So basically, what you are saying is that those 80% should have been left to starve. Or maybe more, since it's not possible to tell in advance which ones of the asylum applicants will get jobs 5 years down the road.
No, what I'm saying is that an influx of people who will not contribute to the economy in any way, but are a drain on limited resources, are a burden on the nation!
And you are demonstrably wrong; and even if you were correct, the idea that this justifies leaving them to die puts you on a par with Joe Stalin, who you earlier condemned for doing basically the same thing.
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.
