Much ado about nothing - the myth of immigration numbers

As Australia's politicians gear themselves for the upcoming election on the 21st August, one of the main issues has been immigration. Of course, a majority of the public believes that there's too much immigration and for all the usual groundless stereotypes of 'they're taking away our jobs' etc. and 'they get special treatment to services'.

I was suprised to see that the numbers of immigrants to Australia is currently at 170,000 a year, which is the highest they've ever been. However, when looking at the numbers of arrivals as a percentage to the Australian population at the time, the level of immigration has significantly dropped from the 1950s-1970s period. Still, numbers have been steadily increasing ever since the lows of the early 1990s when the net migration total was as low as 30,000 per year. What is suprising about this is that during the past 15 years most of the Australian political discourse on immigration has been overwhelming slanted at cutting numbers, however in practice, that has not been the case. So we have a situation, not unique to Australia I might add, of politicians rather publicly saying immigration should be and will be slashed but secretly, away from public view, are not following through with what they preach. What does this mean? It certainly points to the fact that having a 'tough stance on immigration' is just a smokescreen for racism. When members of the public complain about immigration, often what they really mean is that they don't like visible minorities - Africans, Asians, Muslims. Rarely these days (at least in Australia) is much, if at all any, anger is directed at the much larger numbers of immigrants still arriving from the UK and especially New Zealand. By pandering to just talk of immigration cuts allows people to express deep-held (and otherwise socially-unacceptable) racist views towards 'others'. The people holding these views aren't usually the ones who would delve into statistic archives to find out true numbers nor are they really into politics or the complexities of population and demographic dynamics (too many syllables for them). Just some easy sound bites about cutting immigration is enough for them to feel rest assured that their insecurities won't be threatened by dark people and the ignorant majority and courting politicians are all happy.

Of course, by allowing this latent racism to flourish only gives the courage for ignorant people to be more forthright about their views. As what happened one time in Australia - I was waiting for the bus located next to flat complex that is notorious for being the first place of residence for the waves of immigrants to have arrived into Australia these past 30 years. Once they have settled into jobs and have cars (very important for Australia), they move on to other areas only to be replaced by the latest immigration wave. In the 1980s this complex was inhabited by Poles having fled martial law. By the early 1990s, it was a mini-Yugoslavia full of refugees from the Balkan wars. At the turn of the millenium, many African refugees called this complex home, and now it is the turn of Indian students and Sri Lankan refugees. Not surprisingly, the majority of the people waiting for the bus here are usually South Asian. However there was one white woman, aged in her 50s who arrived at the bus stop, approached me and immediately started talking, despite me obviously wearing white headphones and texting furiously. She said she was surprised to see someone that wasn't 'one of them' (while pointing at two Indians standing not far) waiting for the bus. I acknowledged her with an unfriendly grunt which she interpreted as an invitation to rant. "These people just come in here and they get everything served to them on a platter. I think that we should be looking after our own kind first. I mean how about all of the homeless people out there. They should all have a flat first", she said. That was it for me! I told her, "there are already social programmes available for the homeless plus we have a social security system." She pondered a little and said "Yes, but these people get everything and they should wait for the locals to get it first". I wanted to listen to my music but be polite (she could have been an axe-murderer - she looked like one), so I said "You can't play God here saying that one person is better than someone else to be entitled to stuff just because they're local. We all bleed you know". I wanted to say that we all shit and piss so who's to say someone is better than anyone else, but I didn't want to add more fuel to the fire. Now here's the catch. White woman then backs out by saying "Well, I'm from New Zealand anyway".... !!! What the...??? So who's the local then? I wanted to use that stalwart racist line 'well, if you don't like it here, go back to where you came from', but I just couldn't be bothered, and the woman herself realised how stupid she sounded. Yes, she was not that concerned about the homeless - she was just plain racist. Gotcha!