It’s back to the future as headlines report on the arrival boatloads of asylum seekers and politicians reach for the dog-whistle. Malcolm Turnbull recycled John Howard’s “we will decide” line on immigration, and didn’t even blush. And Kevin Rudd is not about to be outflanked.
This is an ugly political game, because the only way to go is down. It’s a race to the bottom.
I was in Pakistan during the children overboard episode, when the dog-whistle was given a good workout, and I interviewed Afghan refugees in Peshwar. They had suffered intense levels of grief and loss both in Afghanistan and during the years of limbo in Pakistan. But for most of them, the real dream was to return to Afghanistan – not Afghanistan as it was then, and sadly as it largely remains now, but a peaceful Afghanistan, with restored communities and hope.They were not talking about flat screen TVs in the Australian suburbs, but about gardens full of grapes and possible reunions with loved ones. That is not a dream that people give up lightly. And when they are finally driven to abandon it, our Prime Minister has no right to criminalise their decision.
Peshawar, where these interviews took place, has been rocked by one bombing after another this year. Schools and colleges across Pakistan are closed for the rest of the week in the wake of the suicides bombing of the Islamic University in Islamabad. Afghanistan is still rent by war, and Pakistan is no refuge. Put down the dog-whistle. Now.
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Australians I believe have made it clear as day they are happy about REAL Refugee’s.
They also have made it clear they are dead against dangerous illegal immigration trips by economic migrants stealing these real refugee’s positions.
Now Australia has 13,750 humanitarian positions a year. Every time a country shopper jumps on a boat from Indonesia… they steal a position from a REAL Refugee sitting in a decrepid diseased U.N refugee camp in some hell-forsaken part of the world. The bleeding hearts think people on boats from the Jakarta Hilton should get priority over people sitting in U.N refugee camps waiting years and eating sticks and grass to stay alive, I happen to disagree.
Who will speak up for these people? And if these boatpeople don’t leave Indonesia, or one of the other various 4 countries they passed through to get here, will their lives really be at risk? Would it matter if they stay in one of these 4 safe havens they passed through? Really?
Now ask yourself the question… this time apply it to a refugee sitting in a U.N refugee camp in Somalia starving and diseased and scared for your life with a village only miles away slaughtered, waiting patiently for years for a country… any country.. to accept you.
Would they be okay having humanitarian spots stolen from them?
Simple solutions are not available on this issue but finding any solution is made much more difficult by those who milk the issue for populist credit points and, with respect, by those who categorise one group or another on the basis of assumptions.
It is reasonable that Australia set a limit on the number of refugees it admits but is the current number reasonable?
I don’t have answers but I live in a country that has an ethos of a fair go for all. And I don’t believe that we add the words ‘except for refugees’.
Apparently the truth hurts so much, some posters just avoid dealing with it all together.
There are (or were as at January 2009) 1,842 refugees in Somalia as opposed to the 1,277,200 Internally displaced people in Somalia who are not classified as refugees, not eligible for resettlement efforts in other countries and therefore not part of the ‘queue’. So if we were to take say 10% that would be 184 people. It doesn’t seem likely on any truthfull basis that the small number of boat arrivals will ’steal’ their spots.
To indulge the queue believers briefly.
How do you get on the queue? You flee your country and go to one that is a signatory to the 1951 convention. Just like these recent ‘queue jumpers’ have done.
So what actually happens when people flee their country and seek asylum or refugee status? The concept advanced by the looney bigotted right is that they ’steal a position’ in ‘the queue’. How? On arrival in a signatory nation, they are assessed by a formal structured process according to the convention and the laws of that country. This process isn’t determined by when they left their country or when they got here. If they meet the criteria they are accepted if not, deported.
This debate has developed a new concept. In the face of the manifest lack of humanity displayed to desperate people risking all to find asylum in a safe country, even the most bigotted anti-immigrationists are quailing. The new concept is that we should act in a humantarian way but the milk of human kindness must be allocated carefully. Under this new doctrine a Somalian refugee is more worthy than a Sri Lankan refugee.
By what objective criteria, on what evidence, is it judged that one refugee is more or less in need of a safe country? ‘They are economic refugees’ and ‘country shoppers’. 1) what does that mean? 2) how do you know? Is everything said about boat people just opinion and predjudice truth or do you actually know something?
Finaly as TTH points out Australia, a big open rich country, has a cap on the number of refugees it will take. It is one of 9 countries that have such a cap. If you want to abolish the problems of ‘queue jumping’ once and for all get rid of the cap.
David Coles thank you for a thoughtful post.
Hi SBH: “How do you get on the queue?” An interesting mythbuster document from 2002 http://www.aeufederal.org.au/Campaigns/Myths.pdf (mainly with reference to Afghanistan and Iraq) made the point that access to the UNHCR is more like a lottery than a queue, and the best way to join the queue is often by paying bribes to government officials.
