From anger to evidence: unpacking Australia’s refugee myths, media spin, and the real numbers behind safety and crime

The scroll through X got ugly fast—slurs, threats, and sweeping claims about “dangerous immigrants” that would’ve been unthinkable to say out loud not long ago. Instead of trading more heat for heat, we hit pause and went looking for the facts: how Australia’s humanitarian program actually works, who gets through our vetting, what changed after boat turnbacks and offshore processing, and what the research really says about refugees and crime.

We break down the two main pathways—offshore and onshore applications—and the tight cap on humanitarian visas. We explain why only a small fraction of applicants are approved, what ASIO screening looks like, and how the High Court’s ruling on indefinite detention forced the release of stateless people under strict conditions. Then we zoom out to the media storm: a handful of serious charges amplified into a story about “crime waves,” while the broader data tells a quieter truth. Large Australian studies find no consistent link between higher immigrant presence and higher crime; if anything, neighborhoods with more newcomers often see slightly lower rates when community ties are strong.

You’ll also meet the people behind the headlines—like Hazara families from Afghanistan, a persecuted Shi’a minority fleeing extremist violence. Their record in Australia points to education, work, and low involvement in violent crime, a reality that doesn’t fit the fear-soaked narrative. Throughout, we stay honest about edge cases and security gaps while making space for solutions that improve safety and integration: faster credential recognition, trauma-informed support, youth programs, and trust-based policing.

If you’re tired of outrage cycles and want clarity grounded in evidence and empathy, this is your stop. Listen, share with a friend who’s on the fence, and tell us what data shifted your view. And if we got something wrong, hold us to it—subscribe, leave a review, and add your voice to the conversation.

Chapters

• 0:00 From Doomscrolling to Outrage
• 3:35 Abuse Online and Real-World Harm
• 5:40 Stepping Back for Facts
• 7:50 What People Believe About Immigration
• 10:20 Scope: Asylum, ISIS Brides, Skilled Visas
• 12:30 Values, Privilege, and Empathy
• 15:50 Australia’s Humanitarian Program 101
• 18:45 Boats, Turnbacks, and Offshore Processing
• 22:30 Onshore vs Offshore Applications
• 24:45 Vetting, Approval Rates, and Myths
• 28:30 Stateless People and High Court Ruling
• 32:10 Release Conditions and Public Safety
• 36:30 Media Narratives and Crime Headlines
• 39:15 What the Research Actually Finds
• 43:10 Why Context Matters More Than Labels
• 46:30 Who’s Coming: Focus on Hazaras

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to Fitzcapades. My name's Michelle. Now I I've got an axe to grind, I guess. Um I've been spending way too much time on Twitter or X man, and I have become quite flabbergasted actually at the degree and amount of the xenophobia and racism that is out there that people are tweeting. People are tweeting outrageous things that you know what back when I was growing up, racism was frowned upon, you know. It was just the worst thing it could be called was racist, you know. And like the stuff that these people are saying is the stuff that would like get you fully like five detentions or something at school back when I was at school. And these people are just out there tweeting it, and they're honestly believing this shit too. And for me, with my background, like I just I'm I I can't believe that this is where humanity is at this point in time. I I I can't believe it. I am horrified, like honest to God, you know, people are seriously like you know, sounding like the rednecks in Queensland pubs, man, but they're all over Australia, outwardly saying, We don't want those stinky immigrants here, you know, they're just bringing their stinky cultures, and you know, all they're gonna do is bring violence and crime, you know, they're dirty, every insult under sun, it's just so barbaric and outrageous. The amount of hatred and the the the lack of empathy is uh uh astounding to my little left-wing ears. And so, of course, in an outrage, and maybe after a couple of whines, I took to the keyboard and I and I started to comment on some of these posts, which was the last thing I should have done actually, because it didn't end well. Um, and I ended up just being fully, fully sledged. Like, you know, literally, one dude, he this is his response to me, and I can't believe it's he goes, Shut up, you fat dumb bitch. You are going to get raped by a Muslim man and you're gonna like it. Literally, that's what some like fucking Australian dude wrote, and I was like, Wow, like you guys are enraged. Like the amount of like passion and and hatred, it's just so sad, you know? And I look over at America and what's happening there, and ice agents are pulling immigrants out of homes in the middle of the night, taking their kids out of bed when they don't even have any clothes on, zip-locking their zip tie-locking their hands together and shoving them in the back of a like bus. In what world are we living in now that adults, actual adults, have lost sight of the fact that these are fucking children that we need to protect? And instead, they think it's not only okay, but it's justified to traumatise them to that degree, you know, to that degree, just because of the colour of their skin. It is an absolute abomination. Where are we headed today? So, yes, I was outraged, but then I took a step back and I was