- Riz Wakil: Runs his own printing business. Photo: Jenny Evans

It's the ultimate entrepreneurial testing ground: you stake your life savings on a perilous journey to a country where you arrive (if you're lucky) penniless, with little to build your future upon save your stamina and your smarts. It's capitalism at its most Darwinian, less Celebrity Apprentice than Refugee Apprentice, and yet its successes, like Riz Wakil, are many.
"I came here from Afghanistan in November 1999, when I was 18 years old," says Wakil. "We had 77 people on a 30-foot fishing boat. We ran out of water and food. Any proper food we had we gave to an Iraqi family, because they had young children to feed. So we just ate dried biscuits, with boiled rice every second or third day."
- A new life: Ali arrived with nothing. Photo: Jenny Evans

After nine months in Curtin Detention Centre, Wakil, an ethnic Hazara, was accepted as a refugee and released, whereupon he found casual work, mostly for printing companies.
Thirteen years later Wakil owns his own business in Fairfield, a printing and design company that turns over $300,000 annually and employs five people.
Many Australians see "boat people" as not only "illegal" but lazy.
"You see it all the time," says Sophie Peer, from refugee advocacy group Chilout. "Our Facebook page is full of comments like 'Why would you let them in, they're all dole bludgers.' There's a huge racism there, without a doubt."
And yet far from being a drain on the system, humanitarian refugees have been shown to make an important contribution to the economy, a finding highlighted by Graeme Hugo's report in 2011.
Commissioned by the federal government, Professor Hugo's research found that despite needing a short period of intense support after their arrival, asylum seekers invariably proved a boon to the economy, particularly in regional areas, where they filled labour shortages and built demand.
Professor Hugo's report also found that humanitarian entrants displayed "greater entrepreneurial qualities" compared with other migrants, "with a higher than average proportion engaging in small and medium business enterprises".
Not only that but they facilitate the development of trade between Australia and their countries of origin and, because they were forced out of their homelands, tended to demonstrate a greater commitment to life in Australia.
You certainly can't fault them for initiative. Ali, who is 18, arrived in Australia on a leaky wooden boat just 18 months ago. He was alone, broke and spoke no English. Within months of his release from detention, however, he had earned his first pay packet - $160 - at McDonald's.
"It was amazing," he says. "I sent $100 to my mother, who was still in Afghanistan. The rest I saved so I could buy an iPhone.''
When he bought the phone, the first app he downloaded was an English dictionary.
After his father was executed by the Taliban, Ali was sent away, first to Kabul, then to Pakistan. There a family friend paid $5000 for him to be smuggled to Australia. The trip was a nightmare. He was detained in Malaysia, badly beaten, and sent back to Pakistan. After attempting the journey again, he made it, arriving half starved.
He is now studying at Holroyd High School, having saved enough from working at Luna Park over the school holidays to buy a computer. Even paying his first tax instalment was a thrill. "We don't do this in Afghanistan."
As the Hugo report showed, people such as Wakil and Ali are assets not liabilities. Asked about Kevin Rudd's new refugee policy, Wakil said: "When you are running from potential death, you don't listen to policies. You just go, because you have to. This is what makes me angry, because Rudd is now just playing politics with people's lives."