Asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants(see previous post).If they were illegal ie had broken any law then they should be charged, taken before a court and an appropriate sentence handed down. This never happens because they have not broken any known laws. If you don't believe this is so, ask the Dept of Immigration which law(s) asylum seekers have broken.

Interestingly, it is only asylum seekers who arrive by boat who get thrown into detention centres while their claims are assessed. People who arrive by plane with visas eg tourist or student, and claim refugee status on arrival are allowed to remain in the community while their claims are assessed. How bizarre is that. There are more refugees who have arrived this way than by boat but apparently we don't have to worry about them disappearing.

Treating asylum seekers humanely while their claims are assessed does not mean having an open door immigration policy. We have always had controlled immigration and always will. Managing an intake of refugees is just part of that controlled immigration.

The idea that we will be swamped by refugees is just ludicrous. We have a population of 20 000 000 in Australia. We currently accept around 12 000 refugees each year. This amounts to 0.06% of the population. What sort of threat does that represent to Australian society. If we increased our intake to 20 000 pa it would still only be a 0.1% increase on our current population.

Of course we are nation built on immigration. The last convicts came around 150 years ago and even before that free settlers were coming in their thousands. It is migration which has enabled our population to get to 20 000 000.
My own antecedents came in the early years of last century, mostly from the UK. I must own up however to having an illegal immigrant in the family tree. One of my great-grandfathers was a Belgian sailor who jumped ship in Melbourne and became a farmer.

I believe the diversity immigration has provided makes us the wonderful country we are today.

Miranda, if what your saying is balanced and accurate, then I would tend to side with you in regard to those assylum seekers who were so treated. (I still maintain the general principle of security and health clearances and mandatory detention at least for those checks.
Incompetance is not a good thing at any level.)
Perhaps the real challenge should be to resolve THAT problem first, and speedy throughput of assylum seekers should be the outcome.

Instead of these morons chanting sloguns and waving 'let me raise my socialist left profile' banners outside detention centres, they should be waving them outside the DIMA and be specific about such incidents as you are reporting.

I'm sure that the usual avenues are open to take whatever action is appropriate to remedy this apparent blight on our public service scorecard.

Have you written to the Minister or prime minister about this ?

I've written in support of policies I see as important, and that is one of them.

The problem with debating the issues surrounding refugees is that too often, it degenerates into a 'I'm not racist, unlike you' mentality. It becomes a competition of who can prove their non-racist credentials. Such posturing is meaningless and does not address the root cause of the refugee problem.

The same people who bleat 'free the refugees' also make excuses for insurgencies in Iraq. They oppose any efforts to bring democracy to places like Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of opposing U.S imperialism. In this sense they are contradictory.

Regimes that pump out refugees by the millions, are also condoned by the 'free the refugee' crowd. Instead of criticising Howard, why not pressure a world body such as the U.N to be more proactive in disciplining corrupt regimes? Detention centres have become a political rallying point for complacency disguised as compassion. As David Boaz has said: immigration legal or otherwise is always political.

Well there should be a simple test to enter "The land of Oz" Firstly ,you have to have a good grasp of the English language,be half intelligent if you're male and have a good sense of humour: If female,be sexy,good looking and highly intelligent,since they carry most of the genes for intelligence.How is that for a good sexist non politically correct statement.Can we stir the pot and excite some original thinking?

Numbat “Col you sound s-o-o-o patronising ..... Very glad you are not the immigration minister, though verandah limestone”

Think I am patronising because I point out the quality of detention in Australia versus free-living elsewhere – so be it. I guess we can assess where your views are coming from when you descend to exercising insulting “renaming rights” at the expense of the immigration minister (very childish).

As I said before – we have laws and “standards” governing immigration and those laws cover the category of “refugees” as well as “family reunion”, “skilled” and “business” migrants etc.

There is not an entry standard for – “those who seek the illegal circumvention of the Australian standards” – those who try fall into the “detain and repatriate” catagory.

These “asylum seekers” journeys to Australia have, generally, taken them from the place where they are supposed to have been “persecuted” through many other countries before arriving here.

I would observe - a genuine “asylum seeker” achieved their goal once they were beyond persecution – which they achieved far closer to “home” than Australia.

These so called “asylum seekers”, in deciding on their trans-continental journey to get to Australia, are in fact not “Asylum seekers” at all. They are “economic refugees” attempting to avoid the economic circumstances of their homeland. We do not have an immigration category “economic refugees wanting to jump the queue and ignore Australian legislation and protocol”.

So forget the bleeding heart garbage, it has no place in any debate.

I would suggest the standard of treatment in Australia of detainees, relative to the detention practices of other countries, would rank us at “worlds best practice”. I note community based programs are being abandoned elsewhere in favour of detention because they do not work – so why shift from the functional to the dysfunctional?

The “financial cost / success” of the policy is not simply in the “cost of detaining those who try” but the ”cost saved by deterring those who might try”!

Oh, come on. Australia is bound by international law to allow entry to people who seek asylum. Numerous investigations have showed that the claims of by far the majority of asylum seekers are eventually found to be legitimate. To claim that the majority of people who risk everything to get here by boat are 'economic' refugees is just rubbish - if they had the money, they would just fly here on tourist visas and overstay, like most of our 'illegal' immigrants.