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The Forum > Article Comments > Knock, knock, who's there? Hopeful souls at every door > Comments

Knock, knock, who's there? Hopeful souls at every door : Comments

By Tanveer Ahmed, published 23/11/2009

The mass of humanity upon our Asian doorstep will come knocking wherever there is a door.

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"It's also an indication that as soon as there is a perception of a weak spot in the migration rules, you can bet knowledge of it spreads like wildfire." NO NO NO, didn't you hear that our PM and Foreign Affairs and Immigration ministers have all said it is nothing to do with what we do here, it is all to do with Push Factors elsewhere.

Surely you didn't intend to infer they might be liars?

Personally I agree that it is our Pull Factor not the Push Factor that is what drives people.

We have a government of liars, again, I guess it's what we deserve.

Though when the previous government lied, the MSM and civil rights and various other groups were incensed about it, now they find it's OK.

Lack of consistent values I guess.
Posted by odo, Monday, 23 November 2009 10:38:52 AM
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An eminently sensible article Tanveer Ahmed. And well said odo.

Rudd’s watering down of border-protection policy was simply the stupidest political decision that I’ve ever witnessed (or second stupidest after his huge boost to immigration and his ‘big Australia’ never-ending population growth policy).

It just defied all logic. There was a policy that was working. It had virtually stopped all boats from coming, so just about no one was being affected by detention, TPVs, etc.

Then Rudd just put his foot in it in the most spectacular manner. It was dogsballsly obvious what it was going to lead to!

Well I hope all our politicians have learn their lesson now. I hope that they can see that we simply MUST have strong border protection and that onshore asylum seeking, the spruiking of dodgy courses and other routes for asylum seekers must be curtailed.

We can boost our humanitarian efforts by increasing international aid and better directing it at the sources of refugeeism. And we can considerably increase our refugee intake. But it just simply HAS to be under tight control.

There is enormous potential for a very large-scale movement of people trying to enter this country outside of our formal refugee and immigration channels. We cannot afford to be let misguided humanitarianism hijack the imperative to have strong border control.

In fact, the best level of humanitarianism that this country can provide would go hand in hand with strong border protection. If the Australian citizenry had faith that the borders were secure, then they’d be more amenable to a considerably increased offshore refugee program. But if boats keep coming and the fly-in route remains open, then they are going to get jack of the whole refugee deal, which would probably include overseas aid and offshore refugee programs as well.
Posted by Ludwig, Monday, 23 November 2009 11:18:48 AM
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Sorry our boats full - repel all borders.

We should only allow people in when we have the capacity to do so.

At the moment our country is stretched and we need to stabilise and become self sufficient and sustainable.

We already import fish, fruit and vegetables to meet our needs.
Posted by PeterA, Monday, 23 November 2009 11:57:34 AM
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You are so right Peter A. Sustainability in Australia has got to come first.

An essential part of this is net zero immigration and the stabilisation of our population.

However, this should not preclude us having a big input into refugee issues. Even within a net zero immigration program there would be room to about double our current intake. That would be in the order of 25 000 refugees within an annual immigration program of about 30 000 (and zero onshore or fly-in asylum seekers).

I think that this would be the best balance between exercising our global responsibilities towards the betterment of humanity while also exercising our national responsibility to quickly become sustainable.
Posted by Ludwig, Monday, 23 November 2009 12:24:40 PM
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Have to change the second verse of Advance Aust Fair...... "For those who come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share"
Posted by JonathanT, Monday, 23 November 2009 3:12:50 PM
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"We already import fish, fruit and vegetables to meet our needs."

Yeah, I just can't go a day without Russian caviar, Israeli dates and - Jeez, we don't bloody import vegetables unless they're in tins. Pickled walnuts? Who wrote this?

You've really got to sharpen up as this is silly.

