New refugee laws

[Wokko]

Interesting that so many refugess will bypass any country without a robust social welfare program and universal healthcare to reach Australia or Western Europe. I wondered this and looked at one example, Tamils who leave for Australia on boats via Indonesia instead of going to a Tamil state in the South of India.

"It's often older people and the unskilled who come here," said a strategic analyst in Chennai, R. Hariharan, a retired colonel. "People who can't afford to pay the huge sums its takes to get to Australia or Canada."

I would rather take Burmese refugees who have sitting in camps in Thailand, some for 30 years.

Refugees have become a smokescreen for 'normal' immigration, both legal and illegal that many people also want curtailed but are too scared to bring up without being branded a 'racist'. So their anger is directed at those who have been made a 'safe' target due to the political discourse. I'd personally have a national conversation on all immigration, but we can't deny the mining industry those 457s.

[HAL]

I often wonder about this and looked at one example Tamils who leave for Australia on boats via Indonesia of going to a Tamil state in the South of India too.

[Tannin]

[think positive]

[Wokko]

I believe this argument had already been had and won

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrJ1mMPpVuQ

Watching Howard makes me all nostalgic. Can't we parachute the little guy back into a safe seat?

[pietillidie]

What, did Julie Bishop's efforts to place the moral burden of world people movements on Cambodia fall through?

Pitiful, juvenile, and irresponsible; Tony Abbott to a T and his only hope of re-election. C'mon, get out there and stomp on some brownish-yellowish-Muslimish fingers, you moral giants.

Let's make these poor buggers bigger than Abbott's failed economy to save the bastard!

[HAL]

Is that a rhetorical question?

[David]

[pietillidie]

I would just like to know, aside from the intervention of Jesus or angels or pixies and elves, how people know that X asylum seeker who may or may not be fleeing death but had the resources or relatives or just luck to make it to Australia is somehow less "deserving" than person Y who is in a refugee camp and may or may not be presently safer than X asylum seeker who may or may not have been extremely unlucky to miss the queue which may or may not have existed?

The stories people tell themselves.

There is no other responsible action but to assess claims humanely and shoulder some of the global people movement burden. Once we do that, we then have the moral authority to start acting regionally and working with countries such as Japan, South Korea and even China (believe it or not) who all face greying populations.

Moreover, China wanted to start a development bank which itself would help to underpin stability elsewhere, but idiot face refused to take part in it, much to Paul Keating's disgust.

This hysteria of this issue truly is a measure of Australian meatheadedness, and it is the wedge that could very easily get the country Abbott after Abbott as national leader, cementing infinitely bigger problems than asylum seekers in a nation that has done extremely well out of immigration.

Narrow minds failing to see the bigger picture is hardly a new problem, however.

[1061]

[think positive]

[Pies4shaw]

^^^ giving effect to the obligations Australia voluntarily assumed under the Refugees Convention, instead of pretending they don't really exist, would be a reasonable start.

[Tannin]

^^^ So far as the convention goes, nearly all the arrivals by boat are NOT subject to the Refugee Convention because they are not directly fleeing (which is the circumstance the convention covers), they have already fled to another country (such as Indonesia) and are now looking to move on to somewhere else, usually a rich country like Australia. The convention does not oblige us to do anything in this case.

The convention ONLY applies in cases where the asylum seeker travels directly from their home country to Australia. Some of the Sri Lankan boats thus qualify, but the vast majority of boat arrivals do not.

Providing homes to boat arrivals is like rescuing only those survivors from a shipwreck who were able to buy, bribe, or steal a lifebuoy or fight their way onto the safety of a raft, leaving all the drowning swimmers to their fate.

[David]

^ Though some might say that it's still better than pushing the people in lifebuoys back overboard while giving the finger to everyone else in the water.

Oh, and if we're to stretch the metaphor, cordoning off 75% of the rescue vessel so that Rupert Murdoch can park his luxury car.

[stui magpie]

Tannin and Wokka (now that's an unlikely couple) are doing a great job IMO in responding to the usual stuff on this topic. I completely agree with them and have little extra to add.

So, rather than just believe the Guardians typically exaggerated and alarmist take on the legislation, read about it here and make your own opinion.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5346