Where are all the Asian men? (@ Peril Magazine)

I have another post up at Peril Magazine. It's about why Asian women significantly outnumber Asian men in some parts of Australia.

It should be noted that most groups of immigrants to Australia, including those from European countries, have a sex ratio that is either approximately equal or slightly weighted towards women by several percentage points. (Women tend to be more willing to move overseas for marriage; the greater expectation men face to be the breadwinner might be an obstacle in moving to a place with uncertain work prospects, as opposed to moving specifically for work.) By contrast, the figures from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are unusually weighted towards males. Those likely represent cultures that are highly patriarchal; not only are there already more males than females in those countries due to higher mortality and gender selection at birth, but it would be more accepted for men to leave home to travel than women. But the figures for Japan, the Philippines and Thailand are startling; there are around twice as many women as there are men immigrating to Australia from those countries.

Check it here.

Shut the gate once you get in (@ Peril Magazine)

Got another post up at Peril, the Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine. It's about how the being a migrant, or the descendant of migrants, doesn't necessarily give you much empathy for new migrants.

Today, manufacturing is in decline, and there are less jobs around that unskilled refugees can easily do. The Australian workforce is becoming increasingly white-collar, and increasingly reliant on technology. This is a disadvantage for someone who struggles with English or is a latecomer to the use of computers. So the Italians and Yugoslavs and Greeks who arrived 60 years ago didn’t necessarily face the same obstacles to success that new arrivals from Myanmar, Afghanistan or Sudan might face today. 

Check it here.

Shock as man notices that 7-11 stores are run by Indians

A ONE Nation candidate has courted controversy, complaining that Indians own most convenience stores.
One Nation Queensland state director Ian Nelson made the comments shortly after he announced that he would run for the key seat of Ashgrove.
"Ninety-five per cent of those 7-11 stores are now run by Indian families," he told the Nine Network yesterday.
"Now what's happened to the Australians that man those, that have those leases?
"Now they've gone, they're out."
Asked whether he was worried about being labelled racist, Mr Nelson replied, "How is that being a racist?"
Labor member for Ashgrove Kate Jones wasted no time taking to Twitter to ask Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman whether he was still considering a preference deal with the One Nation party.
[Source]

A few points:

* Yes, a huge proportion of convenience stores are staffed by people of Indian, or at least South Asian, descent. Thank you Captain Obvious.

* Are these people really "Indians" or are they "Indian-Australians"?

* Is there any suggestion that there is something wrong with that? Do Indians do something to illegally or improperly corner the market? Or are they simply doing a job that a lot of "Australians" aren't so keen to do?

* People from India are often more willing to work longer hours, or at later hours, than many others. Take them out of the equation, and there'd be a smaller pool of people willing to do these jobs, meaning fewer convenience stores open when you need them... which is not very convenient.

* I'll repeat a point I've made in earlier posts. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Immigrants who end up on welfare are derided as freeloaders. Immigrants who work hard and succeed are derided as "taking our jobs". Solution = don't be an immigrant, because you just can't win with some people.


Related posts:
"Send them all back!" even if they are Australian
When is an American not an American?
Asians taking over Melbourne's phone book

Those smelly foreigners with their curries and things...

Got a post up over at Brown Pundits, about Teresa Gambaro's "migrants should learn to queue up and wear deodorant" comments. Check it.

Comparing Asian-Australians and Asian-Americans (@ Peril Magazine)

So I have another post up at Peril, this one is about the similarities and differences between Asians in Australia and the US. Byron Wong of the Asian-American blog BigWowo helped me with a few details.

Because the Asian-Australian community is on the whole a little younger than that of Asian-Americans, we arguably remain more “Asian”, since there are fewer of the older generation who were born in Australia or grew up here. In addition to this, Australia takes in proportionally far more international students than the US; our nation of 22 million has around 280,000 international students, whereas the US has 670,000 international students but in a population of 308 million. This means that Asian international students have a considerably greater cultural and numerical impact on Australia than they do in the US. Through them, Australian-raised Asians find another avenue of connecting with Asian culture, and they seem to keep us a bit more “fobby” than Asian-Americans.

Full post here.

Are Asian-Australians moving towards voting Liberal?

Interesting story last week here on ABC News about the Asian vote leading up to the New South Wales election, in which the Labor Party was resoundingly defeated. There is a sense that Asian-Australian voters are no longer a lock for Labor, as the Coalition have belatedly realised that it is an important constituency which they ignore at their peril.

NSW state Liberal candidate Dai Le

Dai Le, the Vietnamese refugee turned Liberal Party candidate, needed a record 29% swing to win the heavily Asian working-class seat of Cabramatta and beat Labor incumbent Nick Lalich. She fell short with a swing 26%, but that in itself is a remarkable shift.

In the last Federal Election, the Liberal Party fielded a number of Asian candidates - Wayne Tseng, John Nguyen and Fazal Cader in the Victorian seats of Calwell, Chisholm and Hotham respectively, and Thomas Dang, Ken Nam and Jaymes Diaz in the NSW seats of Fowler, Watson and Greenway. (Labor had only one Federal candidate of Asian descent, Joy Banerji in the Melbourne seat of Menzies). All of them lost, mind you.

Of course, if it seems like the Liberals are a sudden champion of Asian-Australians in politics, it's worth noting that all those candidates were running in Labor strongholds, and despite a large nationwide swing against the Gillard government, none of them managed to wrest their seat from Labor. So I get the impression that the Liberals might see Asian-Australian candidates as possible wild-cards in working-class seats with large numbers of migrants (which the Libs don't expect to win anyway), yet won't risk them in the more marginal seats in which there are less Asian voters.

