Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday announced that there would be a significant easing of restrictions on asylum seekers http://news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,24094720-5005962,00.html.

I’ve been a strong supporter of mandatory detention and the whole border-protection policy overseen by Howard and Ruddock http://abc.com.au/news/stories/2008/07/30/2318283.htm?section=justin. But it is probably time to wind it back a little….just as long as the strong deterrence factor remains in place.

I don’t have a problem with those still in detention being placed in the community. I wouldn’t mind if they were all accepted outright as future Australian citizens, as part of the end game to this whole saga…if it was the end of the saga.

But I do have an issue with non-detention of new arrivals whose health, identity and security risk can be quickly determined. This could quite possibly lead to another wave of arrivals, if people think that they can quickly be placed in mainstream society if their documentation is in order.

It would only take another one or two boats with a couple of dozen or so people to really flare up this whole issue again…and earn the Rudd Government a great deal of criticism for burdening the country with this highly divisive issue and the enormous taxpayers’ expense involved, when they could so easily have just let it be.

Ludwig,

There are lots of inconsistencies in the whole migration debate. As Paul Sheehan in the SMH said yesterday http://www.ga.gov.au:88/newintranet/pmd/gpda/images/multibeam_shapefile2.jpg there were 178,000 people let in via the bona fide migration program last year. As I understand it only about 8,000 people have tried to come here by leaky boat over the time of the Howard Government. Which one of the two is the elephant? Why is it that the minority (ie refugees) should be used as the scapegoat and sacrificed at the altar of Australia's wealth?

As I've said once before, it's pretty rich to keep out asylum seekers when the hordes of "skilled" migrants are getting off their Qantas flight and being met with open arms by industry at the airport.

I agree with what the Labor Government has done. I also agree that it needs to ensure that we regulate the number of migrants that we take in each year. But is there a way of doing it where the human element is not trashed in the process?

Dear Ludwig and Rob,

I too like what the Rudd Government has done.
It's a step in the right direction.
Howard's detention centres were a nightmare,
and violated human rights.

People were kept in the centres for far too
long, under sub-human conditions.

We need to have deterrants for people that are
willing to enter this country illegally.
But surely, the processing could be fairer
and faster.

Why can New Zealand process their illegal
immigrants much faster and more humanely?

I have never supported detention as the cost is immense and stupid. hard to do if you are an ideologue, but possible.

A bit of information background to this debate is "detention centres" was Labor's, ex prime minister, Paul Keating governments idea.

Rudd perhaps is righting a wrong but it is also essential and a responsible action to maintain community health and screen for possible diseases that have been otherwise eradicated in Australia.

An example of concern is the rarer strains of tuberculosis emerging in developing countries and abroad, these unknown strains are drug resistant and have not been successfully treated with modern Western medicine.

It is also interesting to note that Australia's youth is not immunised against the most common strain of Tuberculosis until well into their teenage years.

This would suggest a window of opportunity for the disease to infiltrate one class of our most vulnerable.

Our governments in charge need to consider and maintain a level of quarantine to safe guard it citizens and our tentative guests need to realise and trust that they will be given fair passage and a "means" to do it with.

Sourcing identification information from developing countries and complicated dictatorships, also limit processing time frames, where record keeping is not a priority.

Suebdootwo, are tourists screened for those things? Because if they aren't, you don't really have a point.

Thank you for outlining another source that requires forms of quarantine and attentioning to co-ordination task forces.

The process of migration and other forms of residency applications to enter Australia requires medical examinations, which include chest Xrays in known countries.

Although monetary restraints, limit the number of medical tests the applicant is required to undergo, leaving many stones unturned.

My understanding is that many of those still in mandatory detention are there because their true identities are still unknown including country of origin. Not all boat people are true refugees but many are and distinguishing between the two opens up a minefield for authorities.

It was a travesty that children were held in detention and I can see a case for allowing families in the community with appropriate support and perhaps a short term working Visa until bonafides are established. The condition of detention centres is something that could be improved and the incidence of drug abuse as highlighted by last night's ABC's 7.30 Report.

It is a difficult balance between humanitarian treatment and border protection and my guess is that there is not much in the way of middle ground on this issue.

RobP

“…there were 178,000 people let in via the bona fide migration program last year. As I understand it only about 8,000 people have tried to come here by leaky boat over the time of the Howard Government. Which one of the two is the elephant?...”

The mandatory-detention border-protection system and the small number of arrivals was certainly no white elephant issue. The fact that there were all-told few onshore asylum seekers over those years indicates its effectiveness….. especially in the face of a massive build-up of people just about to head for Australia at the time of the Tampa incident in August 2001.

