Cardinal Sarah defends homelands and cultures

Cardinal Sarah, who hails from Guinea in Africa, has given a speech in Poland supporting that country's stand against open borders:

Every nation has a right to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic migrants who do not share that nation’s culture, Cardinal Robert Sarah has said.

Speaking at the Europa Christi conference in Poland on Sunday, the African cardinal noted that the country refuses to accept the “logic” of migrant redistribution that “some people want to impose”.

In comments reported by Polish magazine Gosc, Cardinal Sarah added that while every migrant is a human being who must be respected, the situation becomes more complex if they are of another culture or another religion, and imperil the common good of the nation.

This is at least tending toward the reformed refugee policy that I have long advocated: that there should be a common fund to finance refugee resettlement, but that to avoid economic migration and to protect existing cultures, refugees should be resettled in the nearest safe country that is most similar in terms of both living standards and culture/ethnicity.

The most striking comment made by Cardinal Sarah was this:

The ideology of liberal individualism promotes a mixing that is designed to erode the natural borders of homelands and cultures, and leads to a post-national and one-dimensional world where the only things that matter are consumption and production.

The quote deserves to be read carefully, as it clearly suggests that Catholics not only can, but ought to, defend "the natural borders of homelands and cultures."

Trump is right on refugee reforms

For years I have advocated a new refugee system in which refugees would be resettled in those countries nearest to their home countries, not only geographically but in culture, religion and living standard. The resettlement would be financed through a fund paid into by the wealthier nations.

The advantages of such a system is that it would cut the numbers of those claiming to be refugees (as there would be no incentive for economic migrants to claim to be refugees) and it would also allow most easily for assimilation, both for the refugees themselves as well as the host nation.

Donald Trump gave a speech recently to the United Nations in which he advocated similar reforms:

We seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these horribly treated people and which enables their eventual return to their home countries to be part of the rebuilding process. For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10 in their home region.

Out of the goodness of our hearts, we offer financial assistance to hosting countries in the region and we support recent agreements of the G20 nations that will seek to host refugees as close to their home countries as possible. This is the safe, responsible, and humanitarian approach. For decades the United States has dealt with migration challenges here in the Western Hemisphere.

We have learned that over the long term, uncontrolled migration is deeply unfair to both the sending and the receiving countries. For the sending countries, it reduces domestic pressure to pursue needed political and economic reform and drains them of the human capital necessary to motivate and implement those reforms. For the receiving countries, the substantial costs of uncontrolled migration are born overwhelmingly by low-income citizens whose concerns are often ignored by both media and government.

Here is footage of President Trump addressing the U.N. on this issue:

"For the cost of settling one refugee in the US - we can assist 10 in their home region" -@POTUS #UNGA pic.twitter.com/3LeMRcPgKg

— USA Association (@USAAssociation) September 19, 2017

Credit to Bolt

Andrew Bolt is the most prominent right-wing journalist here in Australia. He has a large audience, writing for the Herald Sun newspaper and hosting a pay TV commentary show.

He is not a traditionalist but a kind of right-liberal. This is most obvious in his attitude to communal identity. He has written that he considers himself Australian but only reluctantly:

Yet even now I fret about how even nationality can divide us.

To be frank, I consider myself first of all an individual, and wish we could all deal with each other like that. No ethnicity. No nationality. No race. Certainly no divide that's a mere accident of birth.

Liberals want us to be self-determined, therefore something that is predetermined like our ethnicity becomes something negative for the individual to be liberated from. That's why Andrew Bolt once declared his support for:

The humanist idea that we are all individuals, free to make our own identities as equal members of the human race.

And he is intellectual enough to take this liberal principle to its logical conclusion, namely that we should only identify with our own self. He writes about how he once tried to identify with his Dutch ancestry but rejected this because:

I was borrowing a group identity rather than asserting my own. Andrew Bolt's.

You would think, given this dramatic adherence to liberal principles, that Andrew Bolt would not be of great interest for traditionalists in Australia. Yet because he has a courageous personality he raises issues that many others will not. Last week he wrote one of the best newspaper columns I have ever read in the Australian mainstream media. The first part dealt with a physical attack on him launched by two members of the Melbourne antifa. You can see footage of the attack in the video below:



Bolt defended himself remarkably well and he wasn't backing down when he wrote about the incident in his column:

TO ALL those who called me with sympathy for being attacked on Tuesday by masked protesters: stop it.

Sympathy is for losers. And we must be losers no more.

So I want your high-fives instead. I want you to laugh at the CCTV footage of the haymaker I gave one of the three men who jumped me and blinded me with a thick liquid outside a Carlton book launch I was to speak at.

Their sort has ruled the streets for too long, particularly in Melbourne.

The main part of his column was a strong argument to close the borders to avoid the terror threat. It's worth reading in full, but here are some highlights:

But did Khayre’s rampage finally shock our politicians into admitting the truth?

Did they finally concede they’d run a refugee program that put Australians in danger?

As if. Here is the response of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull: “There are some very, very grave questions … How was this man on parole?”

Wrong. The gravest question of all is actually this: why was this jihadist in Australia in the first place?

Why did our politicians let in Khayre and hundreds, even thousands, of people much like him?

Stop blaming the judges and the police and everyone except the damn politicians who have opened our gates to exactly the mayhem they now pretend to tackle. Our politicians have been wilfully, dangerously, recklessly blind to the danger they’ve imported in their narcissistic urge to seem kind, no matter what the cost to the rest of us.

...So why are we running a refugee program that again and again puts Australians in danger? That brings in terror?

Wouldn’t it be both safer and cheaper to help refugees where they are right now — overseas — rather than pay millions to bring over a lucky few and cross our fingers they’ll fit in?

Old Trotskyists never die - they become teachers for refugees

There has been some controversy here in Melbourne about a group of teachers who plan to wear political T-shirts to class tomorrow. The teachers want to close Australia's offshore detention centres, meaning in effect open borders for those arriving by boat.

The spokeswoman for the group is Lucy Honan. It turns out that she is a member of a Trotskyist group. In other words, she is not so much a Cultural Marxist as a real bona fide Marxist.



