That wasn't Stalin's intention though. He wasn't trying to 'get rid of' them; He just didn't give a shit about them.
If Stalin wanted someone dead, then he had no problem sending people to shoot them dead. If he wanted someone to suffer, he had no problem sending them to somewhere where they would suffer. The people who merely starved were not targeted by Stalin as such; Their deaths were just a side effect of his economic policies.
It seems strange to me that someone who argues that 'economic migrants' are somehow less worthy of assistance than 'refugees' today, fails to make that same distinction when talking about the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century.
It's almost as if you don't grasp what 'economic migrant' actually means.
Idealistic sentiments have no basis in reality. A survey found that up to, and most likely a conservative figure, 80% of asylum seekers given permanent visas were still collecting Centrelink benefits 5 years after arrival here.
No wonder the budget is in deficit, and bound together worst.
A survey found that 86% of statistics presented without citations were total bullshit.
But even if every single person who came here as an asylum seeker was collecting benefits five years after arrival, that is preferable to them not being allowed in, and not being alive five years later.
Unless letting people die through indifference is of no import to you - in which case you are doing exactly what you just condemned Joe Stalin for doing.
According to my last tax receipt, the welfare portion of the Federal Budget was 36.78% of all federal spending. The vast majority of that was spent on the aged, the disabled, and family benefits - 32.26% of the total, with just 4.5% of our taxes going to benefits for the unemployed or 'other' categories.
The immigration budget was 1.28% of the total; even if the ONLY unemployed and 'other' Australians receiving benefits were immigrants (which they are not by a long chalk), that would mean that a whopping 5.8% of taxes collected were going to help out these unfortunates. The budget deficit is still tiny (despite having been trebled by Tony Abbott in just two years); and the contribution of asylum seekers to that deficit is minuscule. Indeed, the cost of offshore processing (and bribes to people smugglers) in an attempt to 'stop the boats' is far higher than the cost of paying all those people benefits instead would have been. If your concern is how much asylum seekers are costing us, then you should be campaigning for Manus Island to be closed, and the inmates granted work permits ASAP.
I am very doubtful that the total cost of assistance (including Centrelink payments) to asylum seekers is greater than the total taxes collected from them; even if your highly dubious 80% figure were correct, the majority of recipients are also paying tax (all of them pay GST, and the ones getting no benefits are also net taxpayers), so the total net cost to the taxpayer is utterly trivial - and may even be less than zero.
Your single statistic wouldn't be worth shit even if it was correct - and there is no reason to think it is, in the absence of a citation. What happens after ten years? Do the benefit claimants get jobs and pay back more in tax than they received in benefits? It seems likely that someone who has to learn a new language would take a few years to become easily employable.
Frankly, your un-sourced right-wing sound-bite is almost certainly untrue; If it were true, it would not indicate that asylum seekers cost us money; and even if it did indicate that asylum seekers cost us money, it would not show that we cannot afford it - all it does is show that your position is that other people's lives are less important to you than the price of a cup of coffee a week.
Congratulations - you are almost on a par with Joe Stalin in the compassion stakes. You must be so proud.
