Culturally similar = they're all dirty, dusky musulmen.

Karnal wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 10:56pm:


You don't say?  You wouldn't get any of that sort of division here - were all one big happy tribe.

Saudi has nearly total 80,000 Iraqi refugees and 300,000 Palestinian refugees in their population, which is by far more than Australia's total refugee population. Yet Saudi has fewer citizens than Australia.

After the war, a much larger refugee program was commenced as Australia launched an ambitious immigration program to meet labour shortages in a growing economy. In July 1947, the Australian Government entered into an agreement with the new International Refugee Organisation to settle displaced people from camps in Europe. In the next seven years, Australia welcomed more than 170,000 refugees, the largest groups being from Poland, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
To meet the needs of the refugees and other migrants, ship-board English classes were established (the precursor of the modern Adult Migrant English Program), army camps were converted to migrant hostels for on-arrival accommodation and the Good Neighbour Council was established to foster and coordinate volunteer settlement support. In the following two decades, the overwhelming majority of refugees were Eastern Europeans fleeing persecution in Soviet Bloc countries. Numbers of humanitarian arrivals increased substantially after the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact countries’ invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the early 1970s, the refugee intake began to diversify. In 1972, 198 Asians expelled by Uganda’s President Idi Amin were settled. Humanitarian settlement from Chile commenced the following year after a military coup deposed the Allende Government. Cypriot refugees began arriving after the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus in 1974 and the 1975 war in East Timor brought 2,500 evacuees to Darwin, marking the beginning of a Timorese refugee diaspora in Australia.

The fall of the South Vietnamese Government in Saigon in April 1975 began a chain of events which prompted a rethinking and reorganisation of Australia’s refugee program. The mass flight of Vietnamese refugees into nearby countries prompted an international response to which Australia committed support. By late 1975, the first 400 Vietnamese refugees had been selected by Australia for resettlement from camps in Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Over the next two decades, Australia was to resettle more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees from various Asian countries. Only a small proportion, around 2000, came directly to Australia by boat to seek asylum. The first to arrive were five Vietnamese refugees who reached Darwin Harbour in a 17 metre fishing vessel. Another 55 boats followed in the ensuing six years.

In the early 1980s, the refugee program expanded to an annual intake of up to 22,000, the largest annual intake in 30 years and a level not seen since. Vietnamese refugees settled from camps in Asia made up the bulk of new arrivals, with significant numbers of refugees also from Laos, Cambodia and Eastern Europe and smaller groups of Soviet Jews, Chileans, El Salvadorians, Cubans and members of ethnic minorities from Iraq (Assyrians, Armenians and Chaldeans).

A milestone in Australia’s refugee intake: 750,000 since Federation

According to the best estimates available, 2009-10 was the year in which Australia, since becoming an independent nation, passed the 750,000 mark in its intake of refugees and humanitarian entrants. From Federation in 1901 until 1948, no official statistics were kept of refugee settlement. However, research published by the Australian Parliamentary Library estimated that Australia received 20,000 refugees in this period. From July 1948 to June 1977, Australia received 269,266 assisted humanitarian arrivals, as well as another 33,000 unassisted humanitarian arrivals, according to DIAC estimates. Since the modern Refugee and Humanitarian Program began in 1977, Australia has received 392,538 offshore refugee and humanitarian entrants and has issued 42,714 onshore protection visas.

... According to the best estimates available, 2009-10 was the year in which Australia, since becoming an independent nation, passed the 750,000 mark in its intake of refugees and humanitarian entrants.

True Colours wrote on Apr 9^th, 2014 at 12:14am:


You seem to have conveniently ignored the fact that  ... Quote: