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The Forum > Article Comments > Asylum seekers: cause or symptom? > Comments

Asylum seekers: cause or symptom? : Comments

By Helen Dehn, published 11/1/2010

Asylum seekers: a regional problem has become very much Australia’s problem alone.

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It's election year.

This is just the first of many dog-whistles that we can expect to hear in the coming months.
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 12:28:13 PM
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Pericles,

Absolutely, the troglodytes will be out in force too.
Posted by examinator, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 2:51:52 PM
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We should implement the same immigration policies and requirements in respect of immigrants as that beacon of liberal democratic socialism, Denmark.

After all they've led the world on multi-culturalism for a generation and have been widely lauded in the past as a magnificient example for the rest of the world.

eg, Seven years resident before an application for citizenship, compulsory classes in Danish history and culture, banning of some types of religious marriage that engenders inequality, banning of religous towers, etc ...

What do you think Bruce and David?
Posted by keith, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 4:10:55 PM
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ASIO knew Tamil asylum seekers were a threat to national security before they were transferred to Christmas Island, said the headline in the Australian.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/asio-knew-tamil-asylum-seekers-were-a-threat-to-national-security-before-they-were-transferred-to-christmas-island/story-e6frgczf-1225818503117

How fishy do things have to get. After what we went through with the Indian Doctor in Brisbane, wrongly accused during the Howard election, one wonders about the transparency of these current ASIO claims.

Critical: It is this type of double poke backflip that the 250 Tamil asylum seekers, who are now in the stand-off with Indonesian authorities at Merak, feared.

Trust together with confidence is the key issue here and is why many on the boat had refused to leave the boat after the Indonesian navy intercepted it in October, on Prime Minister Rudds request.

Seems this kind of strategy does work for the government if the idea is to send fear out as a primary message and motive. Either way the government wins the day but fails the trust factor when it comes to caring about Human Rights and the treatment of ethnic minorities, where there is a failure to disclose good and proper reason.... given the situation involves the war and conditions present in Sri Lanka. Not to mention evidience that the Tamil women interned after escaping the horrors of the civil war in Sri Lanka were sexually abused by their guards who traded sex for food.....

Google stories
http://news.google.com.au/news?hl=en&q=Sri%20Lanka%20refugee%20conditions&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

It seems Australia, we need to update the process we made 30 years ago.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/01/2783771.htm

I ask Government frontbencher Penny Wong to please explain why she has defended the decision by security officials to deny entry to four Tamil asylum seekers on national security grounds.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/govt-defending-decision-to-block-tamils-20100112-m2y6.html

I hope this situation can be better resolved.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Posted by miacat, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 4:43:26 PM
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Far be it from me to spoil the illusions of Australia as scene of mass influx of refugees - below are figures from the UN.

Geneva - Some 42 million people were displaced in 2008, having been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or persecution, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said Tuesday. The overwhelming majority, some 26 million, were displaced within their own countries, while about 16 million became refugees and asylum seekers who crossed international borders.

Some 80 per cent of all refugees lived in the developing world. The UNHCR said this both placed an unfair burden on the poorer sections of the globe, while it also served to counter claims in the advanced economies that they were being "flooded" with refugees.

Pakistan topped the list of host countries with 1.8 million refugees, followed by Syria which had 1.1 million and Iran with 980,000.
Just Imagine the furore if this Australia was in this position.

Germany led in Europe, hosting 582,700 refugees.Australia takes in 6000 refugees annually- deducting the number who arrive informally by boat or formally by air from this number.

There were 2.9 million Afghan refugees and another 1.9 million Iraqis. Inside Iraq another 2.6 million were internally displaced. More than 2 million people were displaced in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The overall figure for 2008 showed a small drop of 700,000 people compared to the previous year. New displacements in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia in the first months of this year have offset even this slight reduction.

Similarly, the 2 million displaced people who returned home last year was a decline from the 2007 number. Refugee repatriation fell by 17 per cent, while internal returns dropped by 34 per cent.

Nearly 6 million people have been uprooted for more than five years, while some groups, such as many of the 3 million internally displaced in Colombia and the Palestinians, have not been able to return to their places of origin for decades.

Lets put the 1000 boat people in perspective .
Posted by Pamela, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 9:12:36 PM
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Transparency Required. Rather than filter in and filter out the accusations explain the sources behind the information on this story.

As noted in tonights media, "If the details are coming from the Sri Lankan government, well then that is of great concern, because they are who these people are fleeing from in the first place....."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/asio-warning-ignored-for-deal-on-tamil-refugees/story-e6frg6nf-1225818601147

We need a solution that does follow through... it helps to hear that the "Rudd government approved the transfer to Australia of four Tamil refugees deemed to be a security threat while they were in detention in Indonesia to honour Canberra's special resettlement deal with Jakarta."

I don't understand why Australia would work to resettle the 5 mentioned today as a security risk [for what ever reason] to somewhere else.... don't we also have a sense of responsiblity....?

Pamela. Your work above is very useful. Thank You. I feel we as Australians drag scorely on the greater issue.

I also thought the question of "Human rights as Australian foreign policy" article by Phil Lynch was a good flush on the circles and aspirations around the matter given all the hooting we as Australians do on the world stage.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2789751.htm

If only we could see past our own shivering fear and respond with a will to resolving the issues inside a framework that deals with a "collective security". Each one of these people are human beings and while desperate their motives are not as dark as we paint.

ASIO needs to join the world outside of its own silo. ASIO does not run the country and has no where near the authority to spook. Trust is lagging here while the secret agent plays hamadryad over citizens and governments. ASIO needs to reform its culture and find a way to communicate more openly the reality of today's environment. President Bush is gone [remember] and with it I call for a revision of fear mongering tactics and outdated policies from ASIO.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Posted by miacat, Wednesday, 13 January 2010 12:35:19 AM
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