Lucy Honan addressing a Trotskyist meeting

The little Trotskyist groups get involved in left-wing campaigns in order to recruit people. That is their primary aim. They often squabble with each other in the process (Trotskyist turf wars). One of the Trotskyist groups, Socialist Alternative, complained in a letter that another Trotskyist group, Solidarity, had attended a Refugee Action Collective (RAC) demo simply to pick a fight:

We are writing to you to protest in the strongest terms possible about your behaviour towards our organisation.

Your inexcusable disruption of the RAC speak out on Tuesday 7 February in Melbourne, which prompted this letter, is but the latest example of your disgraceful activities. At this event, several of your members spent the whole time loudly abusing, pushing, shoving and even punching Socialist Alternative members.

In particular, the behaviour of Tom Orsag was so appalling – constantly and loudly abusing our members – that he was repeatedly asked by activists (not SA members) to stop it and show some respect for the scheduled speakers, who he was drowning out. When the crowd were chanting “Free Ismail”, and “No deportations” Orsag tried to get a chant going against Socialist Alternative. All of this is particularly reprehensible [w]hen put in the context of Solidarity member Chris Breen’s admission that Orsag had only come to the speak out in order to harass Socialist Alternative members.

One of our women members was repeatedly pushed, shoved and punched by three Solidarity members – Chris Breen, Lucy Honan and XYZ (XYZ being the one who punched her). David Glanz went out of his way to approach Mick Armstrong to abuse and harangue him, adding to the disruption to the speak out.

According to the letter, the Trotskyist women, including Lucy Honan, had a pushing, shoving, punching fight during the refugee demonstration. It's credible, as this sort of thing happened back in the mid 1980s, when I was at uni - some of the names of the activists are familiar to me from back then. (The Solidarity group wrote a response blaming the Socialist Alternative leadership for instigating the fighting. )

Anyway, the moral of the story is that the refugee issue, in this case, is being pushed by Marxist activists who hope, above all, to recruit people to their little Trotskyist groups through their activism.

Australian Immigration Minister: mistakes were made

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has sparked controversy by saying that Prime Minister Fraser made a mistake in the 1970s by overriding departmental advice and allowing Lebanese Muslim refugees to come to Australia. Officials in the Immigration Department warned Mr Fraser that the largely uneducated, rural Muslim refugees would struggle to fit into Australia and might bring some of the violence common in their homeland to Australia.

As it happens, two thirds of those connected to terrorism in Australia are Lebanese Muslims; there has been a wave of crime gang related shootings amongst Lebanese Muslim communities in Sydney and Melbourne; 20% of Lebanese migrants still cannot speak English; many of those recruited to fight for ISIS have come from this community; and Lebanese Muslims are four times more likely to be on the disability pension than the general population.

So, although there have been some success stories as well, the department officials had a point.

What I'd like to focus on, though, is the bigger picture of what happens when you bring diverse groups of refugees to Western countries (i.e. refugees from very different backgrounds to the host country). For instance, one leader of the Muslim Lebanese community, Mostafa Rochwani, replied angrily to Dutton that it was Australians who pushed the Lebanese refugees into violence and crime:

These communities have faced cultural, political, economic and physical violence from a society that was hostile to any kind of encroachment on their grip on what it means to be Australian...Whether it is expressed in gang violence or in foreign fighters, these people are inherently just seeking what society was unwilling to provide them: their humanity, their worth being recognised.

Is the problem not obvious? Rochwani is saying that the price for integrating Lebanese Muslims is for the existing population to give up on their own sense of what it means to be an Australian. We have to give up our own identity, so that the refugees can then feel more included.

And, in a sense, he is right. It is human nature for people to want to feel a sense of identity and belonging in the society they live in. If you bring in people who are radically different ethnically, then you have an issue. Either the newcomers have to miss out in terms of identifying with the larger community, or else the existing population does. Someone has to lose out.

This is less of a problem for liberal whites, as they are committed ideologically to the idea of identifying only with themselves as individuals - although in practice they do seek out communities of white liberals to live amongst. But for most Westerners having to give up on their own identity, so that Lebanese Muslims are not radicalised, is not a great situation to be in.

That's why the whole project of flying refugees around the world to live in the suburbs of Western cities is a misguided one. It is part of a liberal denial of human nature.

One more example. Dutton was attacked in Parliament by Australia's first female Muslim MP, Anne Aly. Aly was self-conscious when she was a girl of not looking the same as others:

Australia's first Muslim woman elected to Parliament, the counter-terrorism expert said she had become aware of her own status as a minority at the age of six or seven.

Wondering why she didn't have a Barbie doll that looked like her, she was told by her mother thinking too much would make her go crazy

Anne Aly has been given every advantage in the Western world (a high flying career as an academic, employment as a government expert, a columnist for several leading newspapers, and now an MP) but she still does not identify with the Western tradition because she was self-conscious of looking different. And so she says things like "Let's disrupt, let's destroy the joint."

Again, the only way to make her feel better is for the traditional white Western populations to no longer exist in such numbers. Only then will those like Anne Aly no longer feel like a minority outsider. It is once again a terrible situation that Westerners have been put in by liberal immigration policies - go under, so that Muslim girls don't feel like they belong to a minority which looks different.



Anne Aly responding to Peter Dutton

One final point. In some ways, the politics of the left is forming around this dynamic. It was noticeable during the American elections that younger minority activists looked to white politicians like Hillary Clinton as their "allies" against the white majority. It puts the white leftists in an unusual situation. They are temporarily useful to those who see themselves as the new America, but they won't serve the same function in the longer term - they won't be needed anymore. If the white liberal left wins, and the demographic trends continue, then a tipping point will be reached at which the minority activists will feel confident that they can get the job done by themselves, without the need for the leadership of white liberals. Where then will the future Clintons of the world fit in on the left? In other words, if the point of leftist politics is to represent non-white activists against the white majority, then what will happen ultimately to the white left? They will not be natural leaders of this movement, not in the longer term. They are temporary stand-ins.

The European refugee situation

I don't think this will surprise anyone but a study by "Doctors of the World" has found that only 13% of the refugees who have entered Europe are fleeing from war. The majority had arrived for economic reasons.