like, Well, Michelle, you're actually you actually don't know a lot about this either, to be honest with you. All you're doing is that uh you're just as bad as them coming out with your heart on your sleeve, emotional, passionate, you know, just just you know, arguing with isms, where's your facts? So I took a step back from X before I got someone before someone sent an assassination squawk squad around to murder me. And I took a deep breath and I actually thought, okay, if I'm gonna make have if I am going to have an opinion, I want it to be based on facts, not just ideology that I feel fits my identity or is fits with who I am, you know, because that's just bullshit. I want the actual facts of what is going on. Because I mean, in response to a lot of my stuff that I wrote, obviously I got called a lot of insults and things, uh like that was not cool. But like, you know, there was a lot of news articles and shit like that, which was of questionable, you know, questionable quality and reliability. But the resounding, resounding uh opinion of these people is that A, there's too many immigrants coming in, they're going to take over Australia. B, a few real crazy people honestly believe that the government, well, this was their intention to it was a conspiracy theory to actually wipe us, like white people off the face of Australia, replace them with purely brown and black skinned people, and that that the and I and when I told them, you know, when I retorted back to that, well, hang on a minute, most of our politicians are white. Why are they gonna want to wipe out their own race? They're like, oh for money, of course. I'm like, what the hell? You guys are crazy. This is insane. Anyway, I'm gonna take a deep breath. But so the resounding thing is they feel that immigrants bring with them violence and crime, and that it makes Australia unsafe. We are gonna be overtaken, we're gonna lose our jobs, they've already taken all of our homes, you know, they feel it's out of control, and they just their resounding thing is we don't want them here. Go back to where you came from, pretty much. All right. Very, very, very like, you know, redneck Queensland, fucking, you know, like usually just the people that were a minority of Australia. This is becoming a majority kind of opinion. And I was like, okay, well, maybe there's some basis for what they are saying, you know, why there's so this seems to be such a universally held opinion that maybe I'm missing something here. And so I got I did a deep dive, a real deep dive into this topic. And now I'm not claiming to be the most articulate on legal matters or anything like that. So I'm gonna just tell it as it is, as I understand it. Uh, I'm no legal expert, I'm gonna get some terminologies wrong, I'm sure, but bread and butter, this is uh what I found. Now, this is a really big topic, so I'm gonna split this up into several different episodes. The first one I'm gonna be presenting here is on asylum seekers, so asylum seekers from the yeah, taboo areas of the Middle East, which is where most people object to having uh, you know, um uh immigrants come from, uh, because the common understanding is that there is only one type of Islam religion uh only, and that is the extremists, and every Muslim is extremist, which is entirely not true. Okay. So I'm gonna focus on asylum seekers because that's where my first argument was. People like nah go back to you know country that you came from, you know, la la la la. I was like, well, hang on, these people they just they just want to be safe, and then they're like, Well, yeah, but why do they create the same dangerous environment when they get to Australia that they had over there? And I said, Well, they don't, you know, like they just simply don't. And that was just a like then it just went downhill from there, you know. Um, but I wanted to look at the actual facts. What is the what are the facts? How many immigrants are there? You know, uh, like is it is is it increasing, is it decreasing? Where do they come from? Do they cause more crime? What is the actual story and where is this coming from? That's what I wanted to discuss today. I also wanted to discuss the um uh the um ISIS brides, because that's topical. That could end up being another podcast, or I might end up getting it to it today. We'll see how things pan out. And the third topic that I wanted to discuss was uh the topic of skilled migrant immigrants, and um and that's a separate topic as well, because there's a lot of misunderstanding arounding around that. So listen, I I hope that these are the facts. I there's the facts as well as I could find out um with a very deep dive. Please, if I am incorrect in any of these uh facts or any of my information I'd give, I want to be corrected because as I said, I don't want to base my opinion on just feelings and isms and ideologies. I want my opinions to be based on facts. That's really important. So please, if I'm wrong, drop me a line and and tell me. So I guess just uh before delving in, actually, I just wanted to f finish my introduction with the final with this comment really uh about who I am and and and what my ideology is. So, you know, I realise that I am incredibly fortunate to be born in Australia. I live and am a citizen of a country that millions, if not billions, of people in the world less fortunate than me would give their right arm to live, or to be in my position, you know, and I don't take that for granted. I know that's a really lucky position, you know. Being a citizen of Australia means that I don't have to worry about my safety or being shot dead or being