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Step 2 in Australia now is mandatory detention, and step 3 happens some undetermined time later (if ever). Interesting to see how we've gone backwards.

• vacri 11y ago
  Well, asylum-seekers are a massive political football at the moment, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to other migration - Australia has 500k in and 300k out for an annual net migration of 200k in. Excluding kiwis, permanent migrants in are about 86k. Asylum-seekers are very much in the media, but they are also very not typical of the usual migrant situation here. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features52013-14 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.... With 28% of our population being born overseas, we're doing integration okay (21% if you discount UK and kiwiland - and our #1 country of import in recent years is China). For comparison, the UK is 12% and the US is 14%. If you look at the current migrant rate (migrants/1000 pop/year), there are only two sizeable western countries higher than Australia, being Norway and Spain. If you exclude conflict areas, there are no other large countries higher than Australia[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra... Basically, the WAP is dead as a dodo as of 40 years ago. The idea that Australia is an insular country afraid of immigration is clearly a myth once you look at the stats. Of course, that doesn't sell newspapers. In short, no, we haven't gone backwards. We're actually a success story, it's just that we have a very visible wart on our nose at the moment (thank you, politics). -- [1] this data is from 2014, which is before Germany took in 1% of it's population in the form of Syrian refugees