Nor will it come as a surprise that an Arabic translator, who is Christian but who was assumed to be Muslim by those in the refugee centres, found that amongst themselves those working and living in the refugee centres were hostile to the host society. The translator reported that,

“Some women told me ‘We will multiply our numbers. We must have more children than the Christians because it’s the only way we can destroy them here”, she recalls.

It is more evidence that the refugee system needs to be reformed. These problems would not arise if refugees were resettled in countries with similar economic conditions and cultural/religious backgrounds. If there were no economic benefit to claiming asylum, then there would be no incentive for economic migrants to claim to be refugees. And if asylum seekers were resettled in countries with the most similar ethnicity, then there would no longer be a problem of assimilation (e.g. the issue of Muslims wanting to displace Christians would not arise).

Eltham Resistance

Last month I was sorry to report that a retirement village in my suburb of Melbourne (Eltham) had been bought by a Catholic agency and was going to used to house refugees alongside the elderly residents. It's a similar pattern to what is happening in places like Sweden and Germany.

There are some important updates to this story. I had a conversation with a councillor who told me that the refugees will not be just from Syria but from a range of places. There is a council election happening right now and unfortunately the choice seems to be between left-leaning candidates who want a Middle-Eastern refugee intake and right-leaning candidates who want to build units for Chinese investors. If I learn of any independent candidates I'll publicise this in a further post.

There is some resistance to the plans. A petition is up at Change.org which I'd encourage Victorian readers to sign (see here). There will also be a demonstration outside the local MP's office (Jenny Macklin) from 10.00am to 11.00am on Saturday 1st October (149 Burgundy St Heidelberg).

I'll repeat again the obvious. The current refugee system is irrational. The sensible option is to offer to resettle asylum seekers in countries which are the most similar in living standards and culture to those they are leaving. This would give no incentive to those who are economic migrants and it would be the least disruptive in terms of culture and identity to the host nation. The scheme could be funded from a pool paid into by the wealthier nations.

Hopefully the resistance in Eltham will grow over coming weeks.

Finland's President takes the lead

It's been obvious for a long time that the international convention on refugees needs to be reformed. Yes, there are people displaced by war who need to be resettled. But it makes sense for them to be resettled in countries with a similar standard of living and a similar culture. Otherwise you end up with millions of economic migrants claiming to be refugees and you fail to allow either the migrants or the host populations to keep their own cultures.

The President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, has used his address to the parliament to raise these issues:

Speaking at Finlandia Hall for the official opening of parliament ... Niinistö said that most asylum seekers were not fleeing immediate danger.
"The flow of immigration into Europe and Finland is largely a case of migration rather than a flight from immediate danger," said Niinistö, who was a lawyer before he entered politics. "All estimates predict that the flow of people will increase this year...

The solution, according to Niinistö, will have to involve some changes to established practice around the asylum process. The Geneva Conventions, upon which modern, western states base their approach to refugees, are outdated and states will need to be creative in how they apply them. Otherwise, anyone who can say the word ‘asylum’ will have the right to cross the border and enter Europe, said Niinistö.

"The international rules were drawn up and their interpretation evolved under quite different circumstances," said Niinistö...

"We have to ask ourselves whether we aim to protect Europe's values and people, and those who are truly in acute danger, or inflexibly stick to the letter of our international obligations with no regard for the consequences."

...At the moment, however, we cannot help those who are merely seeking a better life or feel that their circumstances and future are difficult in their home countries."

Japan shows Europe the way on refugees

Japan is a wealthy, modern nation. But it still wants to remain distinctively Japanese. Last year Japan accepted only 27 refugees.

It's a tiny number given Japan's population. Even so, it's difficult to see why Japan should even take this many. Why drop someone from Syria into the middle of Kyoto? How does that benefit anyone? The refugees won't fit into the existing culture and society and the existing culture and society won't uphold its existence by accepting those who can't fit in. It will just lead gradually to demands for a homogeneous Japanese people to give way.

Does that mean Japan shouldn't do anything about refugees? No. Japan can be a good international citizen by donating some of its wealth to rehousing Middle-Eastern refugees somewhere safe in the Middle-East. It seems that Japan has taken this logical step already:

The top five donors [to the UNHCR] in 2012 were the United States, Japan, the European Commission, Sweden and the Netherlands.

What a pity that the European nations can't be as sensible as Japan.

Finland, for instance, has been accepting large numbers of Middle-Eastern refugees, but many have left already because they find the Finnish culture too alienating and the weather too cold:

Almost 70 per cent of Iraqi asylum seekers have given up applications in Finland to go back to their war-torn country.

One Iraqi who decided to return said Finland did not live up to the expectations.

He said: "I don't know what happens to me in Iraq, but here I will die mentally."

Another Middle-Eastern arrival agreed:

"You can tell the world I hate Finland. It's too cold, there's no tea, no restaurants, no bars, nobody on the streets, only cars," 22-year-old Muhammed told AFP in Tornio, as the mercury struggled to inch above 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) on a recent blustery grey day.

Again, there is something absurd about dropping Muhammed into Finland in the first place. The Finnish people have created a way of life in a particular environment that they wish to keep and they should be allowed to do so. Middle-Easterners like Muhammed don't find that way of life congenial - it is logical that they be resettled somewhere more familiar to them.

An Iranian opens up on refugees

Rita Pahani is a columnist for the Melbourne Herald Sun. She is a member of the Iranian community in Melbourne which is why her comments on Iranian asylum seekers carry some weight:

The lies sold by the refugee advocates have been laid bare in the past four months. We were told that the boats couldn’t be stopped, that they were full of frightened souls fleeing persecution and fearing death, despite the inconvenient fact that they were boarding boats in a country that is stable and safe.

We were told that there were no pull factors; that nothing Australia did could slow the flood of boats and yet they have stopped. There has not been a single boat in more than four months. Compare that with last year where 47 boats arrived in April alone carrying more than 3300 asylum seekers.

When the Rudd government came to power in 2007, there was only a handful of people in detention. After completely losing control of our borders, Labor finally admitted what anyone with an IQ above room temperature knew; that pull factors were the key.

