‘Under the Southern Cross:’ Why Australia’s bishops are renewing call to welcome migrants

Immigration to Australia has changed a lot in my life time. If you look at the paragraph below, it is clear most migrants in the first two decades after World War II were of European origin. When I was young the "White Australia" policy was in vogue, and it was quite rare to see Asians or Africans in the neighbourhood.

In response to the unprecedented influx of migrants from southern and Eastern Europe which occurred in the period between 1945 and 1965—resulting in two million migrants arriving on Australian shores in that time—the Australian Archbishops and Bishops urged Catholics to embrace their responsibility to welcome and support these new settlers, as an opportunity to “spread the Kingdom of Christ within this Continent that was once called the land of the Holy Ghost”.

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But that all changed in 1973 when the Whitlam government renounced the White Australia policy. I was 19 when that took place, and I'm now a senior citizen. Prior to that about the only Asians I used to see were in Chinese restaurants.

In 1973 the Whitlam Labor government definitively renounced the White Australia policy. In its place it established a policy of multiculturalism in a nation that is now home to migrants from nearly 200 different countries.

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These days a walk through our local shopping centre will reveal Indians, Chinese, Moslems from various countries, South Sea islanders, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Africans and pretty much the whole gamut of racial stereotypes. Our priest is Nigerian which would have been unthinkable in the 1960's (and probably not needed). He's pretty good so no problems there, but it demonstrates how much our society has changed.

I have a concern though with "multiculturalism". As far as I'm concerned the ethos should be "Australianism", or Australia first, no matter where they come from.

The US might have been based on open migration, although it also was mainly European until recently. But there has always been a strong sense of America first in American society. Even so there have been waves of persecution in the US against migrants from time to time.

The following article was lifted from a Chinese government source (!), but it illustrates the fact that "multiculturalism" can be pie-in-the-sky as a policy if it's not implemented with some discretion.

The United States is a nation of immigrants. Ever since colonial times, immigrants from around the world have come to the country in waves. However, the history of U.S. treatment of immigrants is one rife with inhumane tragedies such as discrimination, exclusion, arrest, detention, expulsion, and a litany of human rights abuses. Worse still, the recent years have witnessed one humanitarian disaster after another caused by the U.S. government on refugees and immigrants going to the country.

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article said:

Amid rising tensions, Australia’s bishops have renewed their call for the compassionate welcome of migrants, marking the 75th anniversary of a landmark pastoral letter that helped shape the nation’s migration response.

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Cool. They can have ours, if they want. It would be nice to be able to enter a store or a restaurant and hear something other than Spanish being spoken.