fatvegan

Unlike Robert, I agree with Fred Nile that there should be a moratorium on Muslim immigration. Although it's fair to say that Fred is rather crude about it. I was amazed at how much support there was for the idea in the SMH poll, although the results of the Daily Telegraph poll are fairly predictable. Notice how the Telegraph statistic isn't quoted as a percent. If they say 98.9% of people oppose further Muslim immigration it sounds unreasonable.

I think multiculturalism is a difficult thing to pull off and needs to be done slowly. I'm probably not of the view that the more different ideas and beliefs you have milling about the better. It's certainly possibly that the statistics that make Australian's from the Middle East look bad aren't to do with their culture. For instance, crime is a fair bit higher, and I think I have enough confidence in our legal system that the numbers aren't biased against certain racial groups. But it's definitely possible that crime is higher because Muslim immigrants are poorer. If that's the case then we should find evidence for it and probably do something about it.

It's also possible that Muslim immigrants integrate just as well as other groups. Looking at those crime rates, I suspect that isn't the case, but someone should do some research on it. If they don't integrate as well, we need to have a discussion about whether or not that matters. I'm inclined to think that in most instances it doesn't matter, but if it is the case then 300,000 Muslim immigrants are going to have a very different impact to 300,000 Greek immigrants.

It just seems silly to say that culture is everything and then insist that when it comes to certain things - like immigration or crime - it's irrelevant.