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The Forum > Article Comments > How low can they go? > Comments

How low can they go? : Comments

By Melissa Phillips, published 14/3/2013

Australia's politicians all seem intent on racing each other to the bottom on immigration issues.

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asylum seekers are not criminals,
Marilyn Shepherd,
That's like saying all non-assylum seekers are bad people. The question is how many are actually genuine asylum seekers ?
I have been through this in the late 60"s when Europe was invaded in exactly the same manner.
Posted by individual, Friday, 15 March 2013 8:42:52 PM
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Rhian, you replied:

<< What you are saying is that, because there are desperate children rotting in refugee camps in Africa and Asia, the desperate children who arrive on our shores should be rot in indefinite imprisonment too. >>

You’re for doing a ‘Marilyn’ and jumping to the ludicrous end of the spectrum in your reply to my first question: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14795#255136

<< …should rot in indefinite imprisonment… >>

Dear oh dear! Detention facilities are nothing like prisons, and detention is not indefinite. It is not particularly long for most, being the longest for those whose refugee claims are the hardest to sort out.

As for my second question, you have offered no response. So I am left to assume that you feel that no deterrence measures should be put in place that would in any way impact on the quick and smooth assimilation and facilitation of arrivals in as much comfort as we can afford them …and that an ongoing quite considerable rate of arrivals if not a much-increased rate is fine by you, bugger the expense to the tax-payer and the fractious consequences that it is having on Australian society.

Oh, and you are presumably perfectly happy to facilitate onshore asylum seekers at the expense of thousands that would have been brought here under our formal refugee/immigration program but now have to stay 'rotting in refugee camps in Africa and Asia', and who are definitely more needy than those who pay people-smugglers to get them here.
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 15 March 2013 8:52:04 PM
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<< There is something sick in the minds of the likes of Ludwig and others like you that think that people who ask us for help are sub-human things to be demonised and brutalised because we feel like it. >>

Wow Marilyn, as old CJ Morgan used to say; get help!!

I asked you a simple and highly pertinent question, in the interests of healthy debate: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14795#255135

But of course, you haven’t responded. ( :<(
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 15 March 2013 9:15:32 PM
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Ludwig and others like you that think that people who ask us for help are sub-human things to be demonised
Marilyn Shepherd,
That is about one of the most idiotic statements ever posted here. I have put to you a couple of times, if you really feel so strongly about the asylum seekers then help them not becoming asylum seekers in the first place. Go to their countries & help them there so they won't need to pack up & leave. If you happen to run into their oppressors & fail then you'll get an idea how we feel about the likes of you here.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 16 March 2013 9:41:24 AM
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Rhian,

You are cherry-picking. In the long run, our greenhouse gas emissions may indeed turn out to be the worst thing that we are doing to the planet, so it is no wonder that they figure heavily in the rankings. Nevertheless, we have a host of other problems. such as perhaps the highest rate of mammal extinctions in the world.

http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Multimedia/CSIROpod/Australian-Mammal-Extinction-Crisis.aspx

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is saying (my first link in my preceding post) that a lot of these issues are linked directly or indirectly to population growth. If you are not prepared to believe the ACF, perhaps you might be more impressed by this summary of our own government's last State of the Environment Report. They also mention population as a cause in some of them.

http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2011/summary/index.html

The asylum seeker numbers are not a significant issue yet, so far as the environment is concerned. The costs, far greater than if we picked the refugees to help, are diverting desperately needed resources from our own people who are coping with understaffed, underfunded hospitals, lack of disability support, death trap roads, etc. I am not convinced that we couldn't go the way of Europe. Yabby once pointed out on another thread that an entrepreneur could just buy up some old sheep transport ships and bring in many thousands of people at a time. Think of how many that they could get onto an old oil tanker!
Posted by Divergence, Saturday, 16 March 2013 5:15:30 PM
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Ludwig

It may be the “ludicrous end of the spectrum”, but we really are locking up children with no indication of a release date on the basis that freeing them would confer unfair ‘advantage”. Do you disagree with this policy? I certainly do.

“Detention facilities are nothing like prisons.” Well they are, to the extent that people are locked up there and not free to go, and the facilities are pretty basic. Looking at the facilities on Manus Island, I’d much prefer to be in an Australian prison.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1718871/Seven-families-sent-to-Manus-Island

The answer to your second question is pretty much the same as the first. It is immoral to lock people up indefinitely as a deterrent when they have committed no crime and in many cases have already suffered dreadfully.

Most of the people who arrive here are found to be genuine refugees, so onshore processing is no more likely than offshore processing to admit people “at the expense” of those in refugee camps.

Divergence

You say “The asylum seeker numbers are not a significant issue yet, so far as the environment is concerned” Exactly my point. So why raise the environment it in a discussion about asylum seekers? I repeat, the environment argument is a fig leaf for people trying to find a morally defensible rationale for what is a fundamentally immoral stance.
Posted by Rhian, Monday, 18 March 2013 12:43:55 PM
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