It was only in 2006 that Asian-Australians were touted as a significant asset for Labor, due in large part to Kevin Rudd's apparent affinity for China and his ability to convincingly recite a few phrases of Mandarin. Previous PM John Howard even lost his own seat of Bennelong in Sydney due in large part to the large numbers of Asian residents who plumped for Rudd. But with Rudd usurped by Julia Gillard, I wonder how much of that voting bloc dropped off.

It is worth noting that despite having long favoured Labor, Asian-Australians are not necessarily a natural fit for a Left-leaning party. (Yes I know, Labor haven't been Left-wing for years, but in the traditional dichotomous view of Australian politics they are the Left to the Liberal Party's Right.) The Liberals are the party of business, of the "haves", and of the social conservatives. Many Asians fit into these categories, or are moving more and more into them. Communities such as the Chinese and Indians are increasingly strongly represented in high-income professional spheres which lean more to Liberal. Interestingly, the other party that has fielded a significant number of Asian candidates has been Family First, which draws substantially from a large Chinese contingent in the Assembly of God movement.

So why have Asian-Australians traditionally been such staunch Labor supporters? Because despite the former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser being a key figure in Australia accepting Indo-Chinese boat people in the late 70s and early 80s, something went horribly wrong after that. John Howard, in his first stint as Liberal Opposition Leader, publicly called for a reduction in Asian immigration. This alienated much of the Asian electorate, and Labor, under pro-multicultural Bob Hawke and then Paul Keating, cemented their identity as the champions of migrant Australians. Years later Howard would retreat from that stance, but it shouldn't be ignored that Pauline "Australia is being swamped by Asians" Hanson started her political career as a Liberal candidate. And it was Howard's stealthy co-opting of her xenophobic attitude towards refugees that spelled the demise of Hanson and her One Nation Party; the Liberals somehow got away with labelling One Nation as extremists while standing for virtually the same things.

Today, I'm not sure if Asian voters recall that Howard didn't want them here in the first place. Maybe it no longer matters. Despite the Liberals' recent hardline stance towards asylum seekers, many Asian voters (even those who were former refugees themselves) seem to have little empathy for the recent waves of South Asian and Middle Eastern refugees. It's a classic "get in and shut the door behind you" mentality.

The Vietnamese community is an interesting example of a voting bloc that may be in transition. Compared to the Chinese, it is more strongly working-class, rooted in Labor strongholds like Cabramatta and the Melbourne suburbs of Springvale and Footscray. Howard's racism in the 80s certainly left an opportunity which Labor seized with both hands, and as a result the Vietnamese vote was virtually guaranteed for Labor. Yet as people who fled from a Communist regime, there are many Vietnamese-Australians who are naturally suspicious of Labor's occasionally left-leaning tendencies. And as a very aspirational community which is increasingly moving into the middle class, the Liberal Party is quickly making up lost ground.

Pursuing a better, smarter kind of immigrant?

Had an interesting discussion last week via the comments of this post with Razib Khan, who blogs prolifically at Gene Expression and elsewhere. It pertains to whether certain groups of immigrants (and Muslims in particular) are more problematic than others, and whether some kind of policy should be enacted to take this into account. I've included the comments below, after which I'll post some of my own thoughts. I've edited my own comments for length here.

(For the record, Razib is a Bangladeshi-American scientist. I assume he was raised as a Muslim but is now a passionate atheist. He's also considerably to the Right of me politically.)

Razib: whatever the details, i do think people need to be more cognizant of differences between various immigrant groups. muslims in particular, all things equal, are very problematic. specifically, i suspect a lot of the issues are pronounced in muslims from nations where they are a majority, and the culture mores as such that non-muslims are marginalized and "put in their place." muslims who are from india, often ismaili, are much more assimilated into british society than those from pakistan. some of this is due to human capital differentials (ismailis are often secondary migrants from east africa who had a history of being business people), but some of it is surely to the fact that ismailis in india have had to learn to fit in as one group among many, while muslims from pakistan come from a society where non-muslims are being cleansed and subject to de facto "jim crow" practices (because they are "dirty" kufars, with many christians and hindus being "low caste" to boot).


Eurasian Sensation: I do actually agree that Islam presents a challenge to multiculturalism in a way that [other, non-religion-specific] immigrant groups do not, since in its stricter interpretations it is incompatible with sharing a society with "kufar". However I also think that people who are Muslim have made valuable contributions to the fabric of my country. So having Muslim immigrants is not really the problem per se; it's how they are managed in their new home.

Razib: muslim immigrants from pakistan, unless appropriately sifted, *are* a problem. "moderates" in pakistan are not moderates like you and i would find congenial. moderates from turkey are less problematic. because of the influence and prestige of anti-pluralist muslim subcultures in the core of the arab world islam as a whole has a problem. if senegal was the model there wouldn't be a problem, but due to its marginality it's a deviation, not the expectation.

both racialists and multiculturalists elide these critical distinctions, because they make their positions easier to defend. after wall, who wants to defend a "crazy racist position" or the "crazy anti-white leftist position."

Eurasian Sensation: Your phrase "unless appropriately sifted" intrigues me. I'm opposed to racially discriminatory immigration policy, yet at the same time I want us to be more discerning in who we let in. How you do propose this sifting is done?

Razib: well, if you don't want to be culturally biased, filter on intelligence. real educational qualifications. the reality is that a lot of the most radical islamists are upwardly mobile, but their radicalism is in part a function of their lack of appropriate economic reward in societies where patronage and nepotism of entrenched elites keeps them from getting their just desserts

the main issue with education isn't that it makes people more liberal as such. *but*, if you are a professional it is almost impossible not to be socially integrated, and therefore see the "kufar" as a fellow human being (i.e., if they're your patients, clients, etc.).
that's why the working class pakistani proletariat in britain is terrifying. they live in their own subculture, and interact lot with "back home." and the amount of coddling they get from the british liberal mainstream is shocking. e.g., their persistent cousin marriage practices result in a genuine burden on the NIH way out of proportion to their numbers because of recessive diseases.


p.s on the last part about coddling. i went through britain last spring, and the working class pakistanis who adhere to conservative muslim values have their own place in that nation. it's accepted, tolerated, and encouraged. but they're nearly as sociopathological as the drunken british lower classes (in a different way). the white lower classes are not given the "space" that the pakistani working classes are, and that's because the latter are viewed as a "different culture," with "their own ways."