David Cole: “Simple solutions are not available on this issue.” Sorry but that’s another myth. Australia has in the not-very-distant past handled larger volumes of refugees, both authorized and unauthorized, than those trying to come in now. The procedures and UN standards are quite well defined except for the odd problem like the recent amendments to protect against genital mutilation, which was handled well by the legislature. As immigration headaches go, plain-vanilla visa overstayers and fraudulent student-visa holders are bigger problems by far. The lack of simple solutions is an invention by those who would use boat people as pawns in political games.
Shakira Hussein: “They were not talking about flat screen TVs in the Australian suburbs, but about gardens full of grapes and possible reunions with loved ones. That is not a dream that people give up lightly.” It makes me sad that when we “decide who comes to this country” we are usually selecting strongly for mirror-images of ourselves, give or take slightly different faces and another language–middle class yuppies who can slip straight into the mainstream and go shopping for their iphones on day one. They’re boring. I remember when Chinatown and Lakemba were really interesting places; now they’re just shopping strips with bilingual signs. Restoring a bit of randomness to the selection of New Australians, as we used to call them, just might allow a bit of the exotic to infiltrate our monoculture.
Or am I just indulging in a postmodern form of racism when I sentimentalize about the exotic?
“On arrival in a signatory nation, they are assessed by a formal structured process according to the convention and the laws of that country. This process isn’t determined by when they left their country or when they got here. If they meet the criteria they are accepted if not, deported.”
Easy they are fast tracked and take others who are waiting patiently in Refugee Camps.
Labor says it has a recommended 90 day turn over period for people coming via boat. Some Refugee’s living in squalid U.N camps wait YEARS to be resettled. There are literally millions of them.
It’s like if you ran a cupcake stall. You have 100 cupcakes sitting on a table, and 20,000 people lined up to get a cupcake. They have all filled out their forms to get a cupcake and are waiting patiently inline to recieve theirs. Then all of a sudden a bunch of cashed up queue jumpers pay the guards to look the other way, go straight up to the table and take the cupcakes without waiting. Now there is only 50 cupcakes left on the table and still 20,000 waiting in line. Now with only 50 cupcakes left for those waiting in line, and the 51st to 100th person in the line has to wait another YEAR for more cupcakes to be cooked up. Tell me that is not queue jumping. The exact same thing is happening here.
The fact that these queue jumpers have already escaped persecution does not seem to bother the left either. They have passed through various safe havens, some have lived in other countries for months if not years, yet you still think they are most deserving of a refugee position? What about the family that can’t afford to travel half way around the world in first class? Who is going to speak up for them while they sit rotting in a U.N refugee camp?
TTH are you addressing anything in particular in Shakira’s article or in the responses so far? Or are you just repeating the same old tired messages on every refugee-related thread that hasn’t yet been forced to block you for trolling?
As for your point about limited places, that’s a Labor government invention of the 1990s. Before then, groups of boat people were assessed independently of the annual refugee quotas under the UN convention, so they would eventually be counted towards overall migration intake.
Do you understand? Our own political changes made “queue jumpers” of these people, not any cheating or rorting by them.
Secondly, if you bothered to read the document I linked to above, and to seek verification of claims that don’t serve your argument as well as those that do, you would find that the bribes often paid by those interned in refugee camps to win the lottery for a place in the “queue” often exceed the (frequently exaggerated) price of a place on the boat. Even after paying the bribes though, the waiting, the uncertainty, and the dangers still remain.
Sine I first read this post Sharman Stone has been on Lateline with her special brand of smarm, misinformation, vitriol and false empathy, and Tucky & Johnstone have scraped the very bottom of the barrell over terrorism and health risks.
Can I appeal to the so-called 4th estate to recognise that when the dog whistle is blown, the first dogs to hear it are those closest and most attuned to the whistler (i.e. you), but it is these dogs which then start all the dogs in the neighbourhood going. Seems to me a few Virginia Trioli moments would help the other dogs (us) to know whether and how to respond.
TTh Let’s say some big fat bastard wants the last cup cake and behind him is the kid who’s been helping out all day, whose mum just died and who is looking for a tiny sign that someone sees and cares about his plight. Who ya gunna give the last cupcake to and why? Remember Fatty is first in line. All the infantile cupcake analogy does is illustrate an ignorant and simplistic approach to this complex issue. I know it hurts buddy but the truth is all we have. Time to embrace it.
You didn’t mention how you objectively assess need but then based on past posts addressing important actual details isn’t high on your priority list. You don’t say how you know they’ve ‘already escaped persecution’ although arguably a Tamil in the Timor sea has more pressing issues that the Sri Lankan government, which ’safe havens’ they’ve passed through? I didn’t say ‘most’ deserving because you’re the one wanting to allocate priorities based on time. and just how do you marry people flying half way around the world first class with the poor suckers who try to get here by boat?
