of strangers.

Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com

You can also read Wooldridge's review of Overloading Australia here.

Watering down the citizenship test

The following article was first published in early 2008, prior to the Rudd Government's watering down of the citizenship test.

From The Independent Australian, Issue No. 14 (Summer 2007/08):

Ethnic Leaders Attack Citizenship Test

A new chorus of opposition to the citizenship test introduced by the former Howard Government late in 2007 has predictably arisen from ethnic leaders now that Labor is in power in Canberra, writes Alan Fitzgerald.

The push is on for the new government to dismantle the Citizenship Test. Much is made of the fact that 20 percent of those who sit the random choice test fail, which actually suggests that the test is working. Labor's Immigration Minister Chris Evans has said that in view of the failure rate he would review the test with the intention of making substantial changes to it.

Surely, if the Minister's aim is to ensure a 100 percent pass rate then it would not be a test at all.

Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria chairman Sam Afra said his organisation always believed the new test was discriminatory (what a surprise!) and would stop many lawful migrants from becoming Australian citizens.

"The news that 20 percent of applicants are failing the test confirms our fears", he said.

However, these critics often do not mention that a person who fails the test can continue to sit for it as many times as they want to, until they pass.

The questions, chosen at random from a resource book, are hardly difficult. If you aspire to be a citizen of this country, out ought to know the date Australia came into existence as a nation, the name of the city where the Commonwealth Parliament is located, or the colours of the Australian flag. To pass the test you are required to correctly answer 12 of the 20 questions that are drawn at random from a pool of 200 questions. As they say, "it's not rocket science" [But it was evidently still all too hard for some of the "skilled", "hard-working", "intelligent" immigrants arriving on our shores - R.E.]. Migrants under the age of 18 to 60 years of age and older do not have to sit for the test, and there exemptions for persons with physical or mental incapacities. Illiterate migrants may take the test in an alternative format.

The questions are selected at random to prevent those sitting the test from learning the answers by rote. One enterprising company is charging migrants $20 to sit 15 mock exams over 90 days online in preparation for the real test. A migrant is eligible to take the test after four years residence in Australia [In most other immigrant-receiving countries, it is at least five - R.E.]. Failing the test does not affect their residency rights but means they cannot take the oath of citizenship until they pass the test.

Further, Australia is not alone is asking potential citizens to demonstrate they know something about the nation that is offering them the benefits and privilege of citizenship. The USA, Canada and the UK all require persons to sit a test.

Critics of the test appear to be quite happy to misrepresent it. Joseph Wakim, a former multicultural affairs commissioner and founder of the Australian Arabic Council, claimed that if the test had been around when his family arrived in Australia, his mother being illiterate would have failed the test, and therefore "I would have not here to tell this story". This is rubbish [And thankfully so. Just think, where would Australia be without such perennially aggrieved ethnic minority activists? - R.E.]

Academic Dr Gwenda Tavan claims the test indicates a narrowly conceived cultural-nationalist model of citizenship that undermines the appeal and advantages of citizenship by defining social membership in overly exclusive, vague and sometimes facile ways.

NSW Anti-Discrimination Board president Stepan Kerkyasharian said the test should rely less on culture and more on practical knowledge of Australia, "not about what happened 20 years ago in some cricket match."

Max Jeganathan, spokesman for Civil Liberties Australia, claimed the test was an attempt to promote Anglo-Celtic culture as being the dominant part of the overall Australian culture at the expense of multicultural identity.

Objection to the test seems more to do with objection to the idea that Australia has a culture of its own and that the nation's institutions, laws, politics, flag and history reflect that reality. The multicultural lobby would argue that mainstream Australian culture has nothing to offer them, but they have everything of value to offer Australia.

Which begs the question of why are they here in the first place?

There is no doubt that some minority cultures reject Australian values in favour of their own traditions which they are determined to maintain. For them, being in Australia - if not being an Australian citizen - is a matter of convenience. For them citizenship is just a ticket to social welfare benefits, job and educational opportunities and a guarantee against deportation should they or their kin embark on a career of crime.

Historian Ann-Mari Jordens (The Age, 10 January 2008) points out that citizenship for migrants involves a cost-benefit analysis. A sizeable proportion of migrants saw no tangible advantage in "making the leap". If migrants think so little of Australian citizenship - other than its economic aspects - who is to blame? Has Australia made it too easy for migrants to take up citizenship without demanding a real commitment to Australia? [The answer is, of course, yes. As Geoffrey Blainey once remarked, Australia hands out citizenship like fast food. - R.E.]