persecuted, and I don't have to worry about the safety of my family every day, you know. People who are born elsewhere are not as lucky, and you know, no one gets to be to gets to choose where they're born in this world. That's a choice we have no influence over. So for me, I don't feel that I am any more deserving of the privilege that I have than the next person. I don't feel that I am entitled to my privilege, you know, and that I'm better than people born elsewhere. I truly believe that every human life is equal in its value, and therefore my privilege is not deserved, it's not earned, it's just luck. And therefore, you know, I feel that someone like less fortunate and l less lucky to be born somewhere else, well, you know, like they it's their entitlement to a good life, they still have an entitlement to a good life, and if I was in their position, you know, I would want to do everything I could to make my life better and my children's life better and my family's life better too, you know. So I don't feel the sense of being invaded upon when they're migrants seeking asylum just to try and get a better life, you know. I've crawled my way out of the gutter from various situations, certainly not as dire as what these immigrants have, uh, and I've gotten myself a better life, and why shouldn't they too? So I don't begrudge them. And if I was in their shoes, I would do exactly the same thing. Um, but there's just a lot of there's no empathy for these people, and there's a lot of uh scepticism and fear and belief that these people are come are really Islamic extremists bullshitting about you know whatever they've gone through just to get a ticket over here and that really they're gonna come and be massive terrorists and ruin Australia. And this is a public opinion, so yeah, but I I don't share that that view. Now, maybe I'll end up being wrong, you know, and so be it. But at this point in time I feel a lot of empathy for these people, and I you can't tar all Muslims with the same brush, you know, extremists make up a very minimal fraction of the entire Muslim community. And in my life, I have travelled to Muslim places like um in Indonesia and have found the Muslim people to be very delightful, and I've gone to university with Muslim people too, and likewise they were beautiful, delightful people as well. So, you know, I don't think we should be letting in Muslim extremists. I understand they're very uh dangerous people, you can't reason with them, they're they just want to waste every motherfucker on the earth, basically, other than them. I understand, and you can't derail that, you can't change them. So, no, I don't think we should be encouraging or even letting these people in who have who are of these ideologies. So please get I want to make that point very clear before we dive into this as well. You know, I'm not a crazy. Um, but yeah, that's that's pretty much where I see myself and everyone else in the world. So I just thought that was important to get straight up the front. So in Australia, we have a humanitarian program whereby people who are refugees and cannot go back to their country of birth or country of origin, uh they can apply for a humanitarian visa and be granted um be granted that and have safe haven in Australia. Okay. That is a good thing. So how does this work? Well before 2013, we used to have boat people that would come because we are an island nation, so you would have all of these dingy boats coming from all over the world entering into Australia with boatloads of illegal immigrants, okay, smuggled in. And what used to happen is that they would be intercepted, they these people off these boats would be transferred to a mainland um uh detention centre process, they'd have their cases heard. If it sounded if if they were found to definitely be refugees and in danger of if they were to go back to their country of origin, then they would be granted a a temporary or protective visa and they'd be allowed to stay in Australia, they'd be released. Then Tony Abbott came in and he um brought in Operations Sovereign Borders, which basically meant that any boats that uh were came to Australia in this manner were turned back. And uh if they couldn't be turned back, there was offshore processing of these uh people done in Nauru and Manis Island, um, or in Papua New Guinea. And that that was a great um that that dissuaded a lot of boats, in fact, all of the boats from coming. He in fact, Tony Abbott's claim to fame is he stopped the boats, and indeed he did. I mean, so if we look at the figures, right, like back in uh 2013, there was an astounding, an astounding, like 30,000 people who came in on boats that year. Right, that's a huge amount of numbers, like that's a huge amount of people. Uh um, and then before that was at the peak though, so like um between like um tw 2008 to 2009, there was 2007, but to between 2012 and 2013, there was like 25,000, 25,000, sorry, to 27,000 people on boats who came in uh seeking asylum. It's a staggering figure. After Operations Sovereign Builders, that pretty much went down to zero. There's less than a hundred people that will come in on shanty boats now. So now we don't have boat people, which was actually I hate to say it, but news to me. I had still envisioned people coming in on boats, but um shows how little I know. But now there are two ways of seeking a humanitarian visa. The first way is offshore. So, like if you're in like say somewhere like Syria, like or you know, um Iraq or something, if you can get yourself to an Australian embassy, put your application in, you will process uh like