Former foreign minister Bob Carr said as much last June: “They’re not people fleeing persecution,” he said. “They’re coming from majority religious or ethnic groups in the countries they’re fleeing, they’re coming here as economic migrants.”

Carr’s comments came after a surge in the number of Iranian asylum seekers arriving by boat in the first half of 2013. More than 4300 Iranians arrived by boat between January and June last year. Carr was right to say the majority were economic refugees.

It’s well known in the Iranian community that having your claim of asylum approved is as simple as reciting a story that can’t be disproved and has worked successfully in the past. Those paying smugglers know what to say and what to omit when interviewed. They are not going to uproot their whole life, sell everything and risk their life at sea and not have a compelling story to tell. The attitude of many in the Iranian community, even those who have been here for decades, is that those arriving by boat are essentially decent people who have sacrificed a great deal to come here for a better life, so if they have to tell a few “white lies” to appease the white man, then so be it. Though many are scathing of those who put their children’s lives at risk by putting them on a leaky boat.

I'd like here to reiterate my own policy suggestion for asylum seekers. I believe that the wealthier nations (not only of the West but also those in Asia and the Middle-East) should pay into a central fund to resettle asylum seekers. However, an asylum seeker would be resettled in whatever country was nearest in living standard and culture to that which he had fled.

This policy would enable genuine refugees to find asylum whilst at the same time discouraging economic migrants and allowing for relatively easy assimilation and resettlement of displaced persons.

Government admission on boat arrivals

You didn't have to be a genius to have figured this out already, but Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, has admitted that significant numbers of boat arrivals are not genuine asylum seekers but economic migrants:

we're getting many advise [sic] that it is economic pressure (and) economic aspirations (driving the arrivals)."

The latest boat, carrying 84 people, sailed directly from Vietnam, where there has been no conflict for 30 years.

Already this year, 759 Vietnamese boat people have come to Australia - the largest group to turn up since just after the Vietnam War - and more than four times the total number that has arrived in the three previous years.

One way to reform the current refugee system would be to resettle those claiming to be refugees in countries with a similar standard of living to their own (the costs of doing so could be borne by wealthier countries). This would remove the incentive toward economic migration.

A corrupt refugee system

Well, how's this for confirmation of what most of us already knew.

Australia's Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, believes that most of those arriving by boat in Australia are economic migrants rather than refugees. He is therefore concerned that 90% are being granted refugee status:

Up to 90 per cent of people who arrive by boat are considered genuine refugees, but Senator Carr said his "impression" was that now, as arrivals spiked, most were economic migrants.

"They're people seeking an improvement in their economic circumstances, and therefore they've got to get into the regular migration stream," he said.

Senator Carr said immigrants who were not part of any ethnic or religious minority could not argue they were being persecuted in their home country.

"There have been boats where 100 per cent of them have been people who are fleeing countries where they're the majority ethnic and religious group," he said.

"I think it's unarguable that if someone is leaving a country and they are part of the majority religious and ethnic group, then they're not being persecuted in the way that the Refugee Convention describes."

So why are so many accepted as refugees? Part of the answer is that those on the refugee tribunals have been threatened with the sack if they reject too many claims. Also, refugee activists with a clear bias have been appointed to the tribunals. From 2010:

The two members of the Rudd Government’s Refugee Review Tribunal say they operate under a “culture of fear”, with their jobs under threat if they reject too many claims.

They believe two members have already lost their jobs for being too tough, and more could follow when the next round of appointments (and dumpings) are announced next month…

...the four-man panel which decides on RRT appointments includes a refugee activist with a conflict of interest.

John Gibson is also president of the Refugee Council of Australia and works as a lawyer for asylum seekers who are turned down by the RRT.

Here are some appointments from 2010 to the Refugee Review Tribunal:

There’s Charlie Powles, a Refugee and Immigration Law Centre solicitor, and Anthony Krohn, a Melbourne barrister who has worked for many asylum seekers and the Refugee Advice and Casework Service.

Add to them the director of the Brisbane Catholic Archdiocese’s Centre for Multicultural Pastoral Care; a solicitor for the refugee advocacy group Southern Communities Advocacy Legal Education Service; and a solicitor for Sydney’s Immigration Advice and Rights Centre.

Samantha Whybrow, who was recently a visa officer in Sri Lanka, was told in 2012 by a Regional Director not to worry if 90% of humanitarian applications were false "because the numbers are so small".

She believes that many visas were being granted on the basis of false information:

In my interviews with family members of people granted humanitarian visas (who were then applying for visas themselves) I asked why their family member had gone to Australia.
  
In a large number of cases I was provided with responses such as, “the gem business was not good”, “I don’t know”, “business was not good”, “our children are in Australia”, “Australia is giving visas for Sri Lankans”.

When I compared these statements with the statements the humanitarian visa recipient had made to officials in Australia I found extraordinary contradictions that lead me to strongly believe the (humanitarian) claim had been fabricated.

Let me repeat here what I think should happen with the refugee system. The current system, in which refugee applicants are resettled in Western countries, encourages economic migration. A better system would be for the wealthier nations in the world (and not just Western nations) to contribute to a central fund for refugees. This fund would be used to resettle refugees in those areas which are most similar to the refugees' country of origin in both ethnicity and living standard.

That would remove the incentive for economic migrants to claim refugee status and it would also avoid cultural dislocation for both the refugees and the members of the host society.

Sheridan on border protection failure

Greg Sheridan has written a lengthy article (registration required) about the boat people arriving in ever larger numbers in Australia. There are two interesting facts that he points to. The first is that the boats have become an organised Muslim channel of immigration to Australia:

This boatpeople phenomenon is essentially a determined Muslim immigration...A former senior officer of the Immigration Department spoke to me this week, on condition of anonymity, on the way the illegal immigration trade to Australia has become regularised, from Iran in particular. When he first got involved in this issue, Iranians and others would go to Malaysia, then on to Indonesia, and it would be months before they could find a people-smuggler. Now, he says, it is more often like a travel agent service, with everything arranged inside Iran.

Sheridan is concerned that this wave of Muslim immigration will bring to Australia ongoing security problems. So far there have been 40,000 boatpeople arrivals under Labour and this number will increase through family reunion. If you have 80,000 most will be law-abiding, but there will be some who will get involved in terrorism. The larger the overall number, the more difficult it becomes for the security organisations to control the situation.