The absence of many persons of ethnic minority backgrounds in our armed forces and volunteer organisations suggests it is Australia which is being taken for a ride, not the migrants.

The Australian Government's embrace of dual citizenship only compounds the problem. Where do the newcomers' loyalties really lie? If they are only here for the money, where will they be in times of adversity? If they don't embrace Australian values - democracy, equality, freedom of religion, secularism - would they be prepared to embrace them let alone defend them if they came under attack?

To claim as the multiculturalists say, that there is nothing unique about Australian values is to deny reality. In most of countries of the world, from which we draw our migrants, these very values are either absent in the body politic or only honoured in the breach. How much democracy exists in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, or South America? The "all cultures are equal" mantra of the multiculturalists would leave a vacuum at the heart of the Australian story.

Objection to the citizenship test is a symptom of a larger problem - Australia's failure to promote its national story to its citizens - both native born and naturalised - through educational and cultural institutions. The idea that telling the national story - its achievements and failures - will cause newcomers to feel left out and alienated is a nonsense.

The 'progressive' left liberals who infest our universities and teaching professions are more at home in a global world than in a nation-state. To them national identity and culture are to be denigrated in favour of some woolly, basket-weaving world of cultural relativism.

The majority culture - the core culture of the nation - is entitled to its pre-eminent position for without it there wouldn't be a nation but a collection of tribes. To promote it is not to make newcomers unwelcome but hopefully remind them of why they chose to come in the first place.

Mass immigration and the intolerance of Western liberalism

British journalist Anthony Browne on mass immigration and the intolerance of Western liberalism:

The People Flow authors make a mistake common among pro-immigration advocates: seeing a nation as nothing more than a geographical entity with a functioning economy and a legal system. But a nation is first and foremost its people. It is the French people that define what France is, not lines on a map.

The pro-immigrationists are effectively trying to abolish nationhood, denying a country the right to sustain its own culture.

British-born white people, the progeny of the generation who survived the Nazi attempt to obliterate Britain as an independent nation state, now account for only 60% of the population of London. England has for more than 1500 years been a Christian country – its flag is a cross, its head of state is head of the national church – but in its second city Birmingham, Islam is now more worshipped than Christianity. In two boroughs of London, whites are already in the minority, and they are expected to become a minority in several cities in the coming decade.

If current trends continue, the historically indigenous population of Britain will become a minority by around 2100. Islam is the fastest growing religion, and much immigration to Britain comes from Muslims fleeing Muslim lands – around 75% of intercontinental asylum seekers are Muslim. But where are the limits? In an extreme example, would British Christians have a right not to live in an Islamic majority state?

For an answer to this, consider what that most liberal of American writers, Gore Vidal, said in a lecture in Dublin in 1999:

“A characteristic of our present chaos is the dramatic migration of tribes. They are on the move from east to west, from south to north. Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety or even the pursuit of happiness. But now with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.”

But at what point are people of the west allowed to say that enough is enough, it is time for us to be allowed to preserve our culture? This is an issue of almost total, mind-numbing hypocrisy among western governments and political elites. They defend the inalienable right of other peoples – the Palestinians, Tibetans, native Americans – to defend their culture, but not the right of their own peoples.

It is vital to emphasise that mass immigration and the remarkably intolerant ideology of multiculturalism are exclusively western phenomena. Indeed, the striking thing about the global immigration debate in the west is its determined parochialism. If people in India, China, or Africa were asked whether they have a right to oppose mass immigration on such a scale that it would transform their culture, the answer would be clear. Yet uniquely among the 6 billion people on the planet, westerners – the approximately 800 million in western Europe, North America and Australasia – are expected by the proponents of mass immigration and multiculturalism to abandon any right to define or shape their own society.

Full article

Rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants

From The Daily Telegraph:

Rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants

Piers Akerman
Monday, April 27, 2009 at 06:09pm

THE stream of unlawful boat arrivals has shown the Rudd Government’s claim to a “deterrent” factor in its immigration policy is false.

Far from deterring arrivals, the Rudd Government, through Immigration Minister Chris Evans’ department, is encouraging people smugglers.

When the temporary protection visas (TPVs) and temporary humanitarian visas (THVs) were abolished by the Rudd Government last August, those affected were given protection visas called resolution of status.

They were told they had immediate access to the same benefits as a permanent protection visa holder, including Newstart and youth allowances, the adult migrant English program (AMEP), the age pension, disability support pension, family tax benefit and childcare benefit.