assessed, processed, and then it's decided whether you can come to Australia or not from offshore. That's one way, and then the other way is onshore processing. So basically there's a lot of people, particularly from Asia and stuff, who will come here on a holiday visa or like a student visa, and then once they get here, then they will uh put in the application and say, Hey, look, I'm a refugee, I can't go back to where I live or where I came from because i I'm at danger. And the amount of humanitarian visas that are granted per year, so between 2023 and 2024, was 16,750. And if you look at that number across uh the board, that's been a flat number, except for the peak in 2013 um with the boat people, the last year of the boat people there that that was at there uh no, sorry, sorry, 30,000 people came, but not all of them got visas, sorry. But um, and and of course there were people applying from other regions. So sorry, um in that year, sorry, there was 13,000 humanitarian visas. Um, so like look, if you look, my impression is looking across the years, actually the amount of humanitarian visas that is has been granted seems to be relatively flat. It does fluctuate a little bit, but you know, it's of the order, like always under sort of 20,000, you know, usually around about 15,000 per year. That's how many people manage to get a bridging visa or a protection visa in Australia under humanitarian circumstances. Now, if you so the the actual process of applying to is not it's a rigorous, it's rigorous, a lot of hoops to jump through, right? So, like basically, firstly, they have to prove that they are indeed refugees, and that's quite there's quite stringent criteria. So they have to prove that they can't have get safe haven within their country from the government or within a neighbouring country or country close to them. Um, they or that there's no other options basically for their safety. This has to be the last possible option, you know, and they they have to prove again that they really are at danger in their own country, uh, either through persecution, religious or you know, political reasons. They have to prove this, that they are a minority and that they are at danger. Then they have to undergo stringent assessment in terms of character assessment, so police checks, if they're criminals, if they've got a criminal record, you know, if they are a bit and and um also in that is looking at the consistency of their story, you know, are they a bit shifty? Are there inconsistencies? Are they perhaps not telling the truth, you know, because of course there are people who might be lying and you know, saying there's something that they're not. So they are really stringently looked at by ASIO, carefully, carefully vetted. And from the Middle East, they're even more so, right? Like so super they're it it's they're high-level intelligence that looks into every aspect of who this person is. So they have to pass the character test, and then also there's a health assistant just to make sure that they don't have anything nasty like you know, multiple drug-resistant TB or something that you know, they don't want to bring that into the country. Now, when we look at uh actually the approval rate, it's only 15% of applicants that are actually eventually end up getting a humanitarian visa. The rest of them are rejected. So it it's it no this perception that we're just letting anyone in the country willy-nilly, that's not the case. There's a lot of people who are rejected, a lot of people that are not let in for various reasons. Um, you know, the thing is though that you can't get a breakdown of the reasons why they were rejected because all of that's sort of a lot of this information and data is really um like top secret, sort of classified. So all I can tell you is that 15% is the number that gets through. So when we look at the nations and in terms of who where these people are from who managed to get these humanitarian visas, the highest, like the the country that has the highest amount of immigrants is Afghanistan. Um, and that's at about 45% of all um uh asylum seekers um that is for that's combining onshore and offshore applications. Um the next com most so that's about say five to six thousand per year. Iraq is second after Afghanistan at 2,148, then Myanmar at about 1,600, Syria at 1,300. These are the stats for 2023, and then after that it drops off quite a lot, and there's a lot of a conglomerate of a lot of smaller numbers, so Congo is 455, uh Ethiopia, you know, 3% sort of thing, China 1.4%, and Chinese are very carefully vetted as well, um uh because there's a lot of distrust. And interestingly, when we look at India, they only have like 0.7% approval rate there because they are very stringently vetted, and there seems to be a high level of people claiming that they are refugees and at danger if they stay in India, when in fact they're not, uh, and that that so um for whatever reason um uh that seems to be the case. So there's a very low approval rate from India. So if you are a um if you are denied in entry into Australia on the basis of character or past criminal um history, and you're in on Australian land, what happens is that you are detained in a in an immigration detention centre, and there are several. There's one at Port Headland and there's one in Womram, um, and and you are held there, and then Australia gets you back to where you came from, right? Now, there's a caveat to that. Sometimes, right, uh the country that the person came from doesn't want to accept them that and they refuse entry, they essentially strip them of their citizenship and make them