I don't really have any good solutions here but I'll throw out a few ideas. I'm speaking from an Australian perspective but the same roughly applies to other Western nations.

Immigration brings changes to any region or state, and like any phenomenon there will be both positive effects (added richness and dynamism to the culture, broadening of perspectives and opportunities, etc), and negative effects (environmental strain, ethnic tension, etc). There is no way to ensure that immigration has no negative aspects to it whatsoever. However, it would be negligent not to consider how migration and cultural integration policies could be improved to ensure that negative aspects can be minimised.
The general Left-Liberal position on immigration and diversity is this: that all races and cultures are basically equal. Given the right opportunities, anyone from any cultural background has the potential to succeed in a Western country.

It's an admirable perspective on things, based on a fairly optimistic view of human nature. But is it realistic? Obviously those on the Right would say no. The conservative point of view has long been that those of nationalities very different to the dominant ethnicity (in this case, Anglo-Saxon) are unlikely to be able to sufficiently integrate, and thus their immigration should be restricted.

The elephant in the room that the Left don't want to talk about and the Right often do is that some immigrant groups just don't perform as well as others on key indicators, and some seem far less likely to successfully integrate into the wider community than others. Some are over-represented in crime statistics.

In the Australian context, if we use crime rate as a key indicator, then a number of ethnicities have significantly higher rates of arrest and imprisonment than the locally-born. It's interesting to note that each of those ethnicities has it's own set of circumstances that impacts on crime rate, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to view it in terms of "race". For example, Vietnamese have a higher than average crime rate, yet the Chinese rate is considerably lower than average. The crime rate is high amongst Somalis and Sudanese, two communities based predominantly on refugees fleeing civil war; yet those Africans who migrated here under other schemes (Kenyans, Zimbabweans, Ghanaians, etc) tend to perform far better. This is primarily because they are more likely to be educated and professional, which echoes Razib's point about the educated being better equipped to integrate. Bear in mind as well that those who settle as refugees are more likely to have experienced trauma and have a broken family structure, and because of their poverty are more likely to live in areas in which the crime rate is already high.

Is the solution then simply to take only business migrants and reduce our refugee intake? I am certain that plenty would agree, but it's not an option in my book. Australia has a sometimes shaky record on asylum seekers, but few in politics would seriously look to make significant reductions to our humanitarian intake.

Here's one idea posited by commenter John Comnenus on the blog of Andrew Bolt, who is Australia's best-known conservative columnist. I have real problems with the implications of this, but it's an example of the sort of ideas that are out there:

In my opinion we should accept no migrants from countries that has a serious criminal incidence of more than 50% above the Australian level. The cost to the public in terms of victim costs, policing, justice and jailing means these groups fail the cost benefit test. Given that it is almost impossible to determine who will be a criminal we should have a blanket ban. Countries in this category are coloured dark red in the graph.

Immigrants ethnicity where the rate of serious criminality is more than 25% above the Australian born level should be subject to more detailed and thorough background checking. Countries in this group are coloured pink.
Countries in the gray zone i.e. within 10% of Australian norm should also have more detailed screening.
Australia’s immigration program should be heavily weighted to the countries in the green category, where the rate of criminality is less than half the Australian born rate. Over time such a policy will decrease crime rates, impact on fewer victims, cost less and leave a more positive view of immigration generally. It would make sure that immigration is being run in the national interest not the immigrants’ interest. The diversity in the green countries (China, India, UK) demonstrates unequivocally that this approach is NOT racist, it is colour blind without being behaviour blind.

Whether you like this plan or not is probably linked to your level of optimism about human nature and the prospects of those populations "levelling out" in terms of their crime rate, and immigration policy seems to assume that after some initial teething problems, crime issues within some of those key groups will normalise over time. If you're curious, the countries that Comnenus would exclude according to his plan are Tonga, Samoa, Romania, Sudan, Vietnam and Lebanon. Certainly those communities have produced more than their share of criminals, but they've also produced two Young Australians of the Year (Tan Le and Khoa Do), a former Premier of Victoria (Steve Bracks) and arguably Australia's greatest ever soccer player (Tim Cahill), to name just a few. Obviously, a few famous standouts are not representative of a whole community, but neither should an ethnic group be judged on the actions of its worst elements. And while crime is a serious issue, it doesn't define an entire community. Vietnamese-Australians, for example, have undergone a rapid transformation from a people mostly confined to blue-collar work in the 70s, to a highly-educated group strongly represented in professional fields. It tells you something about Comnenus and Bolt that their impression of Vietnamese-Australians seems to be predominantly as criminals.

Personally, I can't abide the idea of barring people from immigrating because of their race or where they came from. Most people would rightly regard that as racist. Of course, it's not an uncommon phenomenon, and it is really only Western democracies that believe it morally wrong to discriminate based on race. Japan, for example, has no problem doing so. While the introduction of such a policy would no doubt gain significant popular support in Australia, it would be so problematic and divisive that we are unlikely to see any such thing in the near future.

If we were to enforce a more rigid approach to immigration and settlement, it would have to be a non-racist one. Now, while I tend to despise the inevitable cries of "Send 'em back where they came from" anytime someone ethnic commits a crime, deportation does need to be a potential tool for deterring criminals. In some cases it would probably be the best option. Obviously taking up citizenship means that they becomine solely Australia's problem and exempt from deportation, but I'd even propose a "probationary" citizenship period of say, 3 years, in which it can be revoked in the event of serious crime or multiple minor crimes.