Thanks James Mac, A lottery indeed.
Agreed James.
God it shits me when posters get canned from other blogs on Crikey can pop up elsewhere here. Subjecting everyone to the same arguement they were using on the blog that got them canned and their arse handed to them, trolling relentlessly.
I notice when I log in to Crikey it logs me in to all the blogs. So how come if a poster is banned on Crikey it doesn’t occur on all blogs?
I am afraid that categorising all those who arrive by boat as refugees is doing them a disservice.
Many are not fleeing the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but instead seek to bypass the immigration policies of Australia to partake in the prosperity this country offers its citizens.
Ask the crews on the Navy’s patrol boats who see people throwing passports over the side as they approach, then claiming to be refugees who will be killed if they return to the same countries that provided them with passports.
Ask the same crews who were pelted with bodily wastes when the ‘refugees’ realised they were being transferred to Nauru or elsewhere rather than directly to Australia, and who threatened to do harm to Navy personnel unless they were taken to Australia.
Ask the interpreters who find out so called Iraqi or Afghan refugees speaking Urdu with Pakistani intonations rather than Pashto or Dari or Arabic.
Ask those who have lived comfortably in Malaysia or Indonesia or other third party nations for months or years, having entered freely on passports, living amongst nations where their religion is the dominant one and the culture is much closer to theirs than Australia’s, but then pay individuals to leave those friendly or neutral nations to try and enter Australia.
A classic example is the Tampa refugees.
Their boat was sinking, they were rescued by the crew of the Tampa and were en route to a safe landfall in Indonesia, but they then threatened the crew of the Tampa, demanding to be taken to Australia and suggesting dire consequences if they were not.
That suggests people who had made up their mind they were going to Australia, as they had paid for, no matter what, rather than refugees happy to be delivered to safety in an Islamic country.
There are genuine refugees who make their way here by boat, dating back as far as the Vietnamese refugees fleeing persecution following the fall of South Vietnam. The same is true today.
The reason that the much maligned Pacific Solution worked was that it made it clear to those who sought to come here for economic reasons that their money would be wasted, they would be intercepted, sent to a third country where their bona fides would be extensively checked and if found wanting, they would be repatriated to their country of origin, without the ability to game and manipulate the legal system in Australia to extend their stay.
Those who were genuinely fleeing terror and oppression would come anyway, as they know they are truly refugees and could demonstrate their claims, often through the corroboration of other refugees in camps who knew the refugees claiming asylum.
Basically the Pacific Solution made paying to come to Australia as an ‘economic’ refugee a losing proposition, while those seeking to come here as real refugees could be processed and their claims checked diligently, with most real refugees being allowed to stay.
The watering down of the barriers to economic refugees seeking to improve their standard of living by unlawful immigration to Australia, have led to the belief, rightly or wrongly, that paying someone lots of money to sail you to Australia will result in you becoming a citizen of Australia.
This allows these economic refugees to bypass the usual immigration process and partake of this countries prosperity, with the further ability to then bring their family out here under the family reunion program, thus further undermining the immigration process and encouraging even more people to follow suit.
There has to be a clear understanding that while some people arriving by boat are truly deserving of our sympathy and support as refugees, many others are nothing short of charlatans attempting to emigrate by a back door means to bypass an immigration system that would reject them if they went through normal channels.
Hi Michael, re the Tampa, see comments by “Underbelly3″ and Ross in this recent thread http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/asylum_seekers_should_be_welcomed_not_vilified
Regarding fraudulent refugee claims, yes there have been some cases of this but according to figures from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, these are typically less than ten per cent of asylum claims.
You make the tough Immigration measures sound like a cruel-to-be-kind favour that we do to genuine refugees by keeping out the fraudsters that erode their credibility. But don’t you think the unseaworthiness and appalling safety record of the smuggler boats does that already?
It’s also a bit hard to argue that wholesale implementation of what are arguably gross erosions of human rights, for social engineering purposes, of persons who are not actually accused of any offence, can be justified as a kind of gruff kindness to the genuine refugees. SIEV X sunk at sea, children growing up in prison-like conditions, TPV holders deprived by decree of any language or job-placement assistance and cut off from their families at risk of losing their TPVs … Where do you draw the line between administrative safeguards and arbitrary detention for political purposes, a tool which until the end of the Cold War we associated only with fearful totalitarian regimes.
“God it shits me when posters get canned from other blogs on Crikey can pop up elsewhere here. Subjecting everyone to the same arguement they were using on the blog that got them canned and their arse handed to them, trolling relentlessly.”