The other interesting information that Sheridan provides are the unemployment numbers for the boat people. Most of those arriving are low-skilled and with poor English language skills. The rate of employment, even after five years, is abysmal:

The Immigration Department's figures, released last year, revealed that five years after arrival the rate of employment - not unemployment but employment - of Afghans was 9 per cent, while 94 per cent of Afghan households received Centrelink payments. From Iraq, 12 per cent were employed while 93 per cent of families received Centrelink payments. Overall, households that came under the humanitarian program had 85 per cent receiving Centrelink payments after five years. The family reunion cohort had 38%, and skilled migration 28 per cent.

Those are sobering figures. Even the skilled migration programme has 28% of families receiving Centrelink payments. But you can see how costly to the public purse the arrival of boat people really is: roughly 90% are unemployed even after five years in Australia. At the moment there are 3000 arriving every month or 36,000 per year. Of those 30,600 will require ongoing unemployment benefits. In just over three years there will be 100,000 requiring unemployment benefits, plus other family and rent assistance payments, plus the costs of education, health care and so on.

I should point out that even if the economic costs weren't so high traditionalists would still be opposed to mass, ongoing, diverse immigration. That's because we believe that the different ethnic and national traditions are important to preserve, and so we don't want them to be undermined by open borders.

Aussie Muslim: let us take over

Ibrahim Siddiq Conlon grew up as an Australian boy in country NSW and has a masters degree in architecture. He is also a convert to Islam who preaches for the establishment of an Islamic state in Australia:

ISLAMIC preacher Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon points heavenwards to emphasise his message for the governments of Australia -- there is no God but Allah and only his laws should be obeyed.

"My attack is on the Prime Minister of Australia," he said yesterday. "I hate the parliament in Canberra. I want to go straight for the jugular vein and advise the parliament that they have no right to legislate. They should immediately step down and let the Muslims take over."

An Australian-born convert to Islam, Siddiq-Conlon is the self-anointed leader of a group called Sharia4Australia, which is pushing for the introduction of sharia courts as a first step towards achieving Islamic law.

"One day Australia will live under sharia; it's inevitable," he said. "If they (Australians) don't accept it, that's not our problem. We hope, and our objective is to have a peaceful transition, but when you look at history that has never been the case. There's always been a fight. It is inevitable that one day there will be a struggle for Islam in Australia."

Here's some more:

IBRAHIM Siddiq-Conlon has a message for Australians, whether they want to hear it or not.

"One day Australia will be ruled by sharia, no doubt," he declares. "That is why non-Muslims are worried, because they know one day they won't be able to drink their beer, they won't be able to eat their pork and they won't be able to do their homosexual acts, because one day they know they will be controlled."

...Siddiq-Conlon is the face and voice of Sharia4Australia, a group formed in Sydney's southwest to agitate for Islamic law, starting with the introduction of sharia courts and ending, in his ideal world, with Islamic rule.

While he claims to eschew violence, he unapologetically preaches hate. An online video posted by his group describes its members as "uncompromising [in] their disallegiance, disloyalty and hate for the disbelievers".

"I hate the parliament. I hate [democracy] with a pure hate," he says. Moreover, it is obligatory for all Muslims to reject democracy, because it is a challenge to God's law: "They must hate it, speak out against it, and if that doesn't work, take action against it."

Siddiq-Conlon formed Sharia4Australia last year, styling himself as the new champion for Islamic law in Australia.

An online video announcing its emergence stated: "For far too long now Aust has been ruled by a corrupt evil infedile [sic] group of people who are clear disbelievers in the sight of Allah. It is time for change. Time at least for the truth.

"Today Muslim youth and the oppressed and weak Muslims march forward with their flags behind brother Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon. O Muslims stand tall, take the vow and pledge allegiance to none other than Allah and his Messengerorting and vowing allegiance w the Muslims while disloyalty to the disbelievers and their kufr [infidel] ways."

In person, Siddiq-Conlon initially seems harmless enough. He dresses in a white cotton tunic, trousers and sandals, with a neatly trimmed beard and a touch of black kohl eyeliner, in the style said to have been favored by the original companions of the Prophet Mohammed.

He is quietly spoken, polite and articulate ... He converted to Islam while a student, travelled to Indonesia, found a wife there, and returned to Australia...

"I'm an Aussie, I'm a full-bred Aussie, you can't get more Aussie than me," he insists.

But his proclaimed love for Australia is followed quickly by a prediction that, ultimately, Muslims here will have to fight for Islamic law. He doubts the struggle will begin in the next 10 or 20 years, but hopes it will occur in his lifetime. "People don't give up [their land without a fight]. There's always been a fight. It is inevitable that one day there will be a struggle for Islam in Australia. We don't shy away from it. Whether it means we get put in jail, kicked out of the country. If it means harm to us, so be it."

Nor does his disavowal of violence extend to Australian troops in Afghanistan, who he describes as "evil".

"Obviously I don't support the killing of innocent people, but these American and Australian troops have gone there to kill Muslims. What do they expect? Yes, they deserve to die. Under sharia, yes they do. That is the judgment of sharia. They are eligible to be attacked."

When you view his YouTube videos you are immediately struck by a sense of how religion and politics are intertwined in Islam. Living rightly for Ibrahim Siddiq Conlon means not only living modestly and in submission to God but also fighting, literally, for the establishment of Islamic political rule.

At the moment, the balance of forces is not favourable for Siddiq Conlon. The Muslim population of Australia is still too small for any realistic challenge to state power. But numbers are growing due to influxes of Muslim refugees from countries like Lebanon and Somalia. In 1971, there were 22,311 Muslims in Australia, by 2006 there were 340,400. A Melbourne suburb like Dallas already has a 40% Muslim population, in Auburn in Sydney it's 41%.

The current refugee policy is leading us into dangerous territory. The problem with the policy is that it does not attempt to resettle refugees in like countries. For instance, it would be better if refugees from the Middle-East were resettled in a like country in the Middle-East, one that was closest in terms of standard of living, religion and ethnic tradition.

