Keith said

"To those who are constantly critical of people who still support the use of John Howards very effective temp protect visas would you please stop the name calling and abuse."

I agree it would be best to conduct this debate without name calling, although the level of calculated vilification and demonisation directed towards refugees by the previous governments - and seeing the totally unnecessary human damage that was caused - can make it hard to stay polite. But I still agree it is best to try to do so.

The simple fact is that "John Howard's temp protection visa" was NOT effective at anything other than adding cost, trauma and risk. The numbers continued to increase, mainly because many more women and children risked their lives on boats, as their option for possibly reuniting with family was removed.

Mandatory detention - in place since 1992 - didn't slow the numbers, despite the massive human damage and cost.

It is possible sending people to Nauru for years has some impact, although most of those people ended up being settled in Australia anyway, at even greater public expense than locking them up for years in Australia - so the potential effect of this, if any, would be temporary, once people saw an outcome was still possible.

The key thing that stopped the boats was getting the Navy to sail or tow them back to Indonesia after intercepting them, rather than towing them to Xmas Island (and the very public deaths of 353 people on the SIEV X around the same time). But this left refugees at risk of being returned to danger. Italy has recently adopted a worse approach - ensuring boats are towed back to Libya, which has a widely verified record of brutality towards such people. While Indonesia is far from perfect, it is well above Libya (and in general terms getting better).

If we want to match Italy for brutality and contempt for human survival, we could probably stop the boats - at least for a while, until other countries tried an even more brutal approach.

TRTL,
In your post yesterday, you said others should 'get informed'

It appears that you are the one who needs to 'get better informed'

While I have not checked the accuracy of the numbers quoted in the articles you linked to, there is a serious ommission from the information, either by Mike Steketee, of the Aus, or the UNHCR.

What was not stated is that very nearly all those that arrive by air, and do not have proper visas, are sent away on the same airline that brought them, back to their place of departure. The Immigration Dept website states that 97% are gone within 72 hours of arrival. This puts a completely different perspective upon the matter and has been mentioned serveral times on threads such as this, on OLO.

You have been around here for a long time so am surprized that you did not know of this, but I am not aware of you deliberately misrepresenting anything at any time, so I assume you are unaware.

Someone also mentioned overstayers, again according to the Dept website the figure quoted is one at any given time, not an annual figure. Most are tourist/visitors who stay longer than expected and leave, to be replaced by others. There are figures available that show the number of longer term overstayers and the lengths of time.

In my opinion, a real discrepency is in the number of 'permanent residency' visas granted to foreign students and 457 workers onshore.
With family these totaled over 54000 last year and are not shown in 'settler arrivals' In fact I had to write to the Dept to get the figures. This means we get 54000 more permanent immigrants that we are not told about. The previous government introduced this and the present government has not stopped the practice.

Banjo

People use the description of refugees who arrive by plane in differing ways, which doesn't help clarity of the debate.

Most people who talk of the 'asylum seekers who arrive by plane' are referring to people who arrive on a valid visa (tourist, business, student, sportsperson etc) and claim asylum some time later. The fact they arrive on a valid visa doesn't automatically make their refugee claim any less valid, although the percentage of successful refugee claims among this group tend to be much lower than those who arrive by boat, the vast majority of which are found to be genuine refugees.

This is certainly the way Mike Steketee in The Australian was describing the vast majority of claimants who didn't arrive by boat. Airport 'turnarounds' are a much smaller number, and in same cases are not counted as asylum claimants at all.

You a right, the overstayer figure is usually an 'at a set point in time figure', not an annualised (and therefore accumulating) figure.

People who gain permanent residency from onshore claims after initially coming here as a student or 457 visa holder are all counted in the annual figures for permanent residency migration program. They may not be shown as 'new arrivals' in that year (depending on what set of statistics you are viewing), but they are certainly counted in the relevant year's statistics of new permanent residents. Sometimes these are listed as 'category shifts', depending on the set of stats you are viewing, but they are still counted as part of the overall total of new permanent residents for the year when the permanent visa was granted.

* But this left refugees at risk of being returned to danger. Italy has recently adopted a worse approach - ensuring boats are towed back to Libya, which has a widely verified record of brutality towards such people*

You miss the point there Andrew. We know that most African boat
people to Europe are in fact economic migrants, who are happy to
risk their lives for a European lifestyle. Many die crossing the
desert, many die when boats sink.

It is the very fact that Europe was a soft touch and many got
through, that encouraged even more to follow, so the trade has
grown and grown over time.

So it is the soft touch that can be blamed for more deaths, for if
none had ever got through, there would be no boat trade to Italy.

If the 1951 UN Convention were updated, so that all refugees are
taken from refugee camps, the problem would be solved. No country
wants a free for all, as we have now.

By all means spend more resources on refugee camps, to make them
more habitable, that should be a global UN effort.

The boat trade costs a fortune, not just in Australia, but in Europe
too. Hardly resources well spent in looking after the most
vulnerable. It is hardly the most deserving, who happen to sail
over the line in Australia.

But it has to be accepted that your soft touch is part of the cause
of the problem in the first place.

If no refugees got through on boats, there would be no trade.

Banjo, Mr Bartlett's done a pretty good job responding, though I'd make the point that I did state the "overwhelming majority who enter legally on planes then breach their visas" indicating that yes, they do enter legally with visas.

And as yet, nobody seems to have answered my question as to why people get so worked up over boats as opposed to this much greater number who enter via planes.
If there was any merit in the arguments opposing illegal migrants, surely this is where the focus would lie.

Also, the fact that our border policies are among the harshest of any western nation, doesn't seem to get much of an airing, instead we get more calls about how despite being harder on refugees than other western countries, the country's still run by bleeding heart lefties.

Hello Andrew

Yes the more we seem to try to move on the more we are pulled back, by the polls, into facing Australians traditional fears.

So I have no idea as to our best policy.

Whatever John Howard did worked, and the vast majority of us accept that fact and we are not too bothered about the details... Christmas Island eventually emptied and the facility there was described by labor pollies as John Howards 'white elephant'. That white elephant is now growing to accommodate an increasing number of illegal entrants.

So what do we do?

Philip is probably right in so much as we can now expect flotillas of illegal entrants. Kevin seems to just want to spin the problem. The vast majority of us want a safe and orderly immigration and not a seeming holus bolus argy bargy rash of smarty pants on unsafe and at times downright dangerous leaky boats... and we want our leaders to deal with the problem.

I think we aren't too concerned about arrivals by plane because their numbers are limited by the number of planes that come here and because those planes are generally full of bona fide visitors, business people or Aussies returning. Leaky boats ... well no one knows how many there but we do know that when the arrive there are no bonafide visitors, business people or Aussies on board. ;-)

cheers

Come on now you've got all the stats, and have known leadership ... so how about suggesting a reasonable solution?