I’m constantly accused of being a troll because I hold mainstream views which a lot of Australians agree with. I understand Crikey is a leftwing website, however does that not give me the right to express my views without being censored all the time? I have never attacked anyone in here or used vulgar lanugage, yet others who do that to me go scott free. Glad to see freedom of speech isn’t lost on some.
Anyways on the topic at hand:
“You didn’t mention how you objectively assess need but then based on past posts addressing important actual details isn’t high on your priority list.”
It’s not my job to assess need, thats the job of the U.N., may I also point out that a person can claim asylum to Australia anywhere in the world by simply going to the closest Australian Embassy. Jumping on a boat completely bypasses the legitimate process by forcing an individual into not only a position of priveledge, by being looked at before anyone else, but also a position of timing, where they are excepted instantly without waiting.
There has been a lot of blurring of lines between Australia’s acceptance of boatpeople and their acceptance of refugees. Claims that Australians are racist because they don’t like boatpeople is pure BS. It’s the CIRCUMSTANCE not the people that offends people. Most Australians support Refugees but for christ sakes, come through the front door and at our invation! There is nothing racist about that.
TTH, Michael James also expressed what’s considered a common view in mainstream Australia, but he introduced a (relatively) fresh argument rather than (as far as I know) recycling arguments after having them convincingly refuted elsewhere. So no one is accusing Michael (as far as I know) of trolling.
You’re different. Your repeated claim that “a person can claim asylum to Australia anywhere in the world by simply going to the closest Australian Embassy” has been addressed many times, I’ve seen you just ignore the refutations and keep on going like a broken record. Disagreeing with much of the Crikey readership does not make you a troll. Repetition, monotony, and complete disinterest in even reading the articles and responses that you blog under, make you a troll.
The point I like to make to reactionaries like ‘TheTruthHurts’ is this: if you as a father/husband found yourself in a similar position, most likely you would take every means available to protect your family. not to do so would make you a lesser person.
Regarding our obsession with exercising choice in whom to admit entry, which John Howard immortalized to such Churchillean effect, see earlier in this thread at 11:09am NSW time where I commented on the banal effect on our multiculturalism that this loss of randomness has had.
I also speculated here http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/10/21/rundle-asylum-at-last-from-the-sado-conservatives/#comment-42284 at 11:08am 21/10 NSW time, on the reasons for this psycological obsession we have for controlling who comes in. I won’t reprint it here and make a troll of myself.
I served the ADF for 12 years and have a a lot of friends who were involved in Op Relex, including several different people on different vessels (including several patrol boats, HMAS Kanimbla and ashore) who have independently described issues and confrontations with dealing with SIEV passengers.
The ADF is filled with a lot of compassionate people, who see a lot more of the world than most Australians, including assisting people when they are at their most vulnerable (tsunami’s, floods, earthquakes etc) and they are happy to help those in most need, even when enforcing a government policy they may not personally endorse.
But they also see way too many incidents that never make the papers because they don’t fit the refugee narrative.
That is one of the reasons for the recent article about the stresses imposed on service people engaged in the current operations intercepting SIEVs and the resultant effects on health and morale.
Michael: so tell us a few of those stories. We are here to learn stuff, after all. But keep in mind that all they really have in common is the methods they used to get out of their situations and the destination they came to, so if one of them is an axe-murderer that doesn’t instantly make all the child-throwing stories true.
TTH First, I don’t know why you were canned but I agree, you are impassioned but not rude. The fact I think you are repetitiously wrong is not relevant. Much more offensive posts seem to get through.
Now to the issue at hand.
To be a UNHCR recognised refugee you have to leave your country. As movement of Tamils in Sri Lanka is restricted and visas to Australia a bit hard to come by, how would they leave there country if not by ‘jumping on a boat.
And yes it’s not your job to assess refugee need (thank dog) but you keep saying that one group is more deserving than another all the while bluring the lines yourself (the somalian IDP v refugee confusion for example). You don’t say why, other than someone has waited longer than somene else. In answer to the truly infantile (up to about age 10-12, children see things in black and white terms and have great difficulty in solving complex moral problems) cupcake analogy, I’ve pointed out that in the real world things are a bit more complex and time waiting alone cannot possibly be the only criteria.
Why do the circumstances matter? Isn’t need the real issue. Is what’s at the heart of the queue believers argument some cock-eyed sense of fairness?
By the way, many Australians disagree with your views as noted by figures I’ve previously opsted about votes cast at the 2001 ‘Tampa’ election. Just cause their your views dosen’t make them a) mainstream or b) right.
Well said SBH, once again.
Furthermore: if you have people leaving a burning building, which of them do you put in the ambulance first: (a) the people waiting for the firemen to carry them out, or (b) those jumping out the window?
The answer is obvious: whoever needs to go in that ambulance the most, and is within reach of the ambulance, that’s who go in the ambulance.
Regardless of how they got there. And regardless of how may other people you would like to save but can’t reach them yet.