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The Forum > Article Comments > What my discovering of Mary can teach all of us > Comments

What my discovering of Mary can teach all of us : Comments

By Brian Holden, published 24/7/2012

Is it right or wrong for a desperate person to attempt to become an uninvited resident in another country?

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Interesting article.
Pity you made the statement "Today's boat-people are illegals."
So untrue!
Posted by Ron H, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 9:28:45 AM
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Is it right or wrong that someone can pay a people smuggler thousands, destroy their ID and then take the place of someone who has been waiting in a camp for years to come here? I think that question has a lot more reality to it.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 9:44:10 AM
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'they would be willing to work hard to contribute to the country that gave them a second chance'

Three things: Firstly, can you point to the source and statistics for support of this assertion. Secondly, Australia is not the country that gave them their second chance ... that would have been the country into which they first fled.

Finally Mary wouldn't have caught a great big jet plane to get herself comfortably to Indonesian for a short, and now mostly Australian navy assisted, passage to Christmas Island followed by another, taxpayer funded, flight on another great big jet plane to mainland Australia, then given free smokes, phones, accommodation, welfare and eventual family reunion.

To compare these modern day immigrants in the same terms as Mary, simply cheapens Mary's courage and ordeal.

Why do you need fundamental dishonesty to support your argument?
Posted by imajulianutter, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 9:44:19 AM
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The lack of empathy in the previous comments is a sad reminder of how far removed most Australians have become from the ways in which the lives of our ancestors still affect our lives today.

Australia pays lip service to the Irish Famine, but rarely acknowledges its implications in today’s world – which has come to bear an uncanny resemblance to the British Empire of the nineteenth century. The Irish Famine was totally avoidable, just as today’s imperial wars and globalised economic policies, which have driven millions of people into refugee exile, are totally avoidable.

While one can nitpick about the similarities and differences between Mary’s story and the passengers on the asylum seeker boats of today, the essential human story is the same. People all over the world, in every generation, and through little fault of their own, become victims of the politics and economic policies of the times in which they live. Those who choose to leave often find they have simply left one unforgiving world for another.
Posted by Killarney, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 11:08:23 AM
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...Brian; for the Marys of Australian history I have the utmost respect: For a throng of opportunists arriving by the illegal boatload, issuing demands which extend beyond those afforded to the vast majority of the local population, I have no respect at all.

...All the bleating and sympathy seeking emanating from the microwaves of the ABC towers is, frankly, obvious for what it is; propaganda, and as such is unconvincing and unbelievable in its simple omission of all the facts concerning boat arrivals and their conniving demands; for what is simply not theirs to demand. The current open free one way trade in illegal boat arrivals, needs to stop urgently
Posted by diver dan, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 12:44:07 PM
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>>Finally Mary wouldn't have caught a great big jet plane to get herself comfortably to Indonesian for a short, and now mostly Australian navy assisted, passage to Christmas Island followed by another, taxpayer funded, flight on another great big jet plane to mainland Australia, then given free smokes, phones, accommodation, welfare and eventual family reunion.<<

Not if she were alive today she probably wouldn't: she would probably have done what the vast majority of illegal immigrants to this country do and avoided the boat altogether - obtain a valid visa under false pretences, fly on a great big jet plane direct to mainland Australia and once here either disappear into the community and get up to God knows what or make a formal claim for asylum which gets processed onshore: a much better way to jump the queue than hopping on some leaky tub in Indonesia and hoping it doesn't sink before the Navy intercepts them.

But never mind the teeming hordes of plane people: we should focus our attention on the boat people instead. It may not be the best allocation of priorities but it's a much smaller problem and more easily solved. Why would politicians want to wrestle with a problem that may be too big to fix when they can be seen to be finding solutions to smaller ones?

