Do you imagine Muslims - or migrants/refugees - come only to Australia? Most Western countries who are members of various international organisations (and have good living standards and mostly a well-developed welfare system in place) are obliged to take in a quantum of humanity which is displaced or can prove that they are not just economic migrants. Needless to say, there are countless people, who are upstanding citizens in those countries who are prepared to sell their services to find loopholes to circumvent that description.
Initially Western countries came together just after WWII to make it easier for the many European refugees, who had lost everything, including nationality/state (my late husband was 'state-less', even though he was born a few km east of Vienna, but suddenly his native country was part of the Eastern bloc and his family found itself in Vienna).
This is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
The Convention was approved at a special United Nations conference on 28 July 1951. It entered into force on 22 April 1954. It was initially limited to protecting European refugees from before 1 January 1951 (after World War II), though states could make a declaration that the provisions would apply to refugees from other places. A 1967 Protocol removed the time limits and applied to refugees "without any geographic limitation", but declarations previously made by parties to the Convention on geographic scope were grandfathered in.[3] (Although, like many international treaties, the Refugee Convention was agreed in Geneva,[4] it is incorrect to refer to it as "the Geneva Convention," because there are four treaties regulating armed conflict known as the Geneva Conventions.)
Denmark was the first state to ratify the treaty on 4 December 1952. As of July 2013 there were 145 parties to the Convention, and 146 to the protocol.[1][2][5] Most recently, the President of Nauru, Marcus Stephen, signed both the Convention and the Protocol on 17 June 2011[6][7] and acceded on 28 June 2011. Madagascar and Saint Kitts and Nevis are parties only to the Convention, while Cape Verde, the United States of America and Venezuela are parties only to the Protocol.
In the meantime we have had many more wars and conflicts, and in some of the major ones Australia, as an enthusiastic ally of the Americans was also involved, hence refugees gravitated here.
I am as concerned as you are about a group of people who have a faith belonging to the Middle Ages and who on the whole show little willingness to integrate (by he same token, one could say, they probably feel frightened now and stay apart and amongst themselves).
But I also feel, in hindsight and having studied the history of my own country, that what is happening here and on many other sites and in private conversations, is a kind of targeted propaganda which paints all Muslims as possible assassins, not to be trusted, 'breeding like rabbits', welfare recipients - in short accuses them of a parasitic existence at our cost, seems to ready us all for a concerted and possibly violent reaction against them. Study history and you'll know what I mean.
All we need and should do is make laws, which should stipulate only so many members of a family can be brought in, only so much welfare per family be paid (in some cases it is little enough) and get their religious leaders to do an Australian citizenship course first, with work exposure, if possible to Australian mates, or at least values. God knows there are many charitable organisations who are in need of help.
Denmark (the first country to sign that convention) has recently toughened its laws for immigrants. We should do the same.
In the meantime lets see to it, that our own young don't get any more drug-addicted, violent, lawless than they already are and that not more women are killed in domestic violence. The statistics speak for themselves, if you care to look them up, but no, you just read and listen to the sensationalist media who are in need of a daily story to feed our adrenalin addiction.
On an international level we need to stop wars and not fuel them, do something about the 20 million refugees still sitting in African or Middle Eastern refugee camps, many of them women and children, because the men are either dead or decided to abandon their families.
But it's all in the 'too hard basket' so it's easier to vent and inflame and accuse.
Have a great day in a country which is safe, has good laws, good citizens, good administrative services, but middling and meddling politicians who have only one thing in mind, how to keep their own gravy train going - not all of them, to be sure, but very little true leadership or problem-solving capacity. IMO
Please, any of you, young and energetic enough and feel they can contribute to our political life, please do so. I am too old to try, but still work once a week as a volunteer, because I feel I need to contribute in some way to this wonderful country.
go well
Taurisk
