Not desirous of importing a problem

A NY Times op-ed argues:

Selecting refugees based on their spiritual beliefs is a form of state-supported prejudice that secular societies like Australia have a moral obligation to reject.

As one of Australia’s foremost experts on refugees points out, specific religions don’t have a monopoly on peaceful behavior. “Some Buddhists, for example, are extremely spiritual and peaceable,” William Maley, a professor at the Australian National University and author of “What is a Refugee?,” said in an email. “But there are Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar who might better be classed as fascists.”

Okay, I am convinced. Keep out the Buddhists.

Muslims, especially those from the Middle East, have an image problem in the Western world. Concerns are fed by a legitimate fear of terrorism and the alienness of Muslim and Arabic social norms, clothing and language. ...

“As we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration,” a government official said in 1938.

The Australians do not just have a legitimate fear of "alienness". The Muslims are against much of what Australians are for, and importing Muslims will cause a lot of problems.