a stateless person, which is a massive thing, right? So if you're a stateless person, you're fucked pretty much. Like you have no access to healthcare, no legal rights, you know, you like you are literally fucked, right? If you don't have a nationality, you yeah, your life is miserable pretty much. So yeah, uh there are certain cases where this happens for whatever reason, countries will refuse to have that person back. Now that's not a thing that a nation readily does, because there's lots of repercussions to that, and I'll go into that a little bit more, but occasionally it happens. And it just so happened that we had quite a few people like this in our detention centres in Australia that basically were there indefinitely being detained, right? Uh, because they couldn't be sent to any other country, they were denied entry into Australia, and they had no no hope of ever gaining entry into Australia, no, no hope of ever getting a visa at all. And then at the end of 2023, a high court ruling uh deemed this to be illegal and unconstitutional, and so Australia was no longer allowed to keep these people in legal limbo in detention centres. They were no longer to keep and detained. Now, these were people that were deemed to be too dangerous to be in the general public in Australia, you know, we didn't want them. These were people with murder convictions and and uh sex offence uh offenders and and things like that in their background, like not nice people. But Australia was stuck with their hands tied, you know. There was literally nothing that could be done other than to release them after this this this court ruling, basically. Like, you know, and I like I don't agree with having people like this allowed into the country, but literally there was no other option. Couldn't just put them on a plane and send them back to the country that where they came from because they weren't accepting them, and that that's just bad. That's a violation of so many international laws that you just cannot do it, right? And um, you know, and and and we couldn't keep them detained either, okay? Because basically the reasoning behind it was that this was deemed to be a punishment, and it's not up to border control to uh enforce punitive um punishments or sentences. That's up to the Department of Justice, you know. But the function of a detention centre is is is solely to contain dangerous people until they can be sent back to where they came from. But if they can't be set back to where they came from and they're going to be held there indefinitely, then this was now considered a breach of human rights, uh unconstitutional and uh illegal. And so these uh immigrants, there was 149 of them at the time, had to be released onto Australian soil. So uh there were measures taken to try and make this a safest situation as possible. These people were released with heavily, heavy conditions on their visas, really stringent, heavy conditions to try and keep the public safe. So they were released, some of them were um had to wear ankle monitoring for like 24 hours a day, some days a week. All right, that was later ruled again by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional and not legal, so that had to stop. But they had stringent uh like curfews, so they had to be confined at home between uh 6 pm and 10 p.m. at night. Um, so they couldn't go out. They had to report to authorities or immigration once a day for the rest of their lives, mind you. So it's a big deal. They had restrictions on where they can work and what type of work they could do, restrictions on where they could go, so literally they couldn't go outside of a small suburb, like let alone interstate, and definitely not off Australian soil because they don't have a passport, so they're hemmed in and like imprisoned in a small area. They um couldn't associate with certain people, um and they um and so that they had really and and police were carefully supervising them, like really had their eye on them as well. A lot of them had to live close to police stations, and they had to have a approved fixed state place of residence um in the community. Um so very stringent uh sort of conditions, and breaking any one of those conditions would lead to a minimum um one year in jail. So pretty dire consequences if you fucked up and um yeah, heavy, heavy, heavy-handed. Now, some of these still some of these conditions were later found to be massive overreach by the government and wound back a little bit, but pretty much, you know, these people now were stateless, so you know, they uh have no legal rights, they have all of these conditions, draconian conditions, and if they break them, they're in jail, right? So it it ain't a life of luxury that these people went out to, you know what I mean? And uh bearing in mind too that a lot of these people had crime in their past, but they might have turned the corner and changed their way of living and who they are, you know. And the simple fact is that you cannot uh punish someone for a crime that they haven't committed yet. I mean, that's like then we're sort of, you know, we're we're sort of delving into you know thought crimes and and you know, um the blade runner sort of you know, what they were doing in that film, you know, you just can't do it, it's not cool. But you can see from the other side of the coin too, these are being deemed to be really dangerous people and you don't want them in our community. So it's the devil in the deep blue sea, really. So anyway, so just to bear in mind too that these were people that Australia wouldn't have accepted into our borders if not for this