So what of the idea, suggested by Razib, of filtering on intelligence? It's an intriguing idea. At what IQ does one draw the line? 100? 90? Let's assume for a moment that this was practical; it still opens up a can of worms about how to measure intelligence, whether it is possible to make intelligence tests that are free of cultural bias, and whether someone with a high IQ must necessarily be a better contributor to society than someone with a low IQ.

It's fair to say that the majority of people involved in anti-social and criminal activities would be located in the low-to-average intelligence range. But it's also worthwhile mentioning that my discussion with Razib above focused largely on Muslims, and moderate vs fundamentalist. How does that equate with intelligence? As one of Razib's own posts details, there is a strong correlation between IQ and religiosity; the less intelligent are more likely to believe in the Bible (or presumably the Qur'an as the case may be) as the literal word of God, and to have a religiously conservative worldview. Higher IQ people tend more towards atheism, agnosticism and religious moderation, as well as liberal and moderate political views. But it should also be apparent that religion often negates rationality. I know numerous highly intelligent doctors who are Creationists. And the hardline Islamic lunar Right likewise seems to have a large number of articulate and intelligent people.

So would IQ-screening filter out all the dangerous nuts and extremists? Of course not. But extremism nonetheless requires a fairly ignorant base to work out of. If you accept that there is a correlation between IQ and social class, and between social class and the likelihood of being a criminal, then there is definitely an argument for testing immigrants for intelligence. In theory, anyway.

I don't ever see it being a reality. It might be feasible to apply such a test to economic migrants, but it's highly problematic to make someone fleeing torture, persecution and ethnic cleansing sit an IQ test in order to be granted safe haven. Likewise, is discriminating against the less intelligent (or more pertinently, those who don't perform well on IQ tests) really that much better than discriminating against someone because of their race? There are plenty of working-class folks who would bomb out on an IQ test, yet run their own businesses, employ many other people, and contribute greatly to society.


So beyond some minor tweaking of immigration controls we have now, there may be little else that may be done to guarantee we are letting in the right kind of migrant, at least without contravening some of our basic principles of fairness and equality. Thus it becomes essential that the right kinds of social policies are enacted to encourage an integrated society.

Is multiculturalism the problem? That largely depends on your interpretation of what that term means. "Culture" encompasses a whole list of things both good and bad, and it is possible to have a society made up of many ethnicities, yet firmly reject some of the practices that they may bring with them. Examples are polygamy, female genital mutilation and forced marriage, which occur in a wide variety of cultures worldwide; these are all outlawed in Australia, yet they are still tacitly accepted by some communities and thus persist covertly. As important as it is to respect and accommodate everyone's cultural perspectives, this can only go so far, and some things must be unequivocally rejected. (And in many cases, are rejected; for example, the consumption of dogs, cats and parts of endangered animals is all part of Chinese culture, but that is unlikely to be considered acceptable in the West, ever.)

I'll return to the topic of Islam. As I stated earlier, I agree with Razib that Muslim immigrants present a greater challenge to the fabric of society than other immigrant groups. Yet it is essential to distinguish between moderate and hardline here. The great majority of Muslims in the West are moderate and fit in without any major problems. Moderate Muslims realise that certain aspects of their religion are incompatible with modern life and can be conveniently ignored (in the same way that mainstream Christians don't adhere to the bit in the Bible where it says anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death). But of course, in any religious population there are hardliners, and Muslim hardliners tend to be a whole lot more worrying than Buddhist hardliners or Christian hardliners. Even without taking into account the potential threat of violence, Islam in its stricter interpretations makes it virtually impossible to integrate into a Western society, since it mandates separation from non-Muslims. A sensible government policy creates conditions in which the hardliners are marginalised to the point of insignificance; poor government policy allows hardline ideas to flourish and infect the moderate religious population.

Razib rightly points out that the UK stacks up poorly in this respect, whereas Australia, the US and Canada  seem to have done somewhat better. Surveys seem to indicate that young British Muslims are actually more conservative than their parents' generation, and more conservative than their counterparts in the other Anglophone countries. For example, one indicator of extreme views is whether a person believes that apostates (those who abandon Islam) should be punished by death. According to this Pew Research Centre study, 84% of Egyptian Muslims and 76% of Pakistani Muslims agree with this, whereas in Turkey, Lebanon and Indonesia this was the view of only 5%, 6% and 30% respectively. Yet amongst British Muslims aged 16-24, according to this article, 36% believe in the death penalty for apostasy. 13% of young British Muslims expressed support for Al-Qaeda, compared to only 5% in Turkey. (I'm not saying I put total faith in these surveys - the figure for Indonesia seems high to me - but that's what we have to work with.) In other words, despite their proximity to Western liberal values which emphasise freedom and tolerance for diversity, Britain is breeding a generation of young Muslims that is more extreme than numerous countries which are almost entirely Muslim. It is telling that Umar Abdulmutallab (aka the Underwear Bomber) acquired his extremist mentality not in his native Nigeria, but while studying at University College in London.

If Turkey (99% Muslim) can apparently be so much more progressive and secular than Britain's Islamic community, then it shows that the presence of Muslims does not mean extremism; it is the culture of that society that allows extremism to flourish. I'm not going to proclaim Turkey as any kind of champion of human rights and tolerance, but it has steadfastly maintained a moderate interpretation of Islam which has little room for extremism. So how has Britain managed to nurture a Muslim community where extreme beliefs are allowed to fester?

To an extent it is because Westen countries draw their Muslim migrants from some places with far more medieval attitudes than Turkey. But largely it is because multiculturalism is often too tolerant of intolerance - or at least a certain kind of intolerance. The age of political correctness has rightly turned white people's xenophobia into a taboo, yet it has too often given non-whites (or non-Christians) a free pass. Western governments' tolerance has allowed some mosques to import imams from overseas to preach violent and intolerant versions of Islam, and often thrown in the funding to do it with, all in the name of diversity. In Britain, crazed Islamist activist Anjem Choudry is allowed to publicly endorse terrorism and violence while picking up a social security cheque from the same government he so despises.