The "like country" policy would immediately discourage economic refugees and it would more easily allow both assimilation and repatriation. And it would help non-Islamic countries such as Australia avoid a descent into future political turmoil at the hands of those agitating for sharia.

It's not impossible for the "like country" policy to gain traction. Even in Sweden, there are politicians who recognise (in private) that issues of assimilation have to be considered. One of the more interesting of the wikileaks was the revelation that the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, and the Migration Minister, Tobias Billström, met with the US Ambassador to Iraq in 2007 to try to put in place a system for returning Iraqis whose asylum applications had failed.

"Without rules and regulations for sending those without permits back, the immigration problem would be out of control in a country of 9 million inhabitants," Bildt allegedly said.

The ministers also spoke about several honour killings in Sweden, which led to demands from the Swedes to a stricter immigration policy.

Isn't that an admission that the numbers of refugees from countries with incompatible cultures needs to be limited? If even Swedish ministers can recognise this reality, then surely others can as well.

The Swedish Greens are up in arms about the wikileaks revelation and are threatening to report Bildt and Billström to various human rights committees, but you'd expect that from the Greens. The Green's spokeswoman prefers the status quo:

Ceballos said that the reasons that Bildt and Billström have referenced for limiting the number of Iraqi refugees should not be the deciding factors for the Swedish authorities.

"The Swedish National Migration Board should decide on the basis of each person's protection needs, not based on whether they are easy to integrate or whether they come from areas where honour-related violence occurs," she said.

Why can't their protection needs be met by resettling them in a like country? Why not at least try to harmonise protection needs with ease of integration? Isn't that the sensible, rational policy? To say "we'll take them regardless of whether we can integrate them" is hardly fair to the host population and is likely down the track to lead to a conflicted society.

And after the election?

During the recent Australian election campaign both major parties made a big effort to appear firm on border security. Presumably the focus groups were telling them that this was an issue of concern to voters.

And so PM Julia Gillard made statements like the following:

I don't support the idea of a big Australia... We need to stop, take a breath...

and

For people to say they're anxious about border security doesn't make them intolerant ... It means that they're expressing a genuine view that they're anxious about border security...

Former Labor leader Mark Latham wasn't buying it:

Former Labor leader Mark Latham has labelled Labor's position on population growth "a fraud of the worst order", saying immigration numbers must be slashed...

Ms Gillard's "sustainable" population call was not backed with any substance and was a "fraud" designed to appeal to western Sydney voters sensitive to the asylum seeker issue, Mr Latham said.

"It's clever politics but it's a fraud. It's a fraud of the worst order," he said.

Just a few months later, Latham has been proven correct. Gillard has announced two new policies on asylum seekers. The first is that women and children who arrive illegally won't live in detention centres but in the community. As has been pointed out in the media, this almost guarantees that anyone who arrives will stay. Once established in the community it becomes very difficult to reject asylum claims and to return people back to their own country.

The second new policy is even more significant. The Gillard Government, understandably, doesn't want people getting into boats to try to claim refugee status in Australia. So they are going to allow people who claim they are refugees from anywhere in Asia to be flown, at Australian taxpayers' expense, to an Australian processing facility:

The Federal Government has revealed its East Timor detention centre would see asylum seekers from across Asia able to apply to come to Australia.

The Opposition says the plan risks creating a regional dumping ground that would serve as a magnet for asylum seekers.

The secretary of the Immigration Department, Andrew Metcalfe, revealed in Senate Estimates that potential refugees who reached countries as far away as the Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand could apply to go to the proposed Timor centre.

Mr Metcalfe said Prime Minister Julia Gillard's "overarching concept is that there would be collective responsibility for displaced persons in the region" and they could send them to the centre to determine whether they were refugees.

"Therefore risking your life in getting on a boat would not occur and people smugglers would not be able to offer the automatic destination of Australia in terms of what they are selling," he said.

Mr Metcalfe was unable to say who would pay for the movement of asylum seekers about the region under the scheme, but indicated Australia would bear most of the burden.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said asylum seekers would take the view they had a new spread of countries from where they can access Australia. "They haven't thought through the magnet effect," he said. "They have comprehended that anybody who crosses the line is eligible for processing in East Timor.

"It creates a magnet and you are effectively extending Australia's migration zone to the borders of this region, wherever the hell this is."

Obviously there is going to be an upsurge in the number of people claiming refugee status in Australia. First, if you bring your wife and kids they will be placed in the community and will be almost guaranteed to be granted permanent residency. Second, you can apply from anywhere within Asia.

So, yes, the stance Gillard took on border security during the election was a fraud. That has become typical of Australian elections. Every few years the liberal political class has to appeal to the rank and file for support. And so we get a few weeks of politicians saying things they don't mean and won't follow through with.

We cannot rely on simply casting a vote to really change things - not when the major parties are committed to liberal political philosophies. We need to actively work to change the political culture, so that the people who put themselves forward for political leadership really do mean what they say when they talk about issues such as border security.

Which three countries take 90% of refugees?

I had an argument with a work colleague earlier this year. She was adamant that Australia did not take its fair share of refugees unlike countries like France.

Well, according to the UN there are 747,000 refugees requiring resettlement "in third countries". Last year, 112,400 were resettled. From the UN's website we learn that:

Currently, 90 per cent of all refugees resettled every year are accepted by the United States, Canada and Australia, while only 6 per cent go to Europe.

So just three Anglosphere countries are taking 90% of the refugees.

The refugee system is in need of radical reform. I'd like to propose three measures to create a better system:

a) Asylum seekers should only be offered places in countries with a similar standard of living. This would immediately screen out those who are merely economic migrants seeking a higher standard of living elsewhere and clogging up the system.

b) Asylum seekers should be placed in countries which are closest ethnically to their own. This would allow for easier assimilation. For example, would it make sense for white South African asylum seekers to be placed in a suburb of Beijing? No, because the South Africans would feel like strangers there and have trouble assimilating.

c) The costs of resettlement could primarily be borne by the wealthier, developed countries. But this should be done equitably. It should not just be the Western countries taking responsibility, but also wealthy countries elsewhere in Asia and the Middle-East.

