Wednesday 21 October 2009

"Balancing security with compassion"

Says the editor of the The Australian on 18th October in its editorial "Balancing security with compassion"
We have a proud tradition of welcoming refugees who have in turn strengthened the civic and economic fabric of the nation. Tens of thousands fled here from the Great Irish Famine in the late 1840s, including thousands of orphans. The 35,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution who arrived from the 1930s onwards, and their children, have made vast contributions to Australian business and intellectual life. So have many others, including more than 100,000 Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians who arrived in the 1970s and 80s
Indeed (though what of the Chinese who were 20% of arrivals to 2002?  Oh well, let’s not quibble, the judgment’s about right, overall).   As the Australian government says:
Since 1945, around 6.9 million people have come to Australia as new settlers. Their contribution to Australian society, culture and prosperity has been an important factor in shaping our nation.
Sure.  But what’s the catch here?  The catch is the belief that the past will be replicated in the future.  There’s a trust -- or perhaps it's a desperate hope -- that it will.  But will it? 
In Europe and the UK, the large number of Muslim immigrants in recent years has got to the stage where it’s past the euphemism of a “challenge” and is openly talked of as a “problem”.  Rather than assimilating or even just integrating into society, they have been dis-assimilating in recent years (Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Christopher Caldwell, Doubleday, 2009, p 133).  Rather than marrying more into the local population, Muslim populations in Europe are increasingly marrying in their home countries.  For example, the Turkish population in Germany has been there for 50 years, yet fully 90% of Germans of Turkish descent marry back in Turkey (ibid p 225).  This is a mark of a group that has no intent to become part of its host country.  This trend is accompanied by an increase in the Islamic piety of succeeding generations, and hence of hewing to classic Islam, promoting Sharia law and pressing for the spread of Islam throughout the world.  All these trends are inimical to the values of the west.  They are inimical to tolerance, free speech, equal rights for women, minorities, gays, and we “infidelds”.
What is happening in Australia in recent years has been a massive increase in the proportion of Muslim arrivals.  Monash figures: 12% from 2000 to 2002.  Immigration department figures: 12.5% for the same period then… 80% from Iraq and 92% of all arrivals were Muslims from June ’08 to June ’09.  That’s right: 92% of our immigrants in the year to June were Muslims.   This is happening without even a word, not a word, let alone a discussion, in the Aussie media.
So, I wrote a letter to The Australian, in response to their editorialBalancing security with compassion”.  No chance they’ll carry it, as it’s too politically incorrect.  I wonder when we will wake up and admit we’re making a problem, not just a “challenge”, for ourselves and our kids:
Why should we be non-discriminatory in our immigration policy?  (“Balancing security with compassion”, 17-18/10)  Surely we don’t allow immigration by those hewing to racist, intolerant or supremacist ideologies. Would we allow into Australia members of neo-Nazi parties, the Ku Klux clan or the White Aryan Resistance?  
Why then do we allow unchecked immigration for those hewing to the Islamic ideology?   In the UK and Europe, majorities or large minorities of Muslims, in poll after poll, express support for the supremacy of Islam over the west and for the implementation of Sharia law with its draconian punishments of women, homosexuals and social drinkers.   (Not to mention preferential killing of  we “infidels”) What is there to suggest Muslim attitudes in Australia would be any different, apart from wishful thinking and a misguided sense of our “compassion”?  Our children will not thank us, when Sharia becomes law of the land.

Australian press considers issue of Islamic immigration


References:
Monash University:  People and Place, Katherine Betts, MUP, 2002
Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship.  Key Facts in immigration.