Boat people: this is what you are "anxious" about
This week refugees, boat people and population growth have hit the headlines again. But what are the boat people statistics compared to the rest of the Australian population?
Federal
Jul 6, 2010
This week refugees, boat people and population growth have hit the headlines again. But what are the boat people statistics? See this fascinating infographic created by Robert Corr, with each unit representative of 2000 people.
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30 thoughts on “Boat people: this is what you are “anxious” about”
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Ooh – Red Dots! Does this mean they’re communists as well as islamic fanatics?
Yeah but they double in population every year so by 2020 we’ll be drowning in them unless we drown them first VOTE 1 ANDREW BOLT
Great graphic – smart campaign. But it doesn’t compare apples with apples. If it was the green dots represented Australia’s natural birth rate, fair enough, but this represents an annual intake of refugees and migrants versus population. The tow are not the same measures.
Regardless of your view on this issue, we should be prepared to view the argument from relevant statistics, not manufactured ones.
Have a look at this graphic here. It shows it against the natural increase in the Australian population. Apples and apples.
Come in legally and i don’t have a problem, come here in a boat pretending to be a refugee, throw away your ID and who knows who you are? Go home!
Thank EM – that makes for a much more reasonable comparison.
Christmas Island is 2612 km from Perth, 1996 km from Broome, 2745 km from Darwin, 4949 from Melbourne, 4305 from Adelaide, 5308 from Sydney, 5293 from Brisbane. Ashmore Island is 2308 km from Perth, 637 from Broome, 856 from Darwin, 3585 from Melbourne, 2974 from Adelaide, 3736 from Sydney and 3557 from Brisbane.
If Julia Gillard actually thinks we on the mainland of Australia can see these boats “looming over the horizon” to “give us fears” then she is living in fantasy land.
Of course the people on Christmas Island see them “looming” over the horizon but they have never shown the least bit of fear for the Afghans, Sri Lankans, Iraqis, Iranians, Palestinians and Kurds who do arrive and they must laugh out loud at our ridiculous whining so far away.
Unless Gillard has long distance eyesight the likes of which superman would kill for she is talking racist crap and I wish the major parties would stop blowing the dog whistles and flat out lying about asylum seekers – it is not illegal, the don’t need papers and they should not ever be jailed like we do.
Australia helped to write the refugee convention in 1951 because we turned away Jewish refugees in 1938 to protect the white Australia policy, do we want a re-run with Afghans and Iraqis fleeing wars we started being todays jews sent home to slaughter and genocide?
Can’t we just drown Blot? That’s at least taking real action on population.
Shepherdmarilyn to thread.
The more compassionate and reasonable of us towards refugees in this country are done for, without a foul-mouthed militant with the bottle to verbally devour the Prime Minister where she stands.
I don’t have a problem with the original graphic, as it shows how the influx of migrants of all kinds increases the Australian population — in a small chunk relative to the overall population base as opposed to it being some sort of massive invasion.
Even the second graphic people are pointing to shows what a minor issue we’re talking about. Of all the migrants, only 1 on 60-odd is a refugee who arrived via boat.
What I do have a problem with is people doing what Johnfromplanetearth just did: refer to asylum seekers as somehow illegal.
Everyone has the right to seek asylum in another country, no matter how they choose to travel. There is nothing illegal whatsoever in choosing to seek asylum, or in choosing to travel by boat. It only becomes illegal if the application for asylum / refugee status fail and you then do not leave. At that point you have overstayed your visa. But of course the vast majority of asylum seekers, however they arrive, are found to be genuine refugees.
To characterise the people in boats as “pretending to be a refugee” is, in my opinion, obscene.
Of course the median visa-overstayer is an Irish male in his mid- to late-20s working in a call centre –but we don’t send the armed forces down to Bondi to “turn back the backpackers”. Why is that?