Migrants work harder

re: "Playing the ‘racist’ card" (PostBag, July 30)

Dear editor,
Peter Atkinson's defence of Barry Wallace and the like-minded against the charge that their attitudes are racist is doubtless sincere, as are the attitudes themselves. However, sincerity of belief guarantees neither truth nor decency. The Jim Crowe segregationists of 1950s America were doubtless also sincere in their beliefs about African Americans, which nonetheless remained racist and false. The same is true of Barry's claim that "if you look at the people who come to Australia, most only come to get money from the government, and many don't work and form conclaves. Also, they don't mix into Australian society."

To avoid the charge of racist prejudice prompting such accusations, they would have to be backed up by facts. The relevant facts are the statistics comparing Australian born citizens with immigrants and their children, which show Barry and his sincerely like-minded mates to be wrong. First, immigrants to Australia have higher education levels than the Australian born, with 9.2% having postgraduate degree compared to only 4.8 for the Aussie born. More tellingly, the children of migrants have consistently higher educational expectations than those of home born Australians: 60% of the children of migrants complete at least year 12, compared with only 53% of the children of parents born in Australia. Almost 50% of the children of migrants complete at least a bachelor degree, compared a low 36% for those with both parents born in Australia. These are not the statistics for a group who “only come to get money from the government.”

Naturally, this high motivation to build a better life for themselves and their children is reflected in substantial contributions to the Australian economy and to Australian society more generally. Australia and its non-immigrant population would be much worse off culturally and economically without the boons that migrants and their children bring with them.

Although racist prejudices certainly continue to exist in Australia, with 27% of Australian citizens (Yes, citizens) having experienced personal abuse or discrimination "because of their ethnicity," 86.8% of Australians report that they think it "a good thing for a society to be made up of people from different cultures."

The readily available facts, such as those cited above from The Place of Migrants in Contemporary Australia (Executive Summary), published by the Department of Immigration and Border Control, 2014, flatly contradict the sincerely believed falsehoods of Mr. Atkinson and those he would defend. To recklessly assume the truth of such false beliefs without bothering to check them is to indulge a prejudice which should properly be called racist.

Happily, at least for now in Australia, the racists continue to be losers.

 Felix Qui

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 31, 2018, under the title "Migrants work harder" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1512962/identity-crisis