They were also given travel rights, eligibility for travel documents and the ability to sponsor their family through the Offshore Humanitarian Program.

The Howard government’s Pacific Solution was introduced in 2000-2001 following 54 boat arrivals. A further six boats arrived the following year but there were none in 2002-2003.

There were fewer than 100 the following year, zero in 2004-2005, 56 people in four boats in 2005-2006, 135 in five boats in 2006-2007, just 25 in three boats in 2007-2008, and in the current year 500-plus and climbing.

On the department website, the Rudd Government acknowledges TPVs were introduced by the previous government to discourage people smuggling and to discourage refugees leaving their country of first asylum.

That is correct. Moreover, Senator Chris Evans did not oppose TPVs when they first came before the Senate.

The department makes the further blatantly political comment that “the evidence clearly shows, however, that TPVs did not have any deterrent effect. Indeed, there was an increase in the number of women and children making dangerous journeys to Australia”.

That is sophistry. There was an initial blip, but as the numbers show, attempted arrivals dwindled until the new policy came into effect.

That policy was not crafted as a deterrent. It was formulated as a sop to shrill asylum-seeker activists.

It delighted them, the Fairfax Press and the ABC, as well as limp elements in the Liberal Party such as Petro Georgiou, Judy Moylan and Bruce Baird, along with scores of people smugglers and thousands of their potential clients.

That deterrence is gone is made clear on the department’s website: “Detention is only to be used as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time”.

Further, it is clear that the department will do everything possible to make the necessary stay for health, identity and security checks, as acceptable as possible.

Under the Rudd Government, the presumption is that a person who arrives unlawfully should be placed in the community as soon as practicable, the onus of proof is now on the department to justify why they should be detained.

When they must be held, there must be facilities available for recreational, educational and religious activities, specialist medical treatment must be made available as well as multi-language libraries and outdoor sporting facilities.

People in immigration detention can request excursions and departmental policy is to “ensure that evaluation of the request is progressed quickly”, with assurance that “given enough lead time, there are few restrictions”.

And, of course, detainees have access to internet facilities so they can let relatives know they are being cared for.

If they’re unhappy with their treatment, officials are to encourage them to complain. Promotional material in several languages (including Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin and Vietnamese) is displayed informing people in immigration detention that complaints may be made to departmental staff, DSP staff, the Ombudsman’s Office, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Australian Red Cross about any aspects of a person’s detention and that relevant processes are in place to receive and respond to those complaints.

With all the evidence indicating that the Rudd Government has opened the door, it now needs to set up a complaints department for the residents of Christmas Island where those who arrived on unlawfully aboard the growing armada are housed.

The Christmas Island Shire human resources and policy officer Keith Ravenscroft says shipments of fresh food have been raided to feed the 266 asylum seekers currently in detention and to provide for the big number of security staff, immigration and quarantine officers managing the asylum seekers.

“The local people here are not being looked after and their basic fresh food needs are not being met because the asylum seekers get priority over us,” Mr Ravenscroft told The West Australian. “They are eating better than us and yet we (taxpayers) are paying for their food.”

Deterrence? You have to be kidding.

Original article

Visa changes an invitation to illegal immigrants

From the ABC:

The Federal Opposition says a proposed overhaul of the bridging visa system would further soften Australia's border protection policies, sending the wrong message to people smugglers.

A Parliamentary inquiry says there need to be changes to how the system works, including offering applicants increased assistance to health care, legal services and accommodation.

The Greens say the changes do not go far enough, the Opposition's immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone says the recommendations would allow people into the community before they have had their identity and security status checked.

"That is just another message right now that I think is very unhelpful as the people smugglers literally get bigger and bigger boats, and become more and more active in what is a very dangerous and inhumane trade," she said.

"The message says, 'Look, we're not even going to complete all of your identity checks before we pass you into Perth or Adelaide or some other community where you can work, where you'll be given unemployment benefits if you can't get a job, where we'll find you decent accommodation'."

Original article

New boat sparks island tensions

From The Australian:

New boat stokes island tensions

Paige Taylor and Nicola Berkovic | May 25, 2009

AUTHORITIES on Christmas Island were yesterday preparing to process a boatload of 73 suspected asylum seekers - the 20th arrival since September - fuelling tensions among local residents over food shortages exacerbated by the island's swelling population.

The boat was intercepted off Ashmore Island at 7am yesterday, as new figures were released showing the number of skilled overseas workers coming to Australia on temporary 457 visas had plunged to its lowest level in four years.

Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus did not give details of where the passengers and four crew were from. They are due on Christmas Island by the end of the week.

The flood of asylum seekers has swollen the island's population by almost 60 per cent forcing the Department of Immigration to employ a community liaison officer to ease ongoing tensions on the tiny territory.

Immigration officials were confronted for more than two hours at a community meeting last week by about 150 angry residents demanding to know how the Rudd Government intended to ease pressure on the resources of the small island, whose population of 1200 regularly endures supply shortages as a result of late shipments from Perth.

There are currently 464 detainees on Christmas Island and 226 immigration workers, contractors and service providers. The presence of the fly-in, fly-out workforce - many of whom have a daily allowance of about $80 for food on top of their wage - has led to recriminations over scarce and expensive fruit at the local store.

Fresh food flown in from Perth is many times more expensive than in mainland stores - one man claimed last week to have paid $21 for three capsicums.

Some residents have grown resentful that the 29 asylum seekers living in community detention on the island are able to buy fruit on store credit provided by the department.

The department moved quickly to squash rumours that asylum seekers were living on unlimited credit. It issued detailed information showing a family of four asylum seekers on Christmas Island would receive $766 in store credit each fortnight and $300 cash.

Full article

"Fate Keeps On Happening": Australia, Boat People, And The Repressed Immigration Issue

From VDARE.com:

“Fate Keeps On Happening”: Australia, Boat People, And The Repressed Immigration Issue

By R. J. Stove
May 27, 2009

Australia’s leftish Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has displayed a fairly formidable range of literary awareness, running the gamut from free market economist F. A. Hayek (whom he resents) to theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whom he reveres). This daunting curriculum, though, appears never to have included Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

A pity. Because Rudd’s current political plight calls to mind the maxim of that novel’s intrepid but pragmatic heroine Lorelei Lee: "Fate Keeps On Happening".

The "fate" in question is the 2001 national election, which should have been a disaster for conservative John Howard, head of Australia’s government since 1996. Opinion polls for most of 2001 had Howard well behind.

Then two things happened to save Howard’s career. Most spectacularly, 9/11 helped frighten the electorate into having doubts about the advisability of changing horses in mid-stream. But even before that, in August 2001, there was the MV Tampa affair.

The MV Tampa was a Norwegian cargo ship carrying more than 430 (exact numbers are variously given) Third World asylum seekers, mostly Afghans. Howard—fearful of an anti-immigration backlash led by Pauline Hanson, then at the height of her fame—refused to permit the Tampa to enter Australian waters.

This decision, of course, inspired profuse moaning from the commentariat, international as well as local, about Howard’s "xenophobia”. Such moaning increased in its intensity when he proclaimed: "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come."

On Election Day, the opposition didn’t have a prayer. Howard returned to office with an increased majority, the first of his country’s Prime Ministers to manage this feat since Harold Holt in 1966.

No adult Australian, least of all in Rudd’s Labor Party, has forgotten the humiliation of this defeat. It has burnt its way into Labor’s collective soul, in a way that other, still more severe Labor losses (such as Gough Whitlam’s landslide routs in 1975 and 1977) failed to do.

Consequently immigration hardly figured in the 2004 election campaign. Labor’s leader that year, Mark Latham, was spectacularly erratic in many respects. But on a few themes he possessed a certain native horse sense. He compelled his party to accept a policy of increased penalties for people-smugglers and for those who overstayed temporary visas. No way was Latham about to tolerate accusations by Howard of being soft on illegals.

Suitably impressed by the resultant bipartisan front against illegals getting special privileges, most people-smugglers ceased attempting to ply their noisome trade in Australia’s vicinity.

Until now.

In 2009, an exclamation by the late Heather O’Rourke in Poltergeist II is newly appropriate to describe the advance of boat people: "They’re baaack!"

On April 16, a fishing boat containing Afghan illegals caught fire, killing five people—not three, as originally reported—and injuring 40 more, many of whom were taken to Royal Perth Hospital. (For footage of the fire, see here.)

In the aftermath of this tragedy, the Rudd Government has been left looking much more rattled than at any time since it stormed to victory at the 2007 election. (At that election, it had deprived Howard not only of the Prime Ministry but of his own parliamentary seat in Sydney. Not coincidentally, Howard had not raised the immigration issue again.

