Go Back to Where You Came From - Must see [Australian] TV

Do modern immigration controls keep out the actual people that make a country great?

100 years ago places like Australia, America and Canada pretty much allowed most people in and those people worked hard to give themselves and their children a better future. But now the only people who are allowed in are the highly educated or those with certain rare skills. Sure, those people are needed but are they the fighters? The ones prepared to take risks? The ones who have nothing to lose and thus will fight harder? The ones with fire in their belly rather than a doctorate in computer studies. Sadly I personally I doubt it.

Immigration appears all the wrong way round now. How many of the people who made the above 3 countries great 100 years ago would actually be allowed to emigrate there now? Very few I reckon.

You need the dreamers, the do-ers, the fighters, the risk takers. Not the doctors, nurses, teachers and public workers. Sure you 'need' those skills, but are they the skills that made your countries great? No, not now and not 100 years ago.

 

i think we allow a pretty good cross section in. and the others find a way in anyway.

 

I didn't see season 1, but if that link works domestically, I'll watch it on my computer. I heard great things about it. And if Peter Reith is on season 2 (and Angry Bloody Anderson), it should be interesting.

I didn't live here when the Tampa incident happened, but I watched it from a distance on The Australia Network, and I was appalled. What amazes me is that this weekend Tony Abbott invoked Tampa again, and repeated the lie. Really, if you tell stupid people the same lie often enough (and our tabloid news programmes at 6:30 every evening do that), they'll believe whatever lie you tell them - that immigrants throw their children overboard, that we're being swamped by immigrants, that they're all terrorists, that they arrive here and are given tons of money and a lovely house, or whatever.

The only problem with programmes like Go Back To Where You Came From is that the people who watch Today Tonight (Grumpy Cabbie - imagine if Look North or Calendar were made by the people who write the Daily Mail and you're getting close) are not the ones who watch SBS (Grumpy Cabbie - imagine a more worthy Channel 4 or BBC4). So it doesn't have a chance to change the minds of the people whose minds need changing.

 

You're quite right. And the same goes for Britain. You only need to look at our language to understand the value of immigration to our society.

 

I'm a Pom, and moved here from China because my wife is Australian and wanted to come home. I've been here three years, and I have to say I had it easy on the immigration front because I'm white. It's quite noticeable in Sydney and Perth that it's an awful lot easier for white South Africans and Zimbabweans to claim political persecution and/or skills to get a visa than it is for a Sri Lankan or an Afghan.

But with what you say about great Australians, I think it's worth noting the quite good Australians too. The last big wave of refugees that "swamped" us was Vietnamese, and the generation of Vietnamese people who came here as kids or who were born soon after their parents arrived are ... well .... the same as everyone else: they've maintained their original culture, and integrated brilliantly. It's pretty clear that Australia benefited from Vietnamese immigration, and I'm sure we can benefit from this latest round of people who are resourceful, inventive and determined enough to get here.

 

I did see that, and I enjoyed it. And I think it's something we can learn from: Vietnamese immigrants faced challenges and ran into problems when they first arrived - as some immigrant groups do now - but were very well assimilated in well under a generation.