I understand that my proposals aren't likely to be accepted by the Western elites. These elites seem to have a different agenda. For instance, a senior judge in the UK has decided that homosexuals claiming persecution in their home countries should be allowed to stay in the UK as they have a right to be "free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts and drinking exotically coloured cocktails".

It's true that homosexuals are persecuted in some countries. But the judge's decision means that anyone from these countries can migrate to the UK by claiming to be homosexual. The motivation could just as easily be to access the generous welfare payments in the UK or the higher standard of living.

The judge's decision is yet another step on the path to open borders. Under my proposals, there would still be an opportunity for resettlement, but without the inducements to large-scale economic migration.

Hat tip: NZ Conservative

Tamils & national allegiance

Last week I reported on the attempt of boatloads of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees to land in Australia. The refugees claimed emotionally that they had nowhere else to go. I asked why they couldn't go to their ancestral homeland, the nearby state of Tamil Nadu in India.

There have been some interesting further developments. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia has noted that the spokesmen for the Tamils speak English with a distinct American accent and have therefore probably resided recently in a Western country. He therefore doubts that there would be any problem with them returning to Sri Lanka.

One of the spokesmen, Alex, explained his accent by stating that he "worked at an American call centre in Chennai for three years where he was taught to speak with an American accent."

Where is Chennai? It is the city formerly known as Madras and is the capital city of Tamil Nadu in India!

So not only is it possible for "refugees" like Alex to live in Tamil Nadu, he admits that he has already done so. Furthermore, he was able to obtain work in Chennai, where the economy is booming (it's estimated that Chennai's economy will grow 250% over the next 16 years).

The picture to the left shows a shopping mall in Chennai. The photo below it shows one of the numerous software parks in the city.

The point is that Chennai is not an economic basket case, but has a rapidly modernising economy. Tamils like Alex have already been able to move there and work there and so there is no obvious reason why they shouldn't have patiently taken advantage of the growing economy in Chennai - rather than taking a gamble on paying smugglers to get to Australia instead.

Two journalists

In my previous post I also asked why mainstream journalists hadn't asked about the Tamil Nadu option. Well, two of them now have. Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne Herald Sun wrote:

Let’s presume (on little proof) that these educated and monied Tamils could not stay in Sri Lanka, and let’s ask where they could go instead. Well, just across a narrow strait from their island is the Tamil Nadu state of India, which is safe.

And Greg Sheridan of The Australian observed that:

Just being a Tamil does not make you a refugee. Moreover, if you are fleeing persecution as a Tamil in Sri Lanka, why wouldn't you go and live in Tamil Nadu, the giant Tamil state of India, just next door to Sri Lanka? India does not persecute people for being Tamils.

Although I give credit to Sheridan for writing openly about the issue, his piece does illustrate some of the problems with the political situation in Australia. Sheridan is amongst the most adventurous in venturing his opinions - but his views are still a long way from anything that might be considered conservative or traditionalist.

His basic argument is that continuing mass immigration is a great thing, but that the public will only accept it if the government maintains control over the process. Therefore, he thinks the Tamils should be made to go through normal channels of immigration rather than jumping the queue.

Why would he support mass immigration? Sheridan believes that most of the boat people arriving in Australia are not genuine refugees but illegal immigrants. However, he thinks the actions of the illegal immigrants are moral, even if politically unacceptable:

I make no moral criticism of the illegal immigrants. If I were living in Sri Lanka or Afghanistan and I could pay a people-smuggler $15,000 to get me to Australia, to enjoy everything from law and order and good weather to Medicare, Centrelink and good schools, I would make that effort.

But that understandable motivation does not make a person a refugee. I think Sri Lankans generally make excellent migrants to Australia. I have always favoured a larger immigration program and a larger refugee intake, but I want Australia to choose who it takes and to do so in an orderly way.

It doesn't occur to Greg Sheridan that someone might love their country enough to stay and work to improve the living conditions at home rather than simply packing their family up to move elsewhere.

Sheridan views nations as places you park yourself to enjoy the conditions of life. If the conditions of life seem better elsewhere, then, as an individual "economic man", you rationally choose to park yourself there instead.

There's no sense that nations are distinct entities with unique traditions to which we are more closely or more distantly connected. Little wonder, then, that Sheridan's understanding of the allegiance we owe to particular nations is so flimsy - or that he thinks it moral and reasonable for people to transport themselves to foreign cultures if, say, the welfare benefits or schools are better.

Our allegiance to our homeland shouldn't depend narrowly on the material conditions of life. What is more important is the love of our own enduring tradition, a sense of shared sacrifices through history and an appreciation of our own distinct culture.

And if the schools aren't as good as elsewhere? You work to improve them as part of a commitment to your own nation.

Bahrainis seek immigration reform

The Arab Gulf states have their own immigration problems. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have proposed a six year residency limit for foreign workers. The Bahraini labour minister believes that most of the foreign workers in his country cannot assimilate or adapt because of their cultural and social backgrounds. He recently complained that:

In some areas of the Gulf, you can't tell whether you are in an Arab Muslim country or in an Asian district. We can't call this diversity and no nation on earth could accept the erosion of its culture on its own land.

I can't fault the Bahraini minister for acting to conserve his own culture. However, the situation in the Gulf does raise some further questions.

For instance, if the Bahraini minister believes that non-Muslims cannot adapt or assimilate to an Arab Muslim culture, then the same difficulty of assimilation must also occur when Arab Muslims seek residence in foreign countries. If mutual adaptation or assimilation isn't possible in Bahrain, then why would it be possible in France or Finland?

Also, if the Gulf states are so dependent on foreign labour (there are currently 14 million foreign workers in the Gulf), and if this labour force is thought to be too foreign to assimilate or adapt, then why are Middle Eastern refugees being sent to all the way to the West rather than to the nearby Gulf states? The Gulf states are very wealthy and are very much in need of a more assimilable labour force. It would seem to be a good match.

Finding your way home

Thirty years ago Thao Nguyen's parents left Vietnam for Australia. The new country gave the family great opportunities and Thao rose above the ranks to become a corporate lawyer.

