Numbers: A friend to all boat people
Part 1:Numbers
Number of asylum seekers who arrived last year: 4750
Number who arrived by boat: 179
Asylum seekers found at sea off Australia so far this year: 221
Percentage of asylum seekers who arrive by air: more than 95%
Thanks to Crikey Asylum seekers, the facts in figures
Part 2: Why are the numbers increasing in Australia?
Thanks to Crikey’s Pollytics blogger Why Andrew Bolt should be Sodomised with a Calculator – Part 142 for this graphic representation of the correlation of numbers of asylum applications in Australia and the rest of the industrialised nations – whether or not they have Pacific Solutions or Temporary Protection Visas!
(I am jealous of the figure!!!)
A possie in Aussie 
I always wonder how my fellow citizens feel about their world and found your site of interest. I am Australian but live in America for the past few years and every day am confronted by the consequences of poor immigration policies on the environment and social cohesion.
Australia though is different.
Looking at how other countries rate with their refugees and immigration and attempting to make parallels to other countries is poor. Making parallels to the policies of Australia and racism is tiring and misleading.
The most important part of Australia is to look after our environment. It is very fragile and the increase in immigration has not assisted in ensuring that our ecosystem is protected. Many scientists say that we are already overpopulated, many species of animals and plants which are of valuable scientific research are being wiped out directly as a result of the increase in population and the needs of water.
Don’t get me wrong. Immigration is important, it is vital to share new ideas and immigrants have had immense value to many nations and will continue to do so. It is just that policies should be created firstly with the needs of the country both economic and environmental before ideology.
Comment by Andrew — April 23, 2009 @ 12:09 am |
Hi Andrew
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
I agree that we must pay more atention to the environment when developing population policies, including migration.
When I published the comparison graph in this article it was not intended to imply that Australia should in any way match the numbers of asylum seekers in other industrialised nations, rather it was to illustrate that the increase in asylum seeker arrivals in Australia is reflecting the same pattern as arrivals across the world.
I did this in the hope of correcting the assumption that the increase in arrivals has been ’caused’ by the Rudd government’s asylum policies.
Comment by nayano — April 23, 2009 @ 7:59 am |
Nayano, I apologize if I came overly harsh then. I totally see your point. I was looking at many of the items in the blog especially the comic and shot first and asked questions later.
I do worry that as Australia opens the door to more asylum seekers then more take the risks deemed necessary to come to Australia. As you have mentioned though Australia never really has so it hasn’t been an issue on that front until now.
The massive amounts of immigrants that come by plane on the other hand…
Comment by Andrew — April 23, 2009 @ 12:13 pm |
Hi Andrew
I realise that I take a risk with the ‘humour’ on my blog. But that is a reflection of me – deathly concern with human rights, and love of a joke.
Nayano
Comment by nayano — April 23, 2009 @ 5:54 pm |
Hi Nayano
This blog post is as relevant today as it was last year.
The conservatives are bad enough, but we also need for the Government and the State Premiers to show a bit of backbone and really take on the crazies and xenophobes and defend the rights of people to seek asylum and refugee status when fleeing from oppression and war, and explain that 2,000 asylum seekers in 2009 or even 10,000 or 20,000 will not ‘take over’ (in their shabby words) a nation of 23 million people.
Wayne
Comment by waynemlburns — March 25, 2010 @ 1:53 pm |
Exactly 🙂
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Comment by migration agent — June 15, 2014 @ 12:40 am |