In recent weeks there has been several attacks on international students from India. The letters below suggest additional reasons other than racism (which is undeniably a factor):
Hidden resentment
With regard to assaults on overseas students, dare one raise possible underlying reasons without being assailed with the usual ideology-based BRIX (bigot, racist, ignorant, xenophobe) discussion-stopper?
Is there a hidden concern that immigration is out of control? That, with an unknown population-carrying capacity, our nation is placing at risk its environmental capital, clearly limited by factors including fresh water availability, declining soil fertility and increasing salinisation?
Is there also a loss of social capital, with resentment at an influx of students seeking to use local qualifications to gain permanent residency for themselves and relatives, supporting with their fees a tertiary education system seemingly unwilling to accommodate all non-full-fee local applicants?
To what extent are such concerns, if widespread among their parents, being manifested among youth gangs by attacks on students from overseas? If so, remediation will require open discussion, not its suppression by hurling BRIX-type abuse at anyone concerned at current levels of immigration. In the longer term, debate can be less dangerous than its denial by ideology-based imputations of racism.
– John O’Connor, Cottles Bridge, 30/5
One agreed with him (below); two other letters didn’t:
Numbers just keep adding up and up
John O’Connor (Letters, 30/5) is to be congratulated for his prescience and willingness to look beyond the obvious racial bigotry and pinpoint the true causes of the assaults on overseas students and concomitant social problems. Tim Colebatch reported (The Age, 9/5) that immigration is soaring under the Rudd Government to record levels of about 300,000 a year. Perhaps 90 per cent of these new arrivals are moving into Sydney (no room) and Melbourne (no water).
Many people are concerned at these numbers and want, at least for a time, the system to slow down. Governments, state and federal, show no concern for community feeling and a pressure-cooker atmosphere now exists in the community, with racial attacks and rampant everyday violence.
This frustration will almost certainly reach its apogee here in Victoria next year when the Brumby Government seeks re-election. Should the rains fail this spring, then the high-population Brumby Government will face an electorate as mad as hell about why it has dried-out gardens and must wash in and drink muddy water.
– Tony Davidson, Glen Waverley, 1/6
And another in support:
Populate and perish – we must ask why
In response to the misrepresentations of Alex Njoo and William Maley (Letters, 1/6), two blindingly obvious points seem appropriate. Australia has been a nation of immigrants for some 60,000 years. Today, all Australian citizens must treat one another inclusively, and with due regard for our country’s sustainable future, while being wary of tendencies to divide into ethnic-based pseudo-tribes.
It emphatically does not follow that immigration at its present levels should be immune from questioning. We all need to know: what is Australia’s longer-term sustainable-population carrying capacity? What limiting factors may have already been exceeded? Should our tertiary education sector continue to act as a de facto immigration agency, additional to a large official intake?
We need a rational debate on this, the most important single issue facing us all. Refutation of population concerns is not even on Australia’s political radar. It should be.
– John O’Connor, Cottles Bridge, 2/6
International students (from India and elsewhere) are a lucrative income source for many universities, which have to substitute for decreased government funding. Personally I have little liking for universities and believe the IS program should be drastically curtailed; it is, as pointed out in the letters, another form of immigration. With resources such as water under strain (reservoirs are at their lowest-ever level and there is no prospect of good winter rains this year), why are we encouraging more and more visitors to come?
“Babies we must afford”, Herald-Sun, 1/6. Dumb opinion piece saying IVF should be supported because it creates more future taxpayers. Considering the expenses and medical complications IVF-created children can incur, it is a poor bargain!
