Pakistan - 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees
Australia 2009 - 940 asylum applications from Afghan people
Who is the biggest whinger?

Oh, you speaker with a forked tongue Meander... you forget that Australia is a Christian nation, and there is no room in the inn for 'them'.

Haven't you seen those shock-jock inspired bumper stickers 'F@#^ off, we're full'?

Then there's the 'F*#@ off, we're all Christians' one coming out shortly from one of the Christian lobby groups.

And the calls for a national test for citizenship based entirely on the New Testament quotes, emanating from the PMs office.

Seems Rudd's office might be trying to out-Abbott Abbott in a pre-emptive strike.

Please note meander, Afghanistan is next door to Pakistan and have the same religion.

Susan Metcalfe states that most asylum seekers arriving by boat will turn out to be refugees. That statement requires clarification.

The classification of an asylum seeker as a refugee is a greatly subjective process. In the end it often comes down to whether or not an asylum seeker's claims are to be believed, and in most cases without any real evidence.

The problem in assessing claims of asylum seekers is that it cannot be determined without doubt what has actually happened to them. It is standard practice for asylum seekers to destroy identity and travel documents prior to arrival and then claim refugee status, although such documents had been used for travel through other countries up until arrival at Australian immigration points. All enquiries after arrival of an asylum seeker involve assessments as to whether or not the story of persecution they present is believable. The immigration department can make inquiries offshore to test the story, but this is time consuming and expensive and will not always resolve the matter.

While the law says the onus of proof in a refugee status application is on the applicant, this has in practice evolved into applicants challenging the Australian Government to disprove their stories. As very few stories from remote war zones can be conclusively and individually disproved the storytellers get the benefit of the doubt and so gain refugee status. The net result is that for many years every person getting on a slow boat to Australia with an intention to claim asylum has a prepared story that is an effective distillation of the stories of previously successful applicants. The story has to be moving enough to engage the 1951 Convention protection obligations, but at the same time vague enough to be uncheckable. The further an asylum seeker is from their home country, the more difficult it is to confirm the facts of their story.

The entire refugee assessment process on Christmas Island is flawed by error and guesswork, which greatly works to the advantage of the refugee claimant, and results in abnormally high acceptance rates.

Franklin

You cannot presume that the absence of papers is evidence of intent to deceive. What you say may well be true of some refugees, but surely not of all. Those I have spoken to have sometimes never had official papers, lost them in conflict, had them confiscated by authorities or stolen by rivals.

And of course it’s true that asylum seekers’ claims often can’t be verified – what do you expect? The situations that they are fleeing are hardly likely to produce hard evidence or independent third-party corroboration. Immigration officials are fairly adept at sorting the evidence they get, but it’s hardly surprising the evidence is not always conclusive.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as the saying goes.

Should we presume that every arrival without papers is intending to deceive, and every claimant without corroborating evidence should be returned to their country of origin? If so, we will cause many deaths and ,much persecution in order to reduce the administrative burden of processing a few hundred desperate individuals.

Well said Rhian.

Very few of the human rights abusing states are likely to admit their culpability given that there are now some enforceable international law rules on war crimes etc.

On balance it make sense to err on the side of humanity.