high court ruling and if not for the fact that no one would have them. So, like it or not, we were stuck with them, and this is the way it will always be. If these people, stateless people, end up within Australia, that becomes our problem. And it really doesn't matter who is in power, liberal, labour or whatever, that is the story, and end of story, you know, Supreme Supreme Court rules over government, and that's the end of the story, you know. It's so the fact that these people were released into the community was not a failing of immigration, it wasn't a failing of the government, it was just because, you know, of a bad set of circumstances. So, of course, the media you know grabbed a hold of that and made a mule of it, especially when like so they followed them up. There's 149 of them, so there was two two of them that. Committed murder and now in jail. Um, well, okay, I'll rephrase that. Uh they have been charged with murder. There have been no convictions yet because the matters are still before court. Um, but they they have they've certainly been charged with murder. There was one uh charged with a really nasty um home invasion, and another one was uh charged with an indecent assault of two people that was in Adelaide. Okay. So there was a spray, like what's that? One, two, three, four really serious violent clock crimes done by the four of these individuals. Uh, and then it was reported also that one in five of them uh went on to get uh you know other more minor uh criminal charges up against them as well. But when you actually like look and see what the criminal charges are, they weren't anything too con they were pretty minor, like some dude got caught with some cannabis, and then the rest of them were like just violations of of the visa uh um conditions, which when you look at how stringent those conditions are, you know, I mean uh they weren't easy to breach, sort of thing, um, to be honest with you. So they weren't really real crimes, if you will, in uh as much as you know, it's not like they were all assaults or anything like that. They were all pretty minor. So they they were not violent crimes, I guess, is what I'm getting at. And so the media made a meal of this, you know, one in five, these you know, immigrants has gotten new charges. There were unfortunately the murders, which is terrible, you know, awful, and um and the uh home invasion and the assault. And this is what led to a lot of the public getting this idea that immigrants are dangerous and bring the da crime with them onto our shores. Um, and uh yeah, this is where this public perception, I believe, comes from here. Um now I also want to make the point too of about you know, in terms of these people who've been charged with these crimes, they are like anyone else, innocent until proven guilty. Now I know that the optics are terrible, you know, these are people that are deemed too dangerous to come into Australia. Now we're forced to have them in here, and then they create they they you know commit these heinous crimes, you know. Um but and the optics are terrible. But we have to also acknowledge that these are people who are under strict police watch, and police are watching them with some uh high degree of suspicion, so there's some uh bias there, and they are very uh they're very vulnerable to being um accused of doing crimes that they have done, that they're innocent of, you know. And there's one particular case. There was one of these individuals who was actually initially charged with a sex crime, and later on those charges were dropped because it was found to be a case of mistaken identity, and this person had not committed those crimes, and that just exemplifies this point. And that guy, I don't think Australia wants to be the type of place that we end up putting away innocent people for crimes that they haven't done, you know. Um, you know, I it's just that's just not where we want to be. So, yeah. Um so anyway, this is where this perception of immigrants have come from, and it's really, really sad, really sad. Because now the question I guess that I'm I'm trying to address is whether immigrants or asylum seekers or refugees, whether uh the uh communities of of refugees living in um Australia, uh whether this is uh uh areas where they live where the there is higher rates of crime and um and violence, which is what the general public would believe. That's what they believe, that these immigrants they come here, these refugees, and they come and they bring their horrible violent cultures with them, and it's awful, you know. In fact, there's fairly robust evidence to prove exactly the opposite of what the public perceives. So there was a study titled Immigration, Ethnicity and Neighbourhood Violence, considering both concentration and diversity uh effects. It looked at 882 neighbourhoods in two Australian cities over nine years of crime data and it disaggregated immigrant populations by language, religious affiliation to see how concentrational diversity might affect crime. And the overall findings of this study was that immigration was negatively related to crime. So, like there was a where there was higher immigrant proportions on average, there was associated with lower crime rates. Okay, so through uh um so this actually flies in the face of what the most of Redneck Australia actually believes. Now, the association was weak in terms of there being less crime, but what it did not show was an increased level of crime, that's what we can definitely say. Now, the authors of the study cautioned that immigration or refugee eth uh um um ethnic composition, community