The post-Howard "conservative" Liberal Party opposition, led by Malcolm Turnbull—a prize instance of the pseudo-Catholic pro-abort pol with whom Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and John Kerry have made Americans depressingly familiar—has the scent of blood in its nostrils, for the first time since 2007. Turnbull is accusing Rudd and his cabinet ministers of covering up information about the explosion and its aftermath.

"They know full well what’s happened", Turnbull insists. "They’ve known for some time. They should tell the truth. That’s all we’re asking them to do." [Rudd Braces For More Boat People, By David McLennan, The Canberra Times, April 21, 2009]

Turnbull’s critique is purely technical, however. He has specifically repudiated the Howard era’s border protection policies, which alone, if re-established, might have some chance of restoring the situation to the 2001-2007 status quo. In essence, he is emulating John McCain’s shunning of the issue that hurt McCain so badly with the Republican base.

This is a problem, because while no-one in authority will confirm as yet whether the explosion occurred deliberately or accidentally, what remains indisputable is Prime Minister Rudd’s personal anger at people-smugglers.

Such anger makes a conspicuous contrast with his usual public persona (periodically likened to Harry Potter) of cherubic blandness. But he recently called people-smugglers "the vilest form of human life" and hoped that they would "rot in hell".

Whereas in 2001 it was Labor which found itself trapped in a "damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t" vise apropos illegals, now this unenviable victim status is firmly maintained by Turnbull’s Liberal-National coalition. Turnbull’s natural aggression means that he cannot be seen to agree with Rudd’s policies regarding the illegals, or anything else. This aggression has made him publicly hated without being even remotely respected, a fatal combination in politics, as Machiavelli long ago explained.

Meanwhile, opinion polls (carried out, admittedly, before April 16) had Rudd coasting along on a 74 per cent popularity rating. Those who preferred to see Turnbull take over from Rudd as Prime Minister constituted a grand total of 24 per cent.

The same polls found that the usual mid-term blues had simply failed to occur. Rudd’s own party has been not just unscathed but, rather, strengthened. Labor led the Liberal-National coalition by 58 per cent to 42 per cent. That was actually six points better than the result with which it won office two years ago. (A subsequent poll, reported on May 4, showed a slight decline in Rudd’s popularity. Still, 64 per cent of respondents continued to prefer Rudd over Turnbull.)

So on present trends, Rudd is unlikely to lose the next election, due no later than 2010. Besides, incumbency gives a much greater advantage to first-term Australian Prime Ministers than it does to first-term American Presidents.

To find an Australian national leader who lost office after a single term, à la Jimmy Carter or George H. W. Bush, we must go back to the hapless James Scullin, flung out of the Prime Ministry in 1931, during the Great Depression’s depths. (For newsreel footage of Scullin, see here.) Even Whitlam, chaotic administrator though he was, secured for himself a second term, in 1974.

If the boat people issue continues for long enough to do Rudd serious damage, Australia’s conservatives might have a chance at winning power. Or, who knows, they might even raise the issue of legal immigration, effectively kept out of politics by the usual bipartisan consensus since Hanson’s implosion.

But probably, like the GOP in the U.S., they will opt to play the political game in the approved way—and lose.

R. J. Stove lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Original article

Although it may have criticised the Rudd Government for its soft stance on illegal immigration, it is highly unlikely that the Coalition would ever risk raising the ire of its corporate sponsors in the pro-open borders business community by coming out in favour of lower levels of legal immigration.

The only thing that could possibly force the Coalition to re-assess its blind committment to mass immigration would be the realisation that immigrants, especially those of the non-European variety, overwhelmingly vote for the ALP. As this article points out, John Howard lost his own seat at the last federal election largely due to Bennelong's large Asian immigrant population. The role of the ethnic vote in toppling Howard in Bennelong should have sent a wake-up call to the Coalition that demography is destiny in politics. As Australia's ethnic makeup changes due to immigration, and the non-European minority population soars, the Coalition may find its share of the vote, like the European share of the population, in irrevocable decline.

The cultural costs of immigration

In an article published back in 1994, U.S. conservative pundit Lawrence Auster warns of the threat mass Third World immigration poses to his country's culture and identity. It is a sobering read, and especially relevant to Australians given that we are facing the same threats in this country.

Massive immigration will destroy America
by Lawrence Auster
INSIGHT ON THE NEWS,
Oct 3, 1994

The current immigration debate, although a welcome change from the politically correct silence of earlier years, is still far too narrow in its focus, dwelling on largely technical matters such as methods of border control, the welfare and health costs of immigration, or the impact of immigration on the economy or on minority employment. As important as those issues are, they distract us from a much greater and more difficult question: What is the impact of immigration on the whole society--on America as a civilization?