I'm firmly in support of a society in which all ethnic groups and religions can intermingle. But that only works if those various groups are prepared to play along. Expecting white Australians to embrace and accept cultural diversity is hollow if migrant groups are patronisingly viewed as exempt from having to be tolerant. Multiculturalism as fine with me only so long as it doesn't forget this.

Quiz Time! (Asian Diasporas)

Ok, the quiz for this week revolves around the various Asian communities and people who have spread round the globe. Obviously you could just look this stuff up on Google or Wikipedia, but where would be the fun in that? Have a guess and let me know how you did.

1. Outside of Japan, which country has the largest number of ethnic Japanese?

2. Which South American countries were these Asian men the Presidents of?
(a) Alberto Fujimori
(b) Arthur Chung
(c) Ramsewak Shankar

3. In 1972, Rohan Kanhai became the first person of East Indian descent to captain which prestigious sporting side?

4. Which person of Indian ancestry held the Number 1 ranking in World Golf for 32 weeks?

5. Which ethnic group, of whom many have migrated to the USA as refugees, were known by the French as Montagnards ("Mountain People")?

6. Which "Indian" dish is regarded as Britain's favourite restaurant dish and was reportedly invented in either London or Glasgow?

7. Regularly rated as one of the greatest rock singers of all time, which ethnic Parsi (Indian-Zoroastrian) was born in Zanzibar and went to school in Bombay before moving to London?

8. Of the nearly 2 million Malaysians of Indian origin, 90% of them belong to which ethnic group?

9. Aside from China and Taiwan, which 3 Asian countries have the largest Chinese communities?

10. These men are the last 3 Presidents of which country?




I'll leave the answers in the comments section, perhaps combined with a little relevant trivia.

Also check the previous quiz about variations of European names.

The bloke from the anti-Asian party and his Asian wife

I wonder if this guy has ever uttered the phrase, "I'm not racist - my wife is Asian." If so, he wouldn't be the first.

The director of One Nation in Queensland has an Asian wife.

It shouldn't be a curiosity, and wouldn't be, but this is the party whose founder made her first contribution to federal politics by warning that Australia was in danger of being "swamped by Asians".

Just months after Pauline Hanson's 1996 speech, Sansanee Nelson, the wife of One Nation's now-Queensland director Ian Nelson, left Thailand for a new life in Australia.

The couple hasn't had an easy road, and it's becoming a lot harder as Mr Nelson tries to breathe new life into the dormant party.

It's not the word "Asian" in the first sentence that's provocative - it's the words "One Nation".

One Nation Queensland was deregistered in November 2009, as its membership had fallen below the 500 required.
It's preparing to re-launch before the next state election, meaning Queenslanders will be seeing more of Mr Nelson before March 2012.
And if Sansanee, or their daughter Patti, join him on the hustings, voters could be forgiven if they do a double take.
As an aircraft mechanic, Nelson has lived around the world, including in Thailand, where he met his second wife. Like most new Australians, it took Sansanee time to find work because of her limited English.

But she persevered, with the encouragement of her husband, and now works in a restaurant while presiding over the family's neat home and garden north of Brisbane. Despite witnessing his wife's difficult adjustment to a new culture and country, Nelson has no sympathy at all for the most recent targets of multiculturalism's critics. For him, the woman he affectionately calls "little one" is not like the other new Australians, particularly Muslims, at the heart of the current national debate.

"It's the ones that don't [assimilate] and live in their little enclaves that's unacceptable in this country," he said.

"We've got some wonderful people who are coming into this country. They talk like Australians and they have the barbecues and they assimilate right into Australia. The ones who scare me are the Muslims, they terrify me."

His fear seems to stem from a difficult relationship with two Lebanese-Australian apprentices, and the Cronulla riots.

"They are a race that don't assimilate, they treat Australian women like dirt ... how many were gang raped?" he said of the 2005 violence.

But in contrast to his fixed views on Muslim Australians, Nelson is uncertain whether he and Sansanee have personally experienced discrimination. He's even a bit muddled on whether he was offended by Hanson's revulsion of Asians, which surely cast a shadow over Sansanee's first days in Australia.

"I cringed just a little," he says, before adding: "But we sort of have been since then".

People have stopped him in the street and called him a "dirty old man" in reference to what they perceive is the couple's age difference (although Sansanee is 50 years old).

Mr Nelson says the party is fine with his relationship - its president is married to a Filipino woman - and he doesn't consider whether racism played a part in Sansanee's early employment problems.

"Nobody would ever admit that was the problem," he said.

They say love is blind.

As One Nation attempts its comeback in Queensland, Mr Nelson's blinkers, and those of voters, will be tested again.

 Full story here.

Now, it's not my place to suggest that Ian Nelson's relationship with his wife Sansanee is anything but loving and genuine. But some questions just have to be asked...

* So, does the party who first came to prominence with Pauline Hanson's line "Australia is being swamped by Asians" all of a sudden think Asians are OK?
Perhaps now they've realised that compared to the fear they have of Muslims, Asians aren't really all that threatening anymore.

* Would Nelson be mocked as a "dirty old man" if he had a 50 year-old white wife? Almost certainly not. So why the double standard? Well, it has to be said... the combination of older white man and younger South East Asian woman is one that always raises an eyebrow or two. It just has strong colonialist overtones, and too often seems to feature a imbalance of power in the relationship. It's that stereotype of the ageing white guy who prefers the "submissive" Asian woman who "understands her place" better than white women, and "knows how to treat a man properly".

