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Academic sparks furor with call for Australia to keep immigration ...
Published on: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:00:00 GMT
A university academic has sparked outrage in Australia with his warning that the nation is becoming a Third World colony by allowing nonwhite immigration. Canadian-born Drew Fraser, associate professor of Public Law at Sydney's Macquarie University, argues that his adopted nation made a mistake in the 1970s when it abolished the White Australia Policy - a set of immigration restrictions that ensured the population remained predominantly white for more than a century.
"The White Australia Policy was basic common sense of the sort the Japanese are still committed to and, really, we were buying a lot of trouble by mortgaging our future essentially by abolishing the White Australia Policy," Fraser, 62, told The Associated Press on Friday.
The policy was dismantled in the 1970s and since then Australia has become a successful multicultural society.
Australia accepted 110,000 immigrants in the year to June 30. A 2001 census found 23 per cent of Australia's 20 million population were born overseas. Most of the immigrants had come from the United Kingdom, followed by New Zealand, then Italy.
Fraser's views have received national media coverage since he wrote an angry letter to his local suburban newspaper this month in response to a front-page story about a Sudanese couple becoming Australian citizens like their Australian-born three-year-old daughter.
Fraser, originally from Burk's Falls in the Muskoka region north of Toronto, took exception to the Parramatta Sun's headline: "Now mom and dad are Aussies like me."
"If this is true, presumably the concept of an Aussie is now virtually meaningless," Fraser told AP.
He wrote in a letter published by the newspaper: "Australia, it seems, can no longer remain the homeland of a particular people. Instead, it must become a colony of the Third World."
Most of the public outrage has been focused on his warning against Australia accepting African immigrants.
"Experience practically everywhere in the world tells us that an expanding black population is a surefire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems," he wrote.
Stepan Kerkyasharian, chairman of the government-funded multicultural organization Community Relations Commission, expects a backlash from foreign governments because of Fraser's position at a public university.
"I would not be surprised if there were formal protests lodged at a diplomatic level because this person is speaking in his capacity as a professor of a government-funded and -supported university," Kerkyasharian said.
The government has not commented on the furor, but its human-rights watchdog, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma, is investigating any possible breach of discrimination laws.
The university, which claims to be the most multicultural in Australia, has distanced itself from Fraser's views.
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