To deal seriously with that question in today's climate is to provoke charges of nativism, racism and demagoguery. As immigration advocates are fond of pointing out, fears that immigration would undermine America's national culture were raised in the early 20th century--indeed they were raised against the grandparents of many of the people now opposing immigration. Since that threatened disaster did not occur, the advocates continue, similar warnings are utterly invalid now.

This ahistorical argument ignores the profound and decisive differences between immigration at the turn of the century and today. In the early 20th century, America had a vital and confident core culture and insisted that immigrants assimilate. The immigrants were predominantly European, sharing--despite ethnic differences--a common civilizational heritage with Americans. Most importantly, the great immigrant wave was drastically reduced after two or three decades, ushering in a long period of ethnic equilibrium and social peace. None of those factors obtains today.

The current legal and illegal immigration in excess of 1 million people per year, more than 90 percent of whom are non-European, combined with the higher birthrates of immigrant groups, is rapidly turning America into a multiracial country, with no racial majority, no common culture, and a population doubling to half a billion during the coming century. Despite the fact that many immigrants are good people who want to be part of this country, and despite the fact that immigration may provide some discrete and localized benefits, the overall result of this unprecedented demographic event is the erosion--and ultimately the submergence--of every defining aspect of American civilization.

Foremost of these is our tradition of individual rights. The growing numbers of minorities with distinct ethnic and cultural identities has led to a huge increase in race conflict and race consciousness in America. Each minority group is seeking official recognition and proportional representation as a group--in election districts, in employment, in education, in every area of life--and any failure to reach this utopian "cultural equality" is seen as further proof of America's inherent racism and of the need for ever-expanding state power to uproot the racism. While the problems of American blacks provided the original pretext for group rights, other minorities have acquired their own piece of the multicultural pie. Thus our newly multiracial society is becoming a multinational society, with the perpetual instability, conflict, suspicion and loss of freedom that characterize so many balkanized and Third World countries. Although proimmigration conservatives passionately insist that this shouldn't happen (since they believe that America is defined solely by universal ideas), the point is that it is happening. The assimilation into a common citizenship that was possible for people of European background is not happening for vast numbers of non-Europeans.

Next to pandemic violent crime, nothing so delegitimizes the social order as the presence of millions of persons residing illegally in this country and drawing on public assistance--combined with the government's inability or refusal to do anything about it. The more illegal aliens there are in a given city, all of whom have a powerful interest in the law's not being enforced, the more local officials accede to and even publicly welcome their presence, as Mayor Giuliani has recently done in New York City. When Orange, Calif., was overwhelmed in the early 1990s by a large illegal alien population standing on street corners seeking work, and living crammed into houses in numbers far above zoning limits, local authorities gave up enforcing the law and began instead to accommodate the illegals, building a hiring hall for them, refusing to cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, even firing a zoning officer who tried to do her job.

The rule of law is being further eroded by the fanaticism and violence characteristic of Latin American politics. When a federal investigator in San Diego County uncovered massive welfare fraud by illegal aliens and the welfare department, he was threatened by Hispanics and attacked as a "racist" by a Hispanic supervisor. Citizens in California, Texas and Florida who have spoken out against illegal immigration have received death threats and had their automobile tires slashed as a warning. As one border-control activist in California said, "It's war out here."

The loss of the rule of law goes hand in hand with the loss of national sovereignty. There are parts of the country, such as New York City's Chinatown and Washington Heights, that are already controlled more by foreign-based criminal gangs than by U.S. authorities. Crime networks from many nations, including Nigeria, Russia, Japan and Jamaica, are operating almost at will in this country. Meanwhile, many immigrant and ethnic leaders--including elected officials--openly state that because of its historic "sins" the United States has no right to control its borders.

The close proximity of widely divergent cultures, many of them lacking Western concepts of rationality, makes it difficult for people in this country to reason together or cooperate as citizens. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, juries in major criminal trials in southern California have been deadlocked because multicultural jury members did not share basic assumptions about right and wrong. Meanwhile, under the concept of "cultural defense," some immigrants charged with murder and rape have been let off with light sentences on the basis that people from non-Western cultures should not be held to Western standards.

On a deeper level, America's mind-blowing heterogeneity has helped undermine any common conception of human nature. Replacing the classic and Judeo-Christian allegiance to a moral truth higher than the individual, the mindless celebration of diversity has become America's new religion.

