Immigration Restrictions

[brendan]

But we are talking Australians vs non-Australians. You are asking us to care more about a total stranger in Northern Queensland than a total stranger in Indonesia.

Yes, I am.

That's not so different from being asked to care more about a person because he is black than because he is white.

It is very different, I am basing my criterion for 'care' on the geographic and political borders, not on race.

How is the place of your birth, any less morally arbitrary than your race?

[BA22]

But we are talking Australians vs non-Australians. You are asking us to care more about a total stranger in Northern Queensland than a total stranger in Indonesia.

Yes, I am.

That's not so different from being asked to care more about a person because he is black than because he is white.

It is very different, I am basing my criterion for 'care' on the geographic and political borders, not on race.

Thats not better, it's exactly the same, haha

[mark_alec]

How is the place of your birth, any less morally arbitrary than your race?

Birthplace != residence.

[brendan]

How is the place of your birth, any less morally arbitrary than your race?

Birthplace != residence.

Pr(Birthplace country = country of residence | Poor) = high

Even then, your nationality is just as morally arbitrary as your race.

[enwiabe]

I think the problem with immigration in Australia lies not with the people coming in, but with our shitty integration policy. We shove them in with each other (Vietnamese in one area, Africans in another, Middle-Eastern elsewhere) and give them barely any support. Then we wonder why there are so many Vietnamese immigrants 1st and even 2nd generation trafficking drugs. It's not because they're Vietnamese, it's because they're in a fucked up socio-economic situation and this is an act of desperation to get out of it. Their migrant parents barely speak a lick of English and the tutelage services to help them are utter crap.

You then see the violence of some members of the African community. Again, it's not because they're African, it's because the government hasn't worked out that you need to spend the fucking time and money to form these communities into functioning sections of Australian society.

If you want to trace back the problem of immigration of various peoples, look no further than the ignorance of the government. It fucking disgusts me.

[Mao]

Just because Brendan makes an argument, doesn't mean that anyone who disagrees with it (say through "applauding karma") has to "not understand it". We understand it perfectly fine.

that was not what was implied. read the message. we are saying those who agree with you dont understand the issue at hand properly and are jumping to conclusions with vested interest just like you.

We just think its total shit. Just because you dont think its total shit doesnt mean that we cant think so. His argument last night was PATHETIC in APPLICATION but applaudable in PRINCIPLE. However when people continue to fail to recognise that there are clear distinctions between a utopia and reality, that shits me because people are worth more than a number. These are lives we are dealing with and to say [quote the thread title] "Why the poor don't deserve government life support"  (and no thats not the title of the article) disgusts me and the whole idea of that sickens me and maybe thats why Brendan got so much opposition last night. Because we can put up with oh so much economic rambling and pointless links... but when you talk about morals and what is right and wrong, people stand up and want to be heard because they DISAGGREE.

Im so sick of you saying that everytime people oppose Brendans ideas that we "misunderstand him". We understand him fine. You underestimate the minds of the people on this site. WHY DONT U GET IT THAT WE JUST DONT AGREE WITH HIM.

Its like you will only be happy once eveyrone agrees with him because HE MUST BE RIGHT BECAUSE HE IS BRENDAN and if we dont agree with him we simply MISUNDERSTAND him and we have it out for him
for fucks sake

and we dont agree with brendan because he must be right, we agree with him because he is right.

what shits me is that people think with a construct, they fail to recognise there is more than one option, and just because their own predefined moral may make something wrong, they really are just fooling themselves.

it is people like Brendan who can make progress, not a racist idiot like you who base their morality of people based simply on who they prefer as neighbours. Your double standard disgust me, when it boils right down to it, does a poor white man deserve a feed more than a starving black family? and here you argue for reality? The reality is far more real than you can possibly think, and in your little safe paradigm where you choose and pick who you want, your morality is baseless.

and here stands the public who lobby for "fair go" and "mateship", someone care to say "hypocrisy"?

[Mao]

I think the problem with immigration in Australia lies not with the people coming in, but with our shitty integration policy. We shove them in with each other (Vietnamese in one area, Africans in another, Middle-Eastern elsewhere) and give them barely any support. Then we wonder why there are so many Vietnamese trafficking drugs. It's not because they're Vietnamese, it's because they're in a fucked up socio-economic situation and this is an act of desperation to get out of it. Their migrant parents barely speak a lick of English and the tutelage services to help them are utter crap.

You then see the violence of some members of the African community. Again, it's not because they're African, it's because the government hasn't worked out that you need to spend the fucking time to form these communities into functioning sections of Australian society.

If you want to trace back the problem of immigration of various peoples, look no further than the ignorance of the government. It fucking disgusts me.

the integration policy cannot work [no matter how good it is] when the population does not accept the migrants.
that is evidently seen here...

[enwiabe]

Yes I agree. But that's part of integration policy, educating the populace to be more tolerant and welcoming of newcomers. I've seen so many 2nd generation+ Aussies go up to immigrants who speak poor English and say 'LEARN OUR LANGUAGE!!11 OR GET OUT!!11' as if they think the poor people would pass up the chance to learn to speak good English if they could. It's that kind of stupid bullshit that makes my stomach turn. Because they feel alienated, their kids grow up in an insular environment and things get fuckered up. That's how you get the degradation of migrant communities. It just makes you want to hit your head against a wall several times, it's that frustrating.

Shit needs changing here.

[BA22]

yeh

The onus has to be on them to some point to adapt, otherwise the government is accused of assimilation. There's no way to resolve the immigration debate to everyone's satisfaction.

People are also stupid. They assume because a person does not speak english, they simply don't want to. They are then vilified by ignorant individuals whose grandparets/parents might not have even spoken english until they got here.