Food isn't the issue. It's whether you want people from other nations to live here. If you don't - raise the drawbridge of Fortress Australia now. If you do, lets work together rather than being frightened rabbits.
Posted by Cheryl, Monday, 23 November 2009 3:14:47 PM
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I hope that Tanveer Ahmed is right when he says that one of the backdoors to immigration – the shonky private colleges - is collapsing. The Government should seize the fees paid by students and return the students, with their fees, to their countries of origin. The silly little courses these shonks provide could be studied anywhere or by correspondence; and the ‘qualifications’ gained are hardly ones desperately needed in Australia, particularly when the ‘graduates’ can’t speak enough English to make themselves understood.

The students themselves are being ripped off, but perhaps that’s the price they are prepared to pay to dodge normal immigration procedures.

“Most of us see ourselves as open and welcoming to migrants but the prospect of having porous borders stirs deep discomfort, like allowing strangers into our homes unchecked.”

I don’t feel “open and welcoming to migrants” because I believe there are too many people here now for a country which is two-thirds barren. Migrants were needed in the past, but not now. We should take only migrants we invite because of our own needs. Better still, fill those needs locally; it’s cheaper in the long run.

But, the rest of the Tanveer Ahmed’s sentence concerning ‘porous borders’, ‘deep discomfort’ and ‘allowing strangers into our homes unchecked’, is spot on.

The usual cranks are going to find it hard to call man of Bangladeshi origin a racist for his comment; that’s only for white men!

Again, I have to say that I hope Tanveer Ahmed’s reference to migration agents staying clear of protection visa cases is correct. Migration agents have got themselves a very bad name by dealing with illegals.

The door that the author talks about has to be firmly locked to keep all but genuine refugees processed by the UN out of Australia. It’s all very well to say that we can understand why people want to come here – given Rudd’s encouragement to do so - but that does not mean they should be allowed to.

Rudd and his policies are the real threat to Australia.
Posted by Leigh, Monday, 23 November 2009 3:26:06 PM
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Don't let facts get in the way of populism.
The author consistently, if not wilfully confuses migrants with asylum seekers. Under Australian and international law the two terms are not interchangeable.
Overseas studets are not the new refugees. He claims..."the path of asylum is attractive to those without appropriate skills or financial resources to obtain migration" A person in that category does not come by boat and would not be accepted as a refugee even if they did get to Australia.
Many 'would be' migrants fly to Australia and claim refugee status, they do not get accepted. Some asylum seekers fly to Australia on real and forged documents and do get accepted, but they are very few in number.
Sri Lankan asylum seekers off Indonesian did not deploy emotional blackmail, they are desperate. Use of the term says something about the mindset of the author.
It is claimed that,..."asylum and refugee status represents the path of least resistance for those seeking migration..." It does not; spurious claims are rejected by the Department of Immigration, the Refugee Review Tribunal(in my experince on the Tribunal) and the courts, which hardly seems a path of least resisitance.
I respect right of the author to express an opinion but those opinions might be more acceptable if basaed on fact.
Otherwise as it stands the piece appears more as an emotive and craven appeal to the red neck denialists who would expect different treatment than they advocate, if they themselves were to experience what the current asylum seekers have been through.
Bruce Haigh
Posted by Bruce Haigh, Monday, 23 November 2009 5:02:37 PM
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Australia is essentially a large desert with a small amount of arable land around the coast,it can't support mass immigration, unlike the US or Canada. We should allow only those people, whose skills are required, to immigrate, and accept only our share of genuine refugees.
Posted by mac, Monday, 23 November 2009 5:40:54 PM
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Thanks for article Tanveer.

Like you say, it is naïve to believe that avenues to migration here are not being played. This is understandable – after all, who in a Third World country (inc students and economic asylum shoppers) would not like the benefits we take as a given here – free education, unemployment benefits, retirement/old age pension, etc?

However, in the long run the current accelerating migration plan hatched and implemented by Liberal/Labor is economically unsustainable.

In a way, it is irrelevant who govt is using to pad out numbers, because it is bound to fall over financially as shown by its own study.