Thus Richard Barbieri, the head of the Independent Schools Association of Massachusetts, writes: "The essence of multicultural change is to listen to the uniqueness of others and to change our uniqueness to accommodate theirs.... True diversity will involve being humble, first of all, humble before the knowledge and experience of others." In a multicultural manifesto for the virtually all-white city of Dubuque, Iowa (pathetically titled "We Want to Change"), Dubuque's leaders declared: "Diversity calls us into a world that focuses on the many-splendored beauty of others." In all these calls to multicultural transformation, white Americans are never told why they must embrace the "experience," the "knowledge," the "beauty" of others. The diversity of others is supposed to provide some new and wonderful value--but what is that value? Well, the fact that the "others" are not like "us." They exist, therefore we must yield to them. Multiculturalism turns out to be a kind of mysticism.

Yet even as whites worship at the shrine of otherness, Third World advocates openly boast of their hatred for Anglo society and of their intent to destroy it. The publication Border Watch reports that a Hispanic activist told a California woman, who had publicized the problem of illegal aliens receiving in-state college tuition, that "You are the one that needs to go home. This is a Latino home. You people need to go back to wherever you came from.... Get with it. People of color are going to take over sooner or later." Third World intellectuals provide a more sophisticated version of the same message. "The great power of Latin America is its culture," says Gabriel Garcia Marquez in an interview. "We don't spend a dime trying to penetrate culturally, yet we're changing the United States.... We're changing the language, the food, the music, the way of being. We're changing you into a Latin country." Novelist Bharati Mukherjee--a multicultural "moderate"--speaks of Third World immigrants as "we, the new pioneers, who are thinking of America as still a frontier country." Enlarging on her imperialistic reverie, Mukherjee told Bill Moyers, "I want to conquer, I mean, I want to love and possess this country."

What such "possession" means in actual terms can be seen all over America. Areas dominated by immigrants from Third World cultures with low levels of skills and civility have ceased to be part of what most Americans think of as civilization. Vast stretches of Los Angeles, New York and Miami, have become Latin American or Caribbean slums, with deteriorating infrastructure, cheap wares sold on the sidewalk, cars fixed on the street, men loitering about all day in public, and high levels of noise, dirt, disease, disorder and violence. In step with this process of Third Worldization, there is an exodus of whites (and middle-class nonwhites) from immigrant-intensive states and regions. Thus, even as we are admitting more than a million immigrants and refugees into the United States every year, we are turning hundreds of thousands--and soon to be millions--of embittered and traumatized whites into refugees in their own country.

In cities with large Third World populations, the traditions of Western high culture--classical music, ballet, theater and libraries--are dying out through lack of support or face political pressures to change their entire character. Theater critic Thomas Disch writing in the Atlantic Monthly has said that a leading factor in the decline of the Broadway theater is that, as a result of New York's exploding ethnic and racial diversity, there is no longer a common culture to support the theater. Adapting to the demographic changes, America's powerful arts-funding organizations have given top priority to Third World folk arts, while withdrawing support from high-arts institutions such as symphony orchestras.

The erosion of English as our common language (and our link with our historic and literary roots as a nation) is not merely due to ethnic elites forcing so-called bilingualism down immigrants' throats, as proimmigration conservatives argue. It is a direct outcome of the growing size and power of the non-English-speaking population, as could be seen last year when Hispanic-dominated Dade County, Fla., repealed an existing statute--passed by the former Anglo majority--that had made English the sole language of government. The lesson is clear: "Official English laws" by themselves are useless without restriction of immigration.

As a result of immigration, American national culture is being supplanted by Third World cultures. We are now experiencing the following phenomena in this country: a 25-foot-high statue of the Aztec god of human sacrifice is being erected in a public square in the Hispanic-majority city of San Jose, Calif.; Santeria, a cult that practices animal sacrifice, is now constitutionally protected under the First Amendment; huge festivals awash in pagan symbols celebrating "West Indian Day" and "Hispanic Day" regularly disrupt life in major cities; the passionate assertion of Latin American national symbols and myths are exalted by students and teachers in American public schools. At the same, time traditional American symbols and images are being discarded because they don't "represent" our new, non-Western population. Historical art works, such as a statue of a 19th-century pioneer family commissioned by the state of Oregon, and classic plays, such as Peter Pan, have been purged. The Alamo is reconceptualized as a Hispanic monument. The Pearl Harbor memorial is relativized so as not to offend Japanese-Americans.

