>I think it's probably fair to say that migrants to Australia have brought
>their own troubles with them. Little things like smallpox.
The common cold was more of a problem here - I know that smallpox
decimated the indigenous population of South America in the first
years of the Conquest but I'm not sure how much of an impact it had
in Australia.
I really wanted to say that contemporary urban Australia has been
heretofor a fairly successful example of a multicultural society.
Which is not to gloss that there have been tensions; but I can't
think of a racially driven social crisis caused by immigrants,
whether asylum seekers or legitimate migrants, in the past few
decades despite the fact, for example, that Melbourne has the largest
Greek population outside Athens, or the huge number of Vietnamese who
live here, many coming as boat people after the Vietnam war.
I think something fundamental in public discourse changed with
Hanson's statements about Asians; a smouldering sense of
dispossession and resentment which was mainly (but by no means
solely) evident in rural Australia suddenly had a focus; there was
for example a sudden increase in racial abuse of Vietnamese and
Chinese Australians. Now that resentment, which is not in itself
illegitimate, has another focus in the mainly Middle Eastern asylum
seekers who are the new boat people, and that's fanned by the fear of
the War Against Terror. It's much easier to make mistrust than to
undo it, and I worry now that the kinds of peaceful co-existence that
exist now are seriously threatened by this racially-driven discourse.
To put it in perspective: 50,000 migrants are accepted each year
mainly from the UK and NZ, as compared to the 8000 "boat people" who
arrived last year. There are estimates the 10,000 Britons overstay
their visas and stay on as illegal immigrants each year. But this
never makes the headlines as a problem.
Best
Alison
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Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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