Something big happened in the history of immigration last year. It didn’t get any headlines. It had nothing to do with boats or asylum seekers. It wasn’t debated in Parliament. But it is probably the most important development in immigration in years.
Last year, for the first time in the history of Australia, the United Kingdom was not our largest source of permanent migrants. For the first time ever, more people moved to Australia from China than any other country.Bowen goes on to laud this historic shift in immigration patterns as vital to ensuring "Australia's role in the Asian Century". He also repeats the usual discredited rot about mass immigration being not only economically beneficial but essential (it is neither).
Bowen's article should have been entitled "Immigration paves our way into becoming an Asian colony," for he appears to be to essentially giving the populations of Asian countries the green-light to colonise Australia in the hope that it will lead to increased trade opportunities.
Bowen notes that China has replaced Britain - the nation that seeded modern Australia - as the number one source of new immigrants without any real public debate about this profound change in immigration source countries. Unwittingly, Bowen has conceded that our immigration policy is not subject to the democratic process. This shift in immigration will fundamentally alter the ethno-cultural makeup of Australia and indubitably effect every aspect of Australian national life. Yet the existing Australian people have been given no opportunity to debate whether or not these changes should occur.
If current immigration trends continue, we can assume that the end result will be an Asian-dominated Australia. Australia's founding Anglo-Celtic population will become a minority in this country. Surely it behooves all Australians to consider carefully the profound consequences to our society of such a radical change in the ethno-cultural makeup of our population. We need to consider the wider societal and cultural implications of immigration beyond its trivial economic aspects. After all, Australia is more than just an economy.
This is not going to be the Asian century. China is facing a demographic winter worse than that facing Europe. The resulting Chinese economic collapse will make the current EU crisis look like a walk in the park.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why this development didn’t grab any headlines or be debated in Parliament was because the cosmopolitan liberal élites knew that, getting wind of this, there would be a major backlash in public opinion. They’ve learnt Paul Keating’s lesson well, that mass immigration doesn’t sell. Chris Bowen is a genial, good-natured bloke who unwittingly got taken in by the left’s ideals at university (the old Cold War terminology would refer to him as a “useful idiot”) and doesn’t realise that average Joe Citizen in the pub doesn’t share the enthusiasm of him and his ilk for radical demographic shifts to turn Australia into a multicultural paradise.
ReplyDeleteMay I just add that I'm a very liberal person in all senses, but have never been able to cope with the eventual demographic shift.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I necessarily take a dislike in certain groups of people. It is that with the population of Asia, Australia can easily be overwhelmed, many times over in fact. It's that Australia might become something very much different from what it is today, and then some of us might just end up losing that sense of social cohesion.
I understand why the debate on this issue is rather muted. Because it can easily make Asian Australians feel less Australian and unwanted. It indeed is hard to make this surgical distinction between being out-right racist or simply being too afraid of radical change in a society.