This would seem to be a copybook refugee success story. Yet, it doesn't work out exactly as those promoting open borders might expect it to. We are supposed to believe in all this that ethnicity doesn't matter and that people can be settled anywhere with equal prospects for success. Thao Nguyen herself, though, tells us something different.

Thao has written a column for the Sydney Morning Herald describing her return to Vietnam to work as an intellectual property lawyer. Despite the corruption and poverty she finds in Vietnam, she writes that it is her "dream" to live there because of what it means for her identity. It's clear too from her column that the opportunities given to her in the West haven't fostered a sense of gratitude or belonging. Instead, she presents herself as being an excluded outsider.

Here is Thao writing about her personal response to living in Vietnam:

For me, there is no detachment. I have returned to fill in the pockets of missing history, heritage and identity ...

Although she recognises problems in Vietnamese society, it doesn't affect her close identification with the country:

What I see as flaws through a Western liberal lens are part of the culture and the country, and I can't divorce these disappointments from my personal heritage. Undeniably it is a part of who I am. In many ways, I feel betrayed. Before my arrival I had a romanticised image of the motherland. Growing up with racism, along with social, economic and class exclusion, refugee kids create a haven in their minds. It is where they feel like they belong: the search for an elusive concept of home.

When I visit a floating fishing village in northern Vietnam that is surviving its struggle, I am in tears with pride. This nobility should also run through my veins.

I am finding answers to lifelong questions.

Another comment from Thao brought to mind Professor Putnam's recent claim that "an extraordinary achievement of human civilization is our ability to redraw social lines in ways that transcend ancestry". For Thao ancestry isn't a negative to be transcended, but something to be valued as a source of connectedness. Having spent a night at her family's village she writes:

I wake up renewed by the connection to the ancestry and mysticism that is essential to the Vietnamese spirit.

She finishes by describing her efforts to help a disabled Vietnamese man and his grandson into a taxi:

I pay for the cab but tailgate it until we reach the train station. They were finding their way home. So am I.

We are not interchangeable units. We have a connection to people and place, to a particular history and culture, which enriches our lives and anchors our identity. It is not a freedom but a misfortune to lose this connection.

Singer not so doctrinaire

Jill Singer is not as doctrinaire a leftist as I thought she was. First there was her comment late last year in support of traditional men:

Just as men hanker for women who are more gorgeous but less clever than themselves, women will generally keep seeking men who can provide for their family in material terms.

I hear many women complain they feel dudded in their relationships, that gender equality means women's workload is made unbearable by both work and home duties.

Their husbands apparently benefit from their wife's income but don't put in more at home themselves.

We're not just talking about caring for children, but old-fashioned domestic duties that men used to do such as household repairs. Sure, there are lots of good handymen out there, but they're not married to anyone I know.

Now she has written an article on the importance of our home country and culture and the dislocation of migrants living in a foreign land.

She begins her piece by quoting an ancient Indian text:

One of the paths to happiness, according to an ancient Indian text, is not to leave your homeland permanently.

The wisdom of this has struck me during my visit to Vietnam.

Singer joined a party of Vietnamese men and women and noted:

... it was remarkable to witness their love of country ... The people here are so enthusiastic about their culture and prosperity that I feel sympathy for the Vietnamese who were forced to make their lives elsewhere in the wake of the Vietnam War.

One of the Vietnamese women has a sister living in Sydney who wants to return home but won't because of her Australian born children. According to Singer,

The expatriate sister longs for her family in Vietnam, but her children are Australian.

She lives a life amputated from her culture.

Of those Vietnamese refugees who cannot return home because of "newly formed bonds" Singer writes:

They have gained new homes and new opportunities, but they are also missing out on so much.

Nor does Singer exclude her own kind from the appeal of native land and culture. She writes of those Australians who move overseas that:

Being an outsider can be exhilarating as a visitor, but can prove tiresome over time.

She tells us too that,

I have often dreamed of living elsewhere ... And then I think of being permanently away from home, friends and family, and the appeal quickly fades. Travel is a tonic, but home is a haven.

The conclusion Singer draws from all this is not a conservative one. She argues that refugees wouldn't lightly forsake their homelands and therefore should be judged as genuinely in need rather than as aspiring to a better lifestyle.

It's a pity Singer didn't draw the more obvious, albeit bolder, conclusion, namely that those claiming refugee status should be resettled in places most similar to their home country and culture. This would be an effective way to test whether refugee claimants are genuine, and it would also mean that genuine refugees would suffer the least degree of cultural dislocation.

To illustrate this point, consider the case of a white farmer driven out of Zimbabwe. Would he feel more at home resettled in rural Australia or in a suburb of Beijing? It would seem perverse to place him in Beijing, where both he and his children could never feel part of the mainstream. Yet the refugee policies in place today don't consider this issue, and claimants are resettled without consideration of their prospects for a cultural identity.

Finally, it's worth noting that Singer's article represents something of a return to a traditional view. Throughout European history exile from your homeland was considered an unfortunate fate. Dante wrote in The Divine Comedy of the exile that:

You will leave everything you love most:
this is the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots first. You will know how salty
another's bread tastes and how hard it
is to ascend and descend
another's stairs ...

In Njal's Saga (written in Iceland in the 1200s) the hero Gunnar is sent into exile for three years. As he is leaving, though, his horse stumbles, causing him to look homeward. He decides to stay, even though this will leave him an outlaw and lead to his death.

Finally, I'm reminded too of Elizabeth Fenton, who travelled with her husband to Australia in the 1820s. In the Arab ship she sailed on were two men, both exiles of a kind, whom she pitied. Of the first she wrote:

He makes me quite melancholy. He is English by name and complexion, but his tastes, manners, and his scruples, not to say his religion, are Arab. He is the son of a Scotch clergyman, but for many years has been leading his present life, trading between Muscat and Mozambique ... Poor fellow!

The second was from Greece:

Among this crowd there is, - Oh! sad to write it, - a Greek, a native of Athens, a Moslem now by adopted faith and practice. Little reckons he of past time; Marathon is no more to him than Mozambique. He would rather have a curry than all the fame of his ancestors.

So Jill Singer, in writing of love of homeland and the loss of exile, is contributing to a longstanding tradition within Western culture.