Cheers,

Tony
Posted by Tony Lavis, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 2:27:29 PM
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Unfortunately, Brian’s blog was too blinkered to notice a more chilling comparison between present times and the tragic ones of Mary’s departure from Ireland.
The current population of the world has doubled in the 44 years since 1968; The population of Ireland had taken sixty years to double since 1790, and that, in spite of recurring famines prior to “The Great Hunger”.
What hope is there for the world, for Australia in particular, when nothing has been learned from those days of Priestly subjugation of women, enslaving them to pregnancies throughout their fertile lives; to numbers of children they could scarcely feed let alone adequately foster - and eventual massive tragedy for all.
The current world still suffers from the antediluvian ravings from the Vatican, from mad Mullahs, from the Deep South Bible Belts. And , just as much, from those who are determined not to see- to concentrate wholly on the ugly vision on their doorstep; and denigrate those whose attention encompasses the wider scene.
Posted by colinsett, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 2:30:18 PM
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Some of my forbears made that same desperate six month or more journey from Ireland and Scotland.
Others were forced to migrate as a consequence of the Great famine.
My maternal great Grandmother, also named Mary, spent 10 years sewing shirts, dawn to dusk, in a hell hole English workhouse, just to muster the one-way fare to the other side of the world.
The transportation and conditions aboard ship were as described.
Very few intending uninvited guests would undertake that journey, unless in iron chains?
Indeed, many of them find sanctuary far removed from these shores.
At least when Mary sailed, we had absolute control of who came and the means, timing and method of their passage or transportation; and, at a time when we desperately needed new migrants to develop, what was still a harsh and very foreign land!
Many didn't make it, but perished at sea!
And yes, we made many mistakes along the way, and parts of that history of settlement is both painful and shameful!
However, we none of us alive today, participated or can in any way be held to account or pay for, the activities of ancestors!
We cannot go back and change the past!
And even if we could would we?
Particularly if that change simply eliminated our own historical lineage?
All that said and set aside, if I had a choice between forged documentation and a visitor's visa, followed by a relatively short reasonably safe and comfortable plane journey?
I would prefer that option for both myself and any family members; and indeed, for far less cost than I would likely need to shell out for passage in a leaky very unsafe boat, to a criminal cartel, that simply focuses on maximised profits, rather than any element of passenger safety.
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 3:14:10 PM
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Yes Mary received sweet FA support when she arrived, which is as it should be.

If all the current boat people wanted was a chance to do it for themselves I would have no complaint. If they were prepared to work hard enough to make their own way, or starve, I would welcome them as the sort of people that would help build Oz.

While we have to take the homes of other ozzies, & the food out of their mouths to support this invading horde, I want then stopped.

Post WW11 genuine refugees were given a tin shed to sleep in, & food for a little while. Otherwise it was sink or swim.

Reintroduce a similar scheme today, & watch the boat people dwindle to a trickle. We would get only the genuine, who would be no problem.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 3:51:22 PM
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There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant in Australian law and there has not been for 20 years when the Parliament enshrined the refugee convention into the migration act and granted entry without offence for those who seek asylum under the convention.

To claim they are illegals is just plain wrong and as ugly as the rest of the tripe constantly peddled.

Refugees are not destroying any documents, almost every refugee who arrives here can have their ID sent here within 2 weeks of their arrival and many just don't have any because they are never registered at birth in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I do wish the uglies who infest these sorts of blogs would learn some facts and have an empathy transplant before they spew out their hate.

On the latest figures for example 94% of Afghans are accepted before they ever have a court case.

And now that Pakistan is kicking out 3 million of them we will certainly have to accept them won't we?
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 4:34:35 PM
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...Well Marilyn Shepherd how lucky are you; if I was to state what I really think about refos, illegals and Asians I'd be dismissed from this thread! Cheers!
Posted by diver dan, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 5:32:55 PM
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Well Diver, racism is pretty ugly.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 6:19:16 PM
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Bankrupt Marilyn.

You refuse to state how many refugees is enough for Australia to take but you attack personally people who have a reasonable and different view, from you, of how Australia should maintain it's borders or order it's humanitarian intake.

No wonder the ALP sits at the lunatic support figure of 28%.
Posted by imajulianutter, Tuesday, 24 July 2012 7:24:46 PM
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