I'm not going to suggest that is true of Ian Nelson. Being the product of a WM/AW relationship myself, I'm wary of the stereotypes that sometimes attach to these pairings. But sometimes you still can't help but wonder. That the party's president has a Filipino wife is perhaps telling as well.

 * Given that Sansanee had problems finding work and speaking English, she sounds exactly like the kind of immigrant One Nation rails against. Thus, I can't help but think she is recognised as having properly assimilated because she is an attractive Asian woman who married a white man. Which is fine... but it just makes me wonder... would the party be quite so accepting of a Somali migrant named Abdul with poor English and little success in finding work, but who married a white Australian woman?

* Now I know that most couples have their own nauseating pet names for each other. I get that. But was it just me, or did you feel like vomiting upon reading this phrase?

For him, the woman he affectionately calls "little one" is not like the other new Australians

* This is apparently what it means to be Australian:

"They talk like Australians and they have the barbecues and they assimilate right into Australia."

So fire up that barbie, Abdul, start saying "faaak" a lot, and hope for the best. 

Multicultural Australia in the spotlight

Multiculturalism has been the subject of some debate in the media and political spheres recently in Australia. It's no great surprise, following from recent pronouncements from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British PM David Cameron that were critical of how such a policy had worked out in their countries. And it goes hand-in-hand with the ever-present debate about asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

Here's a selection of various takes on the subject.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen recently gave a strong endorsement of multiculturalism in a speech to the Sydney Insititute. This is touched on in the article Weighed down by the M-word by Paul Kelly in The Australian. However shortly after, Bowen seemed not to walk the walk, as he was roundly criticised for his illogical treatment of a 9 year-old orphaned Afghani asylum seeker. Two halves of the asylum seeker debate at Grog's Gamut blog, nicely unveils how the two major parties are playing both sides of the fence on the immigration/multiculturalism issue. Most noteworthy was the allegation that Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison had wanted to exploit anti-Muslim sentiment as an electoral strategy.

A national study into attitudes towards race was released this week. The Sydney Morning Herald's take on this begins with the headline: Australia tolerant of cultural differences: study. By contrast, SBS News takes the same story and calls it "One in ten" Australians is racist. Glass half-full or half-empty? Conservative figurehead Andrew Bolt is unsurprisingly suspicious of the whole shebang (Racism figures just don't add up). Also unsurprisingly, he declares Muslim integration the real problem. His colleague Alan Howe seems to take the same tack, but with a more positive outlook (We are all in this nation's mix).
Check also Ross Gittins' exploration of our nation's deep seated fears (A crack in the wall of xenophobia), and David Penberthy's article in The Punch (Multiculturalism: something we can all joke about).

As for my own views on the subject, I'll rummage around and come up with something shortly for ya.

Cruel to be kind: could John Howard have got it right on asylum seekers?

Recently, a boat carrying asylum seekers bound for Australia crashed off Christmas Island, resulting in the deaths of 28 people. It was not the first time that asylum seekers have died en route to Australia; in 2009 approximately 54 died that way. Some have estimated that as many as 170 have perished way in the last 3 years.

It's hard not to notice a correlation between the party in power in Australia, and the number of people-smuggling boats headed for our shores. Upon assuming the mantle of PM in late 2007, Labor's Kevin Rudd scrapped many of the controversial policies of his predecessor John Howard relating to asylum seekers. At that point, boat numbers began to rise markedly.

Was Rudd right to scrap these policies? Howard's "Pacific Solution" meant that boats were intercepted en route to Australia and diverted to offshore processing (detention) centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. In addition, the TPV (Temporary Protection Visa) was introduced, which greatly limited the rights of those successfully applying for asylum and made it more difficult to obtain a permanent visa to settle in Australia.

Howard's policies were widely condemned as overly punitive and unfair, and it is easy to regard Labor as having done the humane thing by scrapping them. Yet the number of attempted arrivals by boat since then seems to indicate that the Pacific Solution carried with it a significant deterrent effect, one which no longer exists. Labor's more humane approach has arguably led to more people putting themselves at risk on the high seas, and thus more deaths. So is it really more humane?

Mind you, no one should be deluded into thinking that Coalition policy under John Howard was motivated by humanitarian concerns, at least to any significant degree. Primarily it was geared to paint Howard as a strong leader who would protect Australia from an invading rabble. A case in point was the tactical switch in language, moving away from the term "asylum seekers" to the much more loaded "illegal immigrants" or simply just "illegals". It helped that so many of the asylum seekers were from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, at a time when fear of Muslims was high. Howard harnessed a wave of xenophobia and rode it all the way to re-election.

From a human rights perspective, it was bad, ugly policy. But in terms of a body count, Howard seems to come out looking better than the more "humane" Labor Party. So was he right, and all the bleeding-heart lefties wrong?

Well, yes and no. Between two flawed policies, Howard's cruel policy appears better, a vindication of the conservative ideal that sometimes it's kinder in the long run not to be too kind. But was Howard's policy a good policy? Not really.

One of the Coalition's unequivocally stated goals has been their repeated slogan Stop the Boats. While the motivation behind this was far from altruistic, it was a worthwhile aim, and one that the Left was too soft on. Asylum seekers heading to Australia on boats = virtually inevitable casualties. But the Coalition's methods for achieving this goal were cruel and unfair. So is it possible to find a third way? A course of action that will mean no unnecessary loss of life trying to get to Australia, yet will not punish those seeking asylum?

One of the terms frequently tossed around by conservatives in this debate is "queue-jumpers". In other words, those who come by boat are unfairly subverting the process, and sneaking in ahead of those back in Indonesia and elsewhere who are applying via legal means. While this is in many ways true, it doesn't mean that the "queue-jumpers" do not have legitimate claims to refugee status. And more significantly, talking of "queue-jumpers" conjures images of an orderly system for applying that actually works properly. The reality is that the system of processing asylum seekers is so slow and inefficient that it almost inevitably leads to the conditions that encourage people to look for less legal means.

