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The Forum > Article Comments > Opening Australia’s borders > Comments

Opening Australia’s borders : Comments

By Tiziana Torresi, published 4/11/2005

Tiziana Torresi examines the argument for relaxing immigration laws and finds its supporters are misguided.

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Sheesh Bromwyn, only yesterday I was mentioning the Qutb-Zawahiri-
bin Laden connection of political Islam, last night and tonight
SBS discusses all this. I hope that you have been watching :)
Posted by Yabby, Wednesday, 7 December 2005 11:43:33 PM
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Ludwig

We share a lot of common ground here. I agree we should increase our international aid to 7 %. I also agree on doubling our refugee intake and reducing our total immigration.

Regarding border control. Yes, you're right I did use some conflicting terms. When I mentioned "free borders" I was referring to the borderless world I have seen advocated by some groups whereby people can travel freely from country to country without needing passports and visas etc. In such a world we truly would have a global market economy where people could travel to where the work is according to the laws of supply and demand. It has some appeal and might work in an ideal world, but in today's world most would probably agree the concept is fraught with danger.

I see some limits and controls as neccessary but I don't believe in the draconian measures implemented by this government. Asylum seekers should be detained on arrival while health and identity checks are undertaken, after which they can be returned to their home country if found not to be genuine refugees or given permanent protection and allowed to settle in the community.

The numbers of asylum seekers arriving on Australian shores relates as much to the conditions in their countries of origin as it does on their perceptions of how they might be treated when they get here. The extension of your argument is that it is okay to lock up asylum seekers indefinitely and treat them abominably to act as a deterrent to others. This is an end justifying the means argument which I will never accept. Apart from that I don't know if our opinions really differ that much.

Have enjoyed the discussion and look forward to seeing your posts on other threads.
Posted by Bronwyn, Sunday, 11 December 2005 9:45:35 PM
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Very good Bronwyn. We really do see eye to eye on this matter.

And we will see eye to eye even more after this posting.

I do not for one moment advocate indefinite detention of asylum seekers, nor to in any way “treat them abominably”. I can’t say if there was a deterrence aspect to the length of detention from some or all asylum seekers, I just don’t know, and of course no one is going to admit to it if there was. But I can say a few things about detention;

Australia learnt the hard way that detention is necessary, which evolved from a policy of no detention in the early days of ‘boat people’ arriving on our shores and the fact that they often left the centres and disappeared, as has been the experience in Britain and other European countries that have grappled with this terribly difficult issue. Ultimately, the detention of desperate people meant high walls, razor wire and guards. The inevitable highly unfortunate comparison with prisons arose.

Deciding which asylum seekers were genuine and which weren’t when many of them had deliberately destroyed their papers and/or did not willingly cooperate with authorities, was fraught with difficulty and understandably took very much longer than it would have otherwise. Australia could very easily have said; ‘no papers or no cooperation, no stay’.

It was also highly desirable to release or deport whole groups together, which meant that sometimes they all stayed put until the last and most difficult case in their group was resolved.

The great majority did get their cases resolved quickly. It was only a small portion – those difficult cases and deliberate obfuscators, which stayed for very long periods.

And finally, the great majority were not sent home. Australia exercised a very liberal definition of the 1951Convention on Refugees definition. By comparison, if these onshore asylum seekers had been judged equally to offshore asylum seekers, at one of Australia’s many overseas refugee stations, only a tiny fraction of them would have been allowed to stay
Posted by Ludwig, Sunday, 11 December 2005 11:09:36 PM
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An Englishmen’s point of view

It seems that Tiziana Torresi is advocating the same approach to immigration as in the UK and EU for the last 15-20 years.

The results have been a complete and utter failure, no matter what approach has been tried from the liberal multicultural approach of the UK and Netherlands, to the stricter approach taken by France and Spain.

Once that gate is opened it is impossible to close them. In the UK the Muslim population is already electoral significant. At the moment any party that wishing to win a seat in most urban centres or in the Midlands must have a pro-Islamic agenda or they will be defeated.

Two white men can be sentenced to thirty years in prison for murdering an innocent black boy. Yet three Asians receive half the sentence for bashing a white mans head to pulp the murder not being “racially” motivated according to the judge. Though they did shout “die whitey die” as they killed him. The fact is that we are no longer equal under the law in the UK and this is just the beginning.

Economic benefits to immigration? In the UK even third generation persons of Islamic backgrounds are three times as likely to be unemployed as a "native" or someone from another migrant group. What economic benefits?

Crime statistics on Islamic migrants are not available in the UK (Guess why?) but in Sweden they show that they are the cause of a disproportionate amount of crime. This is especially true with regards to crimes against women (Check out http://fjordman.blogspot.com/).

Is this the path that Ms Torresi advocates?

Increasing aid to the third world? Why ?. The same treatment for thirty year’s, and they are still sick change the treatment. Aren’t three Marshal plans for Africa enough?

In Europe, every approach has been tried and failed. You just can’t assimilate these people they don’t want it and don’t see why they should. They want to assimilate us! In Europe, unless something is done they will by about 2050.

God Bless Australia and thanks for the Ashes
Posted by Aetius, Monday, 12 December 2005 3:50:06 PM
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The justification for progress is the myth that progress brings wealth and if we continue to have progress all the poor in the world will ultimately be wealthy and this will cause their fertility rates to drop, due to the 'demographic transition'. So to deny progress its victims is to deny the poor economic justice and to condemn them to poverty and overpopulation. This is also the argument for first world population growth, open borders, and labour deregulation. It suits the Catholic Church, big business, and land speculators too.

It is true that things have improved for the first world in the 20th century. It is true things were worse 164 years ago in the 'first' world. They were worse because of the 'progress' of the industrial revolution. In 1842 the British working class had an average. life-expectancy of 17 years. 57% died before the age of five. The effects of coal on air quality and light were so devastating that the life expectancy of the city gentry was only 38 years and about half of the population of the industrial areas had rickets, which is a vitamin deficiency disease due to lack of sunlight. This misery was multiplied by the first ever globally explosive population growth that fed the industrial revolution and fed from it, which saw the English population increase from about 5 million in 1750 to 21.5 million in 1881.

The lie is that life was always like that until the 20th century and that things have never been so good in the first world or the third world.

The truth is that, before the industrial revolution, and before feudalism, many people lived long lives and grew straight and tall. Average heights of men in Europe fell from 173.4cm in the early Middle Ages to approximately 167cm during the industrial revolution. Return to earlier stature did not occur before the twentieth century. Likewise the healthiest groups in the Americas predated Columbus's arrival. Descriptions of Africans and Pacific Islanders by those who first encountered them give similar pictures. Descriptions and photographs of Australian aborigines support the same observations
Posted by Kanga, Thursday, 21 September 2006 12:36:30 AM
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My earlier post about progress was a response to Faustino.

I have to say though that the article, "Opening Australia's borders" is brilliant. Unlike most of the 'responses' which are almost all ugly and unbelievably stupid. Amazingly most inadvertantly show that they have not even read the article, but have just seized the opportunity to air some broken old bits of ideology.

Opening Australia's borders is NOT in favour of opening Australia's borders!

And it is very well argued.
Posted by Kanga, Thursday, 21 September 2006 1:04:03 AM
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