My sociology tutor reckons we should stop all immigration into Australia because we lack the water and food reserve capacities to facilitate them. I am so glad were done with sociology tutes

[brendan]

My sociology tutor reckons we should stop all immigration into Australia because we lack the water and food reserve capacities to facilitate them.

there's your reason why he/she isnt an economics tutor. lack of understanding of how resources are allocated

[enwiabe]

BA22, I agree with you, they should make the effort. But often you get people coming over in their adult life and it's so hard to pick up a language as difficult as English then. You can't feel anything but sympathy for their efforts. And look, if they TRY to speak English, that's good enough for me. And even if they don't, we should really try to be understanding. You'll find the adaptation occurs pretty quickly in the next generation of children. The child grows up to learn fluent English and then integration can really start to work. Unfortunately, because they are mainly influenced by parents and other members of their community who have been alienated by the wider Aussie community, they don't get the chances/opportunities to really integrate. And so you get them falling into bad trends like violence and drugs. In some cases it can be really heartbreaking. I really hope that changes.

[Collin Li]

We just think its total shit. Just because you dont think its total shit doesnt mean that we cant think so. His argument last night was PATHETIC in APPLICATION but applaudable in PRINCIPLE. However when people continue to fail to recognise that there are clear distinctions between a utopia and reality, that shits me because people are worth more than a number. These are lives we are dealing with and to say [quote the thread title] "Why the poor don't deserve government life support"  (and no thats not the title of the article) disgusts me and the whole idea of that sickens me and maybe thats why Brendan got so much opposition last night. Because we can put up with oh so much economic rambling and pointless links... but when you talk about morals and what is right and wrong, people stand up and want to be heard because they DISAGGREE.

Im so sick of you saying that everytime people oppose Brendans ideas that we "misunderstand him". We understand him fine. You underestimate the minds of the people on this site. WHY DONT U GET IT THAT WE JUST DONT AGREE WITH HIM.

Its like you will only be happy once eveyrone agrees with him because HE MUST BE RIGHT BECAUSE HE IS BRENDAN and if we dont agree with him we simply MISUNDERSTAND him and we have it out for him
for fucks sake

and we dont agree with brendan because he must be right, we agree with him because he is right.

what shits me is that people think with a construct, they fail to recognise there is more than one option, and just because their own predefined moral may make something wrong, they really are just fooling themselves.

it is people like Brendan who can make progress, not a racist idiot like you who base their morality of people based simply on who they prefer as neighbours. Your double standard disgust me, when it boils right down to it, does a poor white man deserve a feed more than a starving black family? and here you argue for reality? The reality is far more real than you can possibly think, and in your little safe paradigm where you choose and pick who you want, your morality is baseless.

and here stands the public who lobby for "fair go" and "mateship", someone care to say "hypocrisy"?

Not going to comment on this yet, but just so people don't actually misunderstand my original post, I never said Brendan's actual policies were misunderstood, I said his style of debating is.

People simply don't realise the pitfalls of some of the logically fallacious arguments that are being put forward. Originally it was when Brendan made heaps of links to Wikipedia's articles on logical fallacies that caused a lot of misunderstanding. In this case it was a misunderstanding on why Brendan was allowed to evade the question he was asked - was it relevant to policy-making? Would it have an external effect on any other parties? No, then it's none of your business.

[bubble sunglasses]

 agree with the recent posts. also people might not have english proficiency as a top priority. when I was in France, there were lots of Anglophone people I knew who just spoke English; I wanted to speak French at every opportunity, but that was just a personal preference and personal preferences aren't of much value in debates

[Mao]

Yes I agree. But that's part of integration policy, educating the populace to be more tolerant and welcoming of newcomers. I've seen so many 2nd generation+ Aussies go up to immigrants who speak poor English and say 'LEARN OUR LANGUAGE!!11 OR GET OUT!!11' as if they think the poor people would pass up the chance to learn to speak good English if they could. It's that kind of stupid bullshit that makes my stomach turn. Because they feel alienated, their kids grow up in an insular environment and things get fuckered up. That's how you get the degradation of migrant communities. It just makes you want to hit your head against a wall several times, it's that frustrating.

Shit needs changing here.

exactly. The migrants cannot integrate because they have no contact environments to integrate into. they cannot learn the language properly because in they are forced into their secular communities by arrogance and ignorance of the general public.

few migrants have the chance to integrate properly, and it took a darn lot of effort and even distancing oneself from their original culture [i was such a case].
and the racism is ongoing, even teachers recieve constant racist remarks from their students and respective parents, and that absolutely disgust me [my English teacher gets abused often for being Indian, even though he is very abled and probably teach a lot better than most teachers at my school]

Costa's behaviour is a typical case of where the teaching of equality, tolerance and acceptance of multiculturalism has failed. even though he himself came from a migrant family, it doesnt seem he has taken it on board how much this opportunity means to people

immigration may have an adverse impact on welfare, but we are talking about opportunities and freedom: by the same argument, we are talking about lives here, what makes one person more deserving than another?


Whilst is it nice to hope that a nation can clear the poverty line entirely [whenever that is], why should that be done at opportunities of education and employment for unskilled migrants? this arrogance is presented by the same population against "elitism" (see recent arguments on select-entry schools), yet the very elitist scheme is being presented here: "we will look after ourselves so we can be better off, and then we'll worry about the rest later when we feel like"

anyone care to say "hypocrisy"?

[droodles]

agree with the recent posts. also people might not have english proficiency as a top priority. when I was in France, there were lots of Anglophone people I knew who just spoke English; I wanted to speak French at every opportunity, but that was just a personal preference and personal preferences aren't of much value in debates

this bloody country isnt putting much into being multilingual, its so fucking shit. grosse putain de merde salope enculer conard salaud