Access Economics in “Migrants Fiscal Impact Model: 2008 Update” estimated the 2007-08 migration program would bring a net benefit of $536 million to Australia. However, this net benefit is insignificant in comparison with the real long-term costs (NOT factored into the model – modeling only 20yr, and not ‘life cycle’ of migrants) of:
1. Retirement / pension phase and associated costs are not included in calculations.
2. Impact on Budget from any children of the migrant group born after arrival in Australia is also not considered.
3. Public goods and infrastructure funded by Commonwealth budget.

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/_pdf/migrants-fiscal-impact-april-2008.pdf

So, aside from the environmental arguments and the almost off hand way skilled migrants and other migrant groups are ignored in favour of hundreds of thousands of fee paying students (govt gets a couple of years of GST events and taxes out of them before they get visa) accelerating immigration in its current form is flawed – it is underfunded and uncosted even.

There must be a tipping point at which extra costs/declining services cause a kind of ‘Global Warming’ on the very fabric of life here.

When, who knows?

The point is, govt needs to be upfront with costing and where it wants population/economy to go.

Just saying “I’m all for a big Australia” is childish.
Posted by leela, Monday, 23 November 2009 6:40:39 PM
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Ludwig
The restrainer on curtailing numbers for the on-shore refugee program is in the 1951 UN Convention. The central part of it is that a refugee cannot be 'refouled', or returned to his home state. But 'refugee' means, not someone who has arrived, but a person who has been determined to have refugee status, ie someone who has already passed through the system for determination of refugee status. By signing the Convention, a signatory state undertakes not to return an asylum-seeker until after the process of determination of refugee status is completed. This routinely goes from the Immigration Department to the Refugee Review Tribunal, and can go to the Federal Court, Full Federal Court and High Court.

Whether the person arrived legally or illegally is irrelevant to the question whether he has the legal status of refugee.

This means it is not open to politicians to 'curtail' the onshore refugee program without first withdrawing from the UN Convention which has been incorporated into the Migration Act. In practical politics, this is not an option and is unlikely to happen any time soon.

However it would be more honest to do so, rather than to carry on this pretence to the world of adhering to the Convention's standards, and then doing everything behind the scenes in bad faith to evade and defeat them.

Withdrawing from the Convention would not prevent us from accepting as many refugees from wherever, on whatever terms we want.
Posted by Peter Hume, Monday, 23 November 2009 7:19:34 PM
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Peter Hume,

That, without a doubt, is the best reasoned post I have seen on the "nay" side of the 1951 Refugee Convention I have seen here.

Still, here is an alternate viewpoint. The 1951 Refugee Convention leaves it to us to make a determination about whether we accept the Refugee's story on how safe it is to return home. Each country is free to make its own determination. I'd say regardless of whether we are signatories to the convention or not, the number we will send back is determined by the number of mistakes we can tolerate - ie the number of times we send someone back and they end up being dropped into a well.

I am not saying withdrawing from the convention would not slow down the number of people arriving. It will. I am just saying it isn't a magic bullet. Unless there is a wholesale change in public attitude we will accept them anyway, and that will become known in the way the articles author claims our stance is known now.

Until reading this article I didn't realise how much pull factors influenced things http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-real-reasons-for-asylum-seeker-arrivals-20091106-i0j3.html . I now view being a signatory to the convention as being little more than another pull factor - something that signals we are more willing than some to accept refugees. However there are a lot of pull factors, and I suspect some may be even as effective as withdrawing from the convention, and politically a lot easier to do.
Posted by rstuart, Monday, 23 November 2009 8:57:02 PM
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Cheryl
""We already import fish, fruit and vegetables to meet our needs."

Yeah, I just can't go a day without Russian caviar, Israeli dates and - Jeez, we don't bloody import vegetables unless they're in tins. Pickled walnuts? Who wrote this?

You've really got to sharpen up as this is silly."

You have expensive tastes.