integration, social cohesion, and diversity matter a lot in modelling the relationship. Um and the Australian Institute of Criminology's report called Ethnicity and Crime points out that major limitations in existing data exist. So ethnicity is rarely recorded in crime statistics, and many crimes go unreported, which makes strong conclusions difficult. Uh, but a state-level analysis done by a local government area has been done considering social and structural factors like economic change, population, participation in community organizations, and their results emphasize the importance of community engagement and social structure in explaining crime variation more than simple demographic characteristics like ethnicity or immigration concentration. And there's also analysis in the context of uh specific communities like Sudanese, Australians in crime and police and community uh perspectives. This paper examines settlement of refugees from Sudan and how perceptions and policing interact. So, you know, if the police are particularly suspicious of a certain population, that's going to lead to more arrests. So overall uh Australian research consensus is cautious, noting that any correlation between immigrant concentration and crime must be interpreted through layers of socioeconomic disadvantage, community integration, policing practices, and neighbourhood conditions. And the relationship is not straightforward because there are many intervening variables that may affect crime rates, meaning that even if you observe higher crime rates in some areas with refugee populations, one can't attribute the causation directly to being a refugee or immigrant factor. And some of the other factors include socioeconomic disadvantage. So refugees often settle in lower cost housing regions and have lower incomes initially and may face unemployment or underemployment and sometimes deal with language and credential barriers. These conditions are also a risk factor for crime in many studies. Social communities are more ice that are more isolated or lacking in social infrastructure, like youth programs, mentoring, and community centres can be more vulnerable to crime phenomena, and conversely, commun strong community structures and social capital multicultural organisations could help reduce crime. Policing practices and so some areas might record more crime because of more active policing or more willingness or barriers to report crime. A difference in police presence, resources, and community trust affect measured crime rates. Refugees may cluster in particular neighbourhoods for reasons like affordability or existing ethnic communities. And these neighbourhoods may already be disadvantaged or have less infrastructure. So the observed crime rate might might reflect neighbourhood disadvantage more than immigration per se. Some research suggests that diversity of immigrant populations, so multiple countries and languages and religions, and how well different groups mix with each other or with the host society, can also affect social dynamics and neighbourhood effect on crime. Recent arrivals may experience more difficulties with adjustment, trauma, and unemployment and may influence risk factors over time. Many immigrants integrate gain stability and crime risk declines. So, what we can definitely say from the data is that there's no strong or consistent evidence that refugee or immigrant presence causes elevated violent crime across the board in Australia. The idea that refugee communities are inherently more prone to violence is not borne out by rigorous empirical studies. Many claims are anecdotal or based on selected cases, media reporting or moral panic narratives. For example, African gang's moral panic in Melbourne was widely discussed in the media, but later assessed as exaggerated in many respects. Crime statistics in Australia rarely include detailed breakdowns of refugee status, so drawing direct conclusion correlations is difficult. So I think this pretty much dispels the myth that immigration uh is associated with crime. Um if you look at the actual um populations like from the different regions that actually end up coming here too, that's quite reassuring. So, like in terms of the most common um country that that asylum seekers come from, it's Afghanistan. And most of these people are Hazaras, so that's an ethnic and religious minority native to the central highlands of Afghanistan, and they um are distinct from the majority of the Pashtun uh population. They have Central Asian and Mongolian um ancestry, and most of them are Shiite Muslims, whereas the majority of Afghans are Sunni Muslims, so they're quite different religions, and they speak Hazaragi, which is a dialect of Persian. Um, these the Hazari have faced systemic persecution over a century, including religious persecution because they are Shiite and in a predominantly Sunni region, and so the Sunni uh Muslims are more extremist and and see them as uh infidels and uh basically want to waste every one of them off the face of the earth. There's ethnic discrimination often portrayed as outsiders or non-Afghan by extremist groups, and they're they've been subject to targeted violence by the Tam Taliban and ISSK, other extremist groups, and they've you know undergone massacres, bombings of Hazara mosques and schools and neighborhoods. Um and so yeah, like they these are persecuted people, you know, they're they're um it's terrible the things that these people have gone through. But the Hassara people culturally are a peaceful uh group of people. They have a long tradition of education, hard work, and community