Any policy designed to tackle the problem of unauthorised arrivals needs to start back in Indonesia, and other locations from which refugees can apply for asylum. There is no sense in insisting desperate dislocated people wait patiently and adhere to a dysfunctional system. Australia needs to work closely with the UN and other countries in the region to get refugees processed quickly and fairly, and then sent to a safe country (not necessarily Australia). Deterrent measures are necessary too, primarily targeted at people smugglers.

If we are going to insist that asylum seekers play by the rules of our system, we need to make damn sure that the system actually works.

From around the interwebs...

Links and all that.


Merkel jumps on xenophobe bandwagon
by Leo Kretzenbacher in The Age
"If a statement is completely wrong and illogical, Germans call it "so wrong that not even its opposite is correct". Seldom has this characterisation been more fitting than for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent announcement that multiculturalism in Germany had failed. For it to have succeeded or failed it would have had to have been tried in some serious way first. German governments have never been guilty of any serious effort to create a multicultural society."



Culture is more than just a national costume
by Pino Migliorino in the Sydney Morning Herald
"I think that the balance is not achieved by adjusting migration numbers. The balance is one of attitude. It is the balance that the existing nations all over the world, including Australia, have to find in creating equal dialogues between all its cultures and communities. It does not mean that any side has to passively accept what is proposed to them. At the very least, we have to be able to accept that we all have the capacity to learn new things and to change."



Striking a balance in Australia's immigration future
by Pallavi Jain in The Age
"Australia is one of the most developed countries in the world but to maintain that in an increasingly globalised world, it is imperative that it manages its immigration policy well. Very low immigration will deny Australia the benefits of the best minds in the world. Too much immigration may give rise to unforseen social unrest, apart from being a huge burden on the infrastructure and the environment. Striking this balance will be a key to Australia's future."



Western politicians prefer to ignore Israel's inherent racism
by Antony Lowenstein in The Age.
"Imagine a mainstream Australian politician saying that Aborigines should be banned from leading tourists around Uluru because they might "present anti-Australian positions" to visitors. The outcry would be furious.

But a bill is currently before the Israeli Knesset, led by a parliamentarian from the "moderate" Kadima party, that would bar Arab residents of East Jerusalem from working as tour guides in the city. Knesset member Gideon Ezra said it was essential tourist groups are "accompanied by a tour guide who is an Israeli citizen and has institutional loyalty to the [Jewish] state of Israel".
It is just the latest sign in an ever-tightening noose around Arabs from the Zionist mainstream in the self-described Jewish nation."


Feminism curbing Third World women
By Durkhanai Ayubi in The Age

"To me it boils down to this - cultural relativism or the PC brigade should not tie the tongue of Western feminists in speaking out for women who come from less fortunate regions of the world. However, if the argument is ignorant to the complexity of factors in play, then perhaps it would not be so unfortunate if the tongue-getting cat made an appearance."



Shoe throwing only served to harm the left
by Michael Koziol in the Sydney Morning Herald
"Indeed, John Howard's appearance in its totality has been met with widespread praise: he was eloquent, assertive, and handled Shoegate with grace – at least in the eyes of much of the Twitterverse. But many Twitterers – and I suspect many others watching on - afforded shoe thrower Peter Gray hero status for his action, and that is foolish even for those who sympathise with the left.

The concern now is that the shoe thrower will come to represent the left more broadly. It wouldn't be a sensible act of stereotyping but it will happen: those already sceptical of left-wing politics will watch the footage of this silliness and it will reinforce preconceptions about people on the left, what they look like and how they behave. It is the sort of irresponsible behaviour that provides a justification for dismissing intelligent progressive ideas as the musings of delusional hippies."

Fear-mongering, US-style

With the US congressional elections fast approaching, the campaign is heating up, and hence ads like these are popping up to stoke the fear of the foreigner.




One explores the theme of shifty Orientals taking over the world - made possible by Obama introducing universal healthcare, of course. The other is all about the marauding Mexicans, and prompted Joy Behar on The View to describe Senate candidate Sharron Angle as "a bitch" who "is going to hell."

Of course, no one should be surprised that the Repubs and their friends would resort to stirring up xenophobic sentiment in order to get elected; it's actually their stock-in-trade, as anyone who has followed the way they have been depicting Barack Obama for the last few years would be well aware.

Some interesting coverage of these ads around the net... Spin Season analyses Sharron Angle's ad and looks at what makes the Chinese professor ad so effective in playing on the audience's fears, and Angry Asian Man has a post describing how the Asian-American extras in the Chinese professor ad were not aware of the nature of the ad they were filming.

UPDATE: Also check out Jeff Yang's article at NPR entitled Politicians Play the China Card.

Forever a foreigner in New Zealand

TVNZ shock jock Paul Henry has apologised for saying that Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand was not Kiwi enough for the job.
Henry caused a storm after he said this morning that Sir Anand did not look or sound like a New Zealander when he asked Prime Minister John Key whether the next Governor-General would be more Kiwi.
"Is he even a New Zealander?" Henry asked. ''Are you going to choose a New Zealander who looks and sounds like a New Zealander this time?''
Sir Anand, who has Fijian-Indian parents, was born and raised in Auckland, and worked as a lawyer, judge and Parliamentary Ombudsman in New Zealand before becoming Governor-General in 2006.

Full story here.

Ok, so a shock jock makes offensive comments. Nothing revelatory, just sad and fairly typical. I thought this was interesting because it is a perfect example of certain racist thinking and behaviour.
 
This is Henry's pseudo-apology:
 

Henry told Stuff earlier today he did not regret the comments, but has since issued a statement apologising.

"I sincerely apologise to the Governor General, Sir Anand Satyanand for any offence I may have caused. I am aware that Sir Anand has made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand.
"Anyone who knows anything about me will know I am a royalist, a constant defender of the monarchy and the role the Governor General plays in our society.
"If my comments have personally offended Sir Anand, I regret it deeply."