The most significant change brought by multiculturalism is the total bowdlerization and rewriting of American history from an anti-Western, antiwhite perspective. Exposed to such "reeducation" through all their formative years, young white people coming out of the schools today have no sense of themselves as heirs of a historical nation and tradition--only ignorance and a pervading mood of estrangement. "We have come a long way from schooling that made Europeans into Americans," writer Jared Taylor has remarked. "We now make Americans into nothing at all." In the final stage of this process of dispossession, whites will follow the example of Kevin Costner in the film Dances With Wolves and spiritually abandon America for a non-Western culture.

There are many features in the unique complex of habits and institutions we think of as the American way of life: prosperity, well-functioning private and public institutions, a stable and democratic political system, liberty under law, respect for individual dignity, a high level of philanthropy and social cooperation, the sense of fair play, and the belief in reason and common sense. Multiculturalists may sneer at these values as mere masks of "white hegemony," but one thing is certain. These values have only flourished in white-majority societies, particularly in societies with an Anglo-Saxon cultural basis. As whites lose their numerical, political and cultural dominance, American civilization with all its constituent virtues will also come to an end. That process, already well advanced in our major cities, will only accelerate if America continues to receive a mass migration several orders of magnitude greater in scale and diversity than that which submerged the Roman empire.

Original article

Like in the United States, unfettered immigration into Australia threatens to bring about a massive increase in the size of our population, a radical change in our national culture and identity, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Third World peoples. Put bluntly, continued mass immigration threatens to destroy our nation as we know it.

Surely it is incumbent upon the Australian people to discuss whether or not they want their nation to be radically transformed through mass immigration. Immigration policy should not be decided solely by perfidious, short-sighted politicians, unelected bureaucrats, and self-interested business and ethnic minority lobbies. As Geoffrey Blainey wrote: "Immigration is everyone's business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate."

Legrain strikes again

Remember Philippe Legrain? The author of the puerile Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (read Peter Brimelow's scathing review here) is back in the Antipodes once again, preaching the usual open-borders dogma. This time, however, he is in New Zealand.

Michael Courtman of NZ Conservative writes:

Immigrants can't find jobs, so increase immigration

The Press reports that a visiting international economist Philippe Legrain has told New Zealand that it shouldn't cut immigration during the recession

At a Department of Internal Affairs-sponsored meeting in Christchurch, Mr Legrain spouted the usual Economist-style arguments about immigrants boosting creativity and being essential to economic growth, without providing any evidence of how such growth is supposed to boost the living standards of existing citizens.

Instead of trying to protect their jobs by calling for a slowdown in immigration, he said local workers should take it on the chin and direct the blame on "the bankers in the United States," (I wonder if that includes those who lent too much money to recent minority immigrants).

He also said that New Zealand needed more Asian immigration so it could take advantage of the expanding markets in East Asia, while overlooking the fact that the country already has thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of well-educated Chinese, Japanese and Korean speakers, should our export companies require their services.

To illustrate his total disregard for the concerns of local workers, he even admitted that thousands of recent skilled immigrants are struggling to find work as it is:

"During the two weeks he has been in New Zealand, Legrain said he had heard a lot of stories that highly-skilled migrants were unable to get jobs in New Zealand either because their qualifications were not recognised here or companies wanted people with New Zealand experience."

If recent immigrants are already being passed over by local employers, then maintaining high immigration levels during a recession will only make it even more difficult for them to find jobs.

What I think Mr Mr Legrain is really saying here is that because many immigrants are failing to find suitable employment, the country needs to bring in more immigrants to compensate for these lost "units of production," so as to maintain a high rate of economic growth that enriches our elites and avoid any empty berths in Auckland's yacht marinas.

Of course immigration-based economic growth doesn't increase per capita income unless it also lead to an increase productivity levels, and there's little evidence that productivity levels have increased much since National's neo-expansionist immigration drive began in 1990. This can be seen most starkly in the relationship between house prices and wages - since 1990 median house prices have almost tripled, while the average wage has only increased by about 40 percent.

Unfortunately while most people probably aren't particularly impressed by Mr Legrain, John Key apparently is. Recently he announced that National won't be aiming to cut immigration during the recession, and will be sticking with its expansionist target of 45,000 immigrants per year.

That may not sound a lot to overseas readers, but for a small country of 4.2 million, it represents a higher figure than most other developed countries, particularly for one which has little labour intensive industry and derives most of its income from primary production and tourism.