I am happy to call them all as refugees, they can stay in India or Packistan or Sri Lanka.

I do not go around saying I am a refugee and that I should be living in Buckingham Palace. If I get to stay in Buckingham Palace, please call me a refugee.

I have no issue with accepting refugee, but refugee should not make the decision on who comes to Australia. It should not be up to the Smuggler and how wealthy the refugees are to decide who gets to go where.

All the people, who are complaining are favouring a system where the rich only get into Australia and the people smuggler gets millions. We should not be rewarding people smugglers who puts lives in danger or the rich "refugees"

First let's define "refugee". A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution or natural disaster".
Having done that why were the Tamils taken to Indonesia? They were picked up by an Australian ship which could have brought them to Australia, done all the paperwork and then allowed those who were eligible for "refuge" to stay.
We are talking about people who have the same thoughts, desires amd aims as we have.
Why are there so many Australians who appear to be terrified because someone looks a little different or speaks a different language.
My congratulations to the writer of this piece. Please keep writing until you drum some commonsense into the insular little people many of us are!

Why are there so many Australians who appear to be terrified because someone looks a little different or speaks a different language.
Hilily,
I don't believe there are many at all. What most people object to, not fear, is that many of those who come here don't do so to start a "new life" as such because they don't discard the causes which supposedly caused them to become refugees in the first place. Any country devoid of fanaticism is fertile ground for the gradual importing of that vice.

Binoy Kampmark states that it has been shown that the boat people have an extraordinarily high rate of being accepted as refugees once they are processed. Binoy Kampmark needs to realise that determination and verification of refugee status is in itself a highly subjective process.

Paul Sheehan wrote an informative book entitled “The Electronic Whorehouse” which detailed bias in the media on various issues. In a chapter on the breathtaking bias of the ABC on the asylum seeker issue he gave the interesting statistic that in Indonesia in 2001 the UNHCR rejected 80% of asylum seekers as not being in need of protection, rising to 95% in the cases of Iranians applying for unhcr protection. This contrasts markedly with the high acceptance rate for those asylum seekers arriving in Australia’s migration zone. The reality was that the usual practice for almost all asylum seekers was to destroy their identity papers and travel documents, which made the determination of their identities and verification of their stories of persecution and return to their countries of residence or origin a very time consuming, difficult and costly task. Those found not to be in need of protection withheld all cooperation for return to their countries of residence and filed appeal after appeal. In the end the government took the soft option and most were granted protection.

Further illustration was the case of a boat that departed from Cambodia for Australia in July 2001 with 241 Afghans and Pakistanis on board. The boat was intercepted before the asylum seekers destroyed their documentation and most were found to be carrying Pakistani or Afghan passports, many Afghan documents indicating long term residency of Pakistan. Only 14 of 241 (6%) were accepted by the UNHCR as refugees.

This is very simple.

Australia decides who is allowed to settle in Australia.

Surrendering Australia’s right of selection is to surrender to "migratory anarchy", the thoughts and results of which would be intolerable to the vast majority of law abiding and voting Australians.

Whilst we are talking about refugees and compliance with conventions, we should consider the equality of Australia with those countries who did not sign up to this and other conventions.

The nature of world politics and international relations and economic balance has shifted within the 60 odd years since the convention was signed.

I would suggest the best place for migratory Tamils was back in India. I see little complaining by refugee advocates regarding India’s decision not to sign the 1951 convention.

If countries of mass population, like India and China, the new “economic tigers”, continue to operate a waiver on accepting refugees, maybe Australia should consider the validity of a convention which lacks absolute support among countries.

Regarding queue jumping.. whilst refugees exist who have lodged valid applications for refugee visas and those visas are deferred because economic refugees and bought their way here on boats… the regardless of the ultimate “validity” of these economic refugee applications the queue has been jumped and an immoral advantage given to those who are seen to be the more vexatious applicant.

here they all are again..the same meaningless xenophobic right wing rants. i am ashamed to be livin on the same planet as you lot let alone the same country. what disgusting views you consistently express on these issues of who is "allowed" to come here, how appalling a model these views are for your children and grandchildren. there are of course, decent australians, who know what the law is, and understand their and their families potential contribution to the real multicultural world, very few of them seem to bother with this on line journal..i wonder why? ;-)