(no subject)

[aesmael]

It's a funny thing being an immigrant. If you get a job you are awful for taking jobs away from fine, upstanding members of [nationality], but if you have no job you are a worthless drain on welfare sucking the system dry. If you are a person of colour you do not even have to be an immigrant.

Comments

[lost-angelwings.livejournal.com]

Yus :( I rly hate this catch-22 >:O Ultimately it boils down to them just wanting immigrants to be gone period :(

[pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com]

Especially outrageous in places where the ancestors of said people violently displaced a previous population...

(Which is actually just about everywhere, if you go far back enough, but for North America and Australia this was so bloody recent! How do people get that dense?!)

This Land was Your Land (But now it's mine)

[osakadensetsu.livejournal.com]

This land is yourmy land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest suburbs to the Gulf Stream waters petrol drilling platforms
This land was made for youme and me.

As I went walking driving my SUV that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for youme and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While All around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for youme and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling driving my SUV
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fogsmog wasn't lifting,
This land was made for youme and me.

This land is yourmy land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest suburbs to the Gulf Stream waters petrol drilling platforms
This land was made for youme and me.

[floorcandy.livejournal.com]

It's kind of sad to think that there are still people around who seem to think that the White Australia Policy of all those years ago was actually a pretty neat idea.

"...for we are young and free"?

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

I have a friend in Sydney who is OK until she's under too much stress, and then suddenly she becomes incredibly (and generically) racist!? And then it's "Asians this" and "Asians that". Very odd, because when I ask her about this she clams up.

But you are very right about the double standard. Maybe it just reflects financial insecurity?

[taraxoxo.livejournal.com]

I am sorry, but I do blame Howard for all these type of problems, both because of his racism and his 'worthless drain on welfare' ideology. Howard was the worst PM we ever had.

[kales85.livejournal.com]

:/ That awful way of thinking I never could understand people having.. it's so illogical. Most of the 'immigrants' they talk of are people who have been there for multiple generations already too :o. Multiculturalism in a country is great and adds so much, this drain stuff :/ nonsense. People love to blame others for everything

[pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com]

Well, there is a complicating factor.

(Not that I am in any way advocating racism or monocultarlism.)

In Australia's particular case, what looks like a resource-rich and wide-open land, isn't. It's actually capable of supporting only a very small population in the long term; the stable carrying capacity of the land is astonishingly low. You can't even treat farming, forestry and fishing as renewable resources there. In effect, harvesting any organic material in Australia amounts to mining it. That is, it's a nonrenewable resource.

So...really, *any* population increase there is a bad idea. Coming purely from the standpoint of ecology.

[osakadensetsu.livejournal.com]

Easy fix, just stop making babies. ; )

I know Japan faces a similar situation with very little natural resources and generally negative public reactions towards immigration. Though in their case the population growth rate is actually negative, and the population is rapidly aging (and life expectancy is increasing as well), so they NEED the immigrants to take their jobs (and will continue to do so until something changes). (Of course, this is also why robotics is so big in Japan.) Though, I imagine it's not nearly that case in Australia still has a positive growth rate.

But then the whole world is pretty overpopulated...

[osakadensetsu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it doesn't matter what they do. Those immigrants are always screwing up the world in some way or another.