cooperation. They place a strong emphasis on family, religion, and learning, and they've historically been farmers, artisans, tradespeople, often focused on rebuilding and improving their communities despite facing severe oppression. Um they are known to be law-abiding, peaceful, and non-violent. They are active in education, civil society, and human rights work and have produced many writers, poets, teachers, and professionals. And Hazaras have not been involved in any extremist movements or terrorist groups. They have no history of initiating aggression against other ethnic or religious groups. Their political movements tend to focus on equality, minority rights, and inclusion rather than dominance or violence. For example, during the post-2001 democratic period in Afghanistan, Hazaru leaders were among the strongest advocates for women's rights and secular education. They, rather than being perpetrators of violence, they have been consistent victims of it. Taliban and ISSK have massacred Hazara civilians for being Shiite Muslims. Hazara schools and mosques have been repeatedly bombed. And when displaced, such as in Pakistan's Quetta or in Iran's refugee communities, they have been targeted in sectarian attacks. Despite this, their response has been largely one of resilience, peaceful protest, and international advocacy and not retaliation. In Australia, Hazara refugees have built strong peaceful communities, especially in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, and they are known for their high work force participation, low crime rates, and strong emphasis on children's education. Australian police and integration services consistently describe them as model refugee communities. So the Hazara people are have peaceful, happy or uh peaceful family oriented and community-minded people. So these people that come from Afghanistan are not Islamic extremists. Uh they're far from it. You know, they um they just aren't, and and this is the thing that that people fail to understand is that not every Muslim is a Muslim extreme extremist. And these people uh they hate the Islamic extremists, you know, they've been victims of it, and that is not who they are as a people. And and this is why uh asylum seekers from Afghanistan are not dangerous, you know, and and it's but just very sad that the public has been led to see them in in such a different way. Like it's so sad. These people have been through horrendous atrocities and they want peace just like you and me, and it's just so very sad that people have got it uh so wrong about them, you know. So wrong. Um I um I don't have time to go through nor do I think you want to listen to it. Maybe that's a topic for a different day, about the different cultures from other countries. But what it is fine in my reading is universally asylum seekers, genuine bona fide, you know, asylum seekers uh are are peaceful people, they just want peace. They've been subjected to years of horror under, you know, Islamic extremists. They want to get as far away from it as they can, basically. These are not violent people, they are not dangerous people either. But unfortunately, public perception has been coloured by media uh blowing up um you know uh uh uh I guess um inflating um certain terrible events um and making it seem like Australia is just letting anyone in, even violent criminals, and that's leading to this upsurge in crimes, which is not the case. We've already established today that the people that did call that that were the perpetrator or have been charged with these murders are people that Australia wouldn't have let in if not for international laws and for them being made stateless or is stuck with them. This does not exemplify what's happening for the rest of the humanitarian um uh visa program. Uh majority of people who asylum seekers come here are very peaceful and they are not their presence is not associated with an increased amount of crime. So there's a lot of really false beliefs, sadly, out there, that is fueling this lack of empathy and racism and xenophobia, and yeah, it it's really sad. So that's pretty much what I found. Um I said if I'm wrong on any of these matters, then please correct me. The only other person I had to mention, sorry, was the Lint Cafe murderer, which was a an asylum seeker um manice, who was an i Islamic ext extremist, and that's the government probably did drop the ball there because he was a person of interest, you know, and he probably should have been deported earlier, but no action was taken, and that's regrettable, really regrettable. Um but uh on the whole it seems that the vetting process is really safe and people are stringently, you know, sort of research and and and you know scrupulously like investigated, and that's evidenced by a small number of applicants uh eventually managing to get their visas here. You know, I do not think that letting these people in puts Australia at risk. I think we should be empathetic towards their sufferings and have show compassion and understanding. These are not people to be feared. On the other hand, you know, we don't want to open our borders to Islamic extremists. I I'm definitely on board with that. But these people are not, these people have been the victims of that. Um so yeah, that's all I have to say. I I'm I'm gonna do another podcast on the ISIS Brides, which is topical, and also on skilled migrant um uh immigration as well, uh, which is also another interesting topic. So thank you for listening. I say please comment and yeah, join the conversation. Let me know if I've got anything wrong, and we'll talk next time. Namaste.