Over 25% of fresh fruit and vegetables we consume are imported as reported by the ABC, Victorian government and on previous threads - Oranges, grapes, asparagus, tomatoes, cherries etc. now they are talking about apples from China and New Zealand is taking Australia to court over the blocking of importing of apples.
And we imported 68000 tonnes of fish in 2006 and it was not caviar!!
Cheryl go and do some research just walk down the isles of the local supermarket as they state where it comes from then perhaps you only eat out of tins.
Posted by PeterA, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 6:17:33 AM
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Well said Bruce,

You are right. It proves my point the internet has the subtext "have prejudice will rant not thought required"

Tranveer's piece refers to a specific group of wanna be migrants. There is no real link to refugees much less Asylum seekers, claiming doesn't make it so.

Some Sri Lankans are indeed asylum seekers most are refugees (as are some Afghans) and yes there will be some who are opportunists. The trick is to establish the differences.

Clearly simply turning off the tap and thereby turning our back on those in true need is unacceptable.

As Tranveer points out our schizophrenic attitude towards migration, in that we as Govt policy favouring the backdoor method of o/seas student migration, shows us to be more exploitative than genuinely caring i.e. Elitist/opportunistically exploitist rather than Humane.

It seems to have slipped off the radar that the student backdoor migration is bipartisan Govt policy leaving the agenda to the extremists who prefer victimization rather than civilized debate.

They say Politics makes strange bed fellows, this issue is a good example. Those who are concerned about sustainable Population levels need to be mindful of Ben Franklin's dictum about "dogs and fleas". Especially when it comes to who and what issues they support.
Posted by examinator, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 8:40:41 AM
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Ludwig

<< It just defied all logic. There was a policy that was working. It had virtually stopped all boats from coming, so just about no one was being affected by detention, TPVs, etc. >>

This statement demonstrates once again, Ludwig, how myopic your thinking is and how, despite your protestations to the contrary, it just doesn't extend any further than Australia's borders.

Just because people weren't being detained on the mainland, doesn't mean to say they weren't being severely affected. They were and in large numbers. Hundreds spent long miserable years on Nauru with no hope for their future and many still suffer the effects of their abandonment on that hellhole.

Despite your glib assurances, the boats never stopped coming. Yes, numbers waxed and waned, as 'push' factors are never constant, and yes, Howard's cruelty did have some deterrence effect. Boats still kept arriving in Indonesia though right throughout this period. The main difference was that if they tried to continue on they were turned back. We didn't hear about it but it happened unabated, and does to this day. Keeping your precious borders secure, Ludwig, comes at a huge cost in lives, one way or the other. It needs to be acknowledged and not glossed over, as it always is with you.

Thousands of asylum seekers at any one time are stranded in Indonesia. Even when they've been assessed as genuine refugees, they're still been detained, many in truly awful circumstances, and for years on end, some up to nearly a decade now. The ones that can't take it any more eventually succumb to the constant coercion to return to their homeland, and again, we hear nothing about the huge numbers that are returned to danger. But the one NGO that has followed this up in Afghanistan found quite a number had been killed. Of the majority who leave no trace and are impossible to track down, no-one really knows their fate, but it's not too hard to guess.

TBC
Posted by Bronwyn, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 12:37:14 PM
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Ludwig (continued)

You can rabbit on all you like, Ludwig, about how good Howard's policies were for Australia, but don't try and pretend they were good for asylum seekers too. They weren't. They directly contributed to enormous suffering and death. And don't come back with the usual retort that stopping the boats saves lives. As we've seen demonstrated clearly just recently, asylum seekers are prepared to risk their lives, when their only alternative is either years of warehousing in an overcrowded Indonesian detention centre, where their treatment ranges from indifference through to brutality, or refoulement back to danger.

Additionally, 'stopping' the boats at source only means more people in ever more crowded refugee camps for ever longer periods of time. Already the average length of stay is seventeen years and rising. It doesn't affect us here. It's out of sight and out of mind, but again it's another massive layer of suffering that needs to be acknowledged. For many, their lives in these camps are truly horrendous and hope barely exists.