Catch that? "IF my comments have personally offended Sir Anand, I regret it deeply." IF.
Maybe this is just something people say. But it's a classic way of avoiding a proper apology.

Translated, it means "I don't think I said anything wrong at all. But if someone was so sensitive that they had to go and get all offended about it, then that's sad, I guess. I really don't care."

The other interesting thing is the idea of what a New Zealander is meant to look and sound like. Let's pretend for a moment that there actually IS a proper way that a New Zealander is meant to look and sound. What is it?

Below is a very short bit of footage of Satyanand speaking. What does he sound like to you?

If you answered, "A New Zealander", full marks for you. He speaks with a NZ accent, which is unsurprising since he was born and raised there.

Ok so does he look like a New Zealander? Well it's funny, because I seem to recall that the original New Zealanders are a brownish sort of people called the Maori. And for what it's worth, Satyanand actually looks considerably more like a Maori than does Paul Henry (pictured).

What it shows is that for people like Henry, some people will forever be foreigners. Immigrants are often criticised for not integrating or not proving themselves as citizens of their new country. Yet Satyanand has worked his way up to the top of his field to hold one of the country's highest offices, and yet he's still not worthy of shaking off the "foreigner" tag. And - he's not even an immigrant! He was born in Auckland!
 
(Hat tip: Ruth DeSouza)

Check these related posts:

You're damned if you do...

"Send them all back"... even if they are Australian?

When is an American not an American?

More "Obama's not an American" nonsense

The Daily Show - "Born in the USA"

Jon Stewart & co examine the move afoot to prevent babies born in the US being automatically considered citizens.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Born in the U.S.A.
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

You're damned if you do...

Can immigrants ever truly be accepted by all the people of their new country?

Obviously, if a particular group is seen to cause trouble, this might be a barrier to acceptance. So logically, an ethnic group of high achievers who cause little trouble would be accepted easily, right?

Well, you'd think so. But it doesn't necessarily work out that way.


When people from an immigrant group are seen to commit crimes or do something to bring negative attention to themselves, you can hear the usual chorus of criticism.

"They aren't assimilating."
"They don't add any value to this country."
"They are uncivilised and incompatible with our national values."
"They will form ghettos."

Ok, fine. So what about when a migrant group makes a success of itself?

Take for example, the Chinese and Indian communities of Australia. There are almost 700,000 Australians who claim Chinese ancestry, and around 250,000 with Indian ancestry. Now obviously each community is diverse and contains all kinds of people from all walks of life, but both communities would have to be regarded as highly successful immigrant groups, by most measures.

While many Australians would view the stereotypical Indian job as a taxi driver or service station attendant, Indians are strongly over-represented in high-status fields such as medicine. They are much more likely than the rest of the population to have a degree, and to be working in a profession. Likewise, the success of Chinese-Australians in education is well-recognised. Check out last year's top year 12 scores in Victorian schools for specialist mathematics or chemistry, to take two obvious examples, and you'll notice the domination of Chinese surnames.

In both cultures, the strong emphasis on educational achievement, hard work, and the status gained by attaining a "good job", lead to success in many fields; witness the disproportionate success of ethnic Chinese in South East Asia compared to the indigenous populations. In Australia, both communities have a relatively low crime rate as well, when compared to that of the population at large.

This is not to say that the Chinese or Indian way is better than any other way - educational and economic successes are hardly the only measure of anyone's worth to their country. But by many of the criteria that is regularly used to attack some migrant groups (such as those from Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific), Chinese and Indians are therefore the ideal citizens.
So you might deduce then, that the same people who might criticise some communities for struggling to achieve, would heartily welcome migrants like the Indians and Chinese, who are prime examples of what is possible for those willing to go for it.

But no.

For "successful" migrants, the negativity is still there; except this time the complaints are different. This time, they are taking jobs and opportunities away from "real" Australians.

I've often heard the muttered accusation that Asian-Australian school students "cheat" by having tutoring outside school hours, or by eschewing sports or partying in order to study hard. Of course, this approach is not restricted to Asian students; any student wishing to get top marks needs to do this to some extent. It just so happens that Asian students make up a disproportionate amount of those top students. In any case, if this leads them to get the best marks and get accepted into the best courses and jobs, then so be it. Regardless of race, if I'm being treated by a doctor, or having my share portfolio managed by someone, I want it to be a person who is proven to be diligent and hardworking, rather than the one who was a good footy player in high school or who was the life of the party at age 16.

Check this post at the Herald-Sun for an example of how Asian students are viewed as a threat. It concerns one of Melbourne's best-performing schools, with a predominantly Asian student population (many of whose families have moved into the area in order to send their child to a good school). Many of the commenters see this as a threat. One describes it as a kind of genocide of white Aussies, under the guise of multiculturalism. Another wonders, "Where are all the Australian-looking kids?"

I wrote recently about a new selective high school in Mebourne, which accepts only students who pass an entrance exam. It is dominated by Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan students - which indicates that their families are clearly putting a high priority on education. But over at the Oz Conservative blog, you can witness the paranoia that this signifies a grave threat to WASPS. Some suggest it means Asians need to be kicked out of the country.

So there you go, immigrants and children of immigrants; you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You are either sponging off "our" country or stealing "our" jobs. If you don't sufficiently assimilate and perform by some arbitrary measure, you are a threat, a bludger, a dead weight. If you succeed, you are also a threat.

I'm not writing this some kind of love letter to Australia's Indian and Chinese communities. And neither am I an "open borders" kind of guy who thinks we should automatically let everyone in who wishes to come here. I'm just trying to point out that whatever basis people claim for not wanting "foreigners" in the country, it very often comes down to one simple reason: they don't like foreigners.