I'd love it too if all the boats 'stopped' coming, but unfortunately for me, and others like me, my thinking doesn't begin and end with Australia's borders. I'm all too aware of the suffering caused by the cruel and simplistic turn-the-boats-back 'solution'. It doesn't stop the boats. It just redirects their displaced human cargo somewhere else.

We need a little more honesty from you, Ludwig. Why don't you admit once and for all that you don't care what happens to those displaced people, so long as it happens somewhere else where you don't have to be reminded of it?

Well, I'll continue to be that little thorn in your side, Ludwig. I'll keep reminding you. :)
Posted by Bronwyn, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 12:37:21 PM
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“The restrainer on curtailing numbers for the on-shore refugee program is in the 1951 UN Convention. The central part of it is that a refugee cannot be 'refouled', or returned to his home state.”

Yes Peter Hume, the Convention has nothing to say about the numbers of people moving into or towards a country. There is no consideration given to the effects that this may have on the host country’s economy, social fabric, environmental carrying capacity, etc.

I don’t think non-refoulement is the central part of this. The problem is the lack of facility for a country to stop or regulate movements of asylum seekers if significant negative consequences are likely.

This is an enormous shortcoming of the Convention. There has got to be a balance between accommodating refugees and upholding or at least not seriously damaging the abovementioned factors in a country of refuge.

“Whether the person arrived legally or illegally is irrelevant to the question whether he has the legal status of refugee.”

This is pretty absurd when you think about it.

I’d like all laws to apply strictly as they are written. But there are all manner of examples where it just doesn’t happen – where what is in black and white and what is administered are quite different things.

As it applies to the highly flawed Refugee Convention which if taken literally, would expose us to an open-ended number of asylum seekers, it is actually much better to bend it a bit than to strictly observe it.

But of course you are right – we should cut the crap of pretending that we are adhering to the Convention’s standards and we should be striving to bring the Convention into line with reality and practicality….and seriously consider withdrawing from it until this happens.
Posted by Ludwig, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 2:51:00 PM
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“I now view being a signatory to the convention as being little more than another pull factor - something that signals we are more willing than some to accept refugees.”

Interesting rstuart. I’d never really thought of it like that. But it makes sense.

I think that we could mount a very good case for pulling out of the Convention, not least so that we could implement strong border protection that is not interpreted as being in conflict with our international agreements, so that we can bring an end to onshore asylum seeking and alleviate concerns about the rate of arrivals significantly increasing and/or just going on and on for years.

If this was done in tandem with increased international aid expenditure, directed at assisting the most needy of refugees and at the causal factors of refugeeism, and if our formal intake of refugees was increased by a few thousand, then the whole package could be sold as a much-improved humanitarian effort.

We can exit the 1951 Convention, work towards updating it so that we can sign up to a 2010 Refugee Convention, secure our borders and greatly improve our efforts to assist refugees, all at the same time.

Surely this is the direction that Rudd should be pursuing, rather than continuing to make a real hash of this whole saga!

….
Hi Bronwyn. We’ve discussed this issue numerous times on this forum over the last four years. The last time was only very recently. I made exhaustive efforts to nut it right out with you. I had to really push to get you to respond to some of the hard questions and to continue with the discussion. The great flaws in your arguments were laid bare. Enough is enough. I'll leave it to others to respond to you.
Posted by Ludwig, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 3:23:09 PM
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Kevin Rudd said that he wanted "A Big Australia" so apparently he wants it filled with Third world Hopefuls. This will not go down well with Australian tax payers, particularly those who are totally fed up with ethnic strife and seeing boats full of opportunists who get handed everything while homeless people and Aboriginals go without adequate housing, the hospitals are at crisis point.
It may win him kudos at the UN but it will not win any prizes here.
Posted by mickijo, Thursday, 26 November 2009 3:19:19 PM
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