“… it's pretty rich to keep out asylum seekers when the hordes of ‘skilled’ migrants are getting off their Qantas flight and being met with open arms by industry at the airport.”

No, it is just plain sensible to have strong border-protection and to insist that migrants go through official channels, or if they happen to be genuine refugees, go through a rigorous process to make sure of it, with the process being such that it serves as a balance between strong deterrence and reasonable treatment of the ‘applicants’. I think that Howard’s system wasn’t too far off the desired balance.

What IS extremely “rich” is Rudd’s enormous boost to immigration, very soon after he won power, having given no indication beforehand that he was going to do any such thing, and having done it unilaterally with no chance for the general public or relevant academics to be involved in the decision.

BTW, the link you provided didn’t work for me.

Ludwig,

Sorry about that, try http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-reality-check-on-rudds-rhetoric/2008/07/27/1217097054279.html. I had a couple of internet windows open, I must have cut and pasted the wrong one.

My main point was to try to get a better balance between non-economic migrants (eg asylum seekers) and economic migrants, while at the same time being conscious of the total numbers coming into the country. So, if you like, the idea was maintain a cap on migration, but redistribute the two streams so that non-economic migrants are not squashed between and rock and a hard place purely because they've exceeded a tacitly-held and very low Government quota.

The other thing I forgot to say about the migration program is that it does its checks on asylum seekers, so that it can do what exactly? Use a fact like their country of birth or religion so as to make a sweeping generalisation about what sort of Australians they will become?

I think it's true that in any random group of people, regardless of religion or ethnic background, one will find the same proportion of good and bad people in them all. So, for argument's sake, there will be the same probability of finding a very bad egg amongst asylum seekers as amongst economic migrants. We've got no problem letting in economic migrants, however.

The religion of someone is actually a pretty spurious test. The real test that matters is what a person is like on the inside. It's pretty hard to devise a test that will determine this.

Rob, that’s an excellent article by Paul Sheehan.

Now if we could just get Nelson to concentrate on this stuff;

the extraordinary major policy introduced by Rudd immediately upon his election – a massive increase to immigration – for which there was no prior warning, no public or expert consultation and for which he had no mandate to undertake,

the extraordinary contradiction between this policy and that of reducing GHG emissions,

the absolute total addiction of the Rudd government to continuous rapid growth, without question and without feeling as though they need to justify it, as though it should just be taken as an obvious necessity,

the absolute pandering to the vested interests of big business that this political direction involves,

the absolute corruption to the principles of good governance and public representation,

the in-bed-together politics that huge political donations and other favours from big business heap upon unscrupulous politicians,

etc.

Oh, hold on….this thread is about mandatory detention and immigration! (:>#

Um yes, I agree that there should be a much better balance between refugees and other immigrants.

My best balance would be an immigration intake of net zero, that is; about 30 000 per annum, with 25 000 of this being the most needy of refugees, as determined through our offshore program in close consultation with the UN and the humanitarian efforts of other countries.

"Rob, that’s an excellent article by Paul Sheehan."

Yes, he usually nails his target pretty decisively. Maybe he gets some of his ideas from OLO?

As a general statement, the most important thing in this debate is to replace the hysteria with facts that properly round out the issue. The main political question to my mind is: why are asylum seekers inherently more dangerous to Australia than economic migrants?

I doubt that they are.

"...I forgot to say about the migration program is that it does its checks on asylum seekers, so that it can do what exactly? Use a fact like their country of birth or religion so as to make a sweeping generalisation about what sort of Australians they will become?"

That is a broad assumption you are making Robp. Do you really believe that this is the reason these checks are done - in a secular society like Australia I find that hard to believe given the broad range of migrants here (my father being one of them).

Are you advocating that there should be no checks at all? I would worry about someone that was not willing to indicate their true identity or refuse a health screening or a standard criminal records check etc. I have to do those things just to get a job these days.

Most asylum seekers are probably bonafide refugees but if so there should not be any problem in providing a true identity.

Why do goverments continue to push for population growth either via (immigration or baby bonuses) in a country where water supply and degradation of systems like the Murray Darling continue and where city infrastructures are struggling to cope with burgeoning numbers

Something that gives me the irrits in this debate is the unexamined assumption that without mandatory detention, the Department of Immigration will just let everyone in who asks, and give them a box of dynamite and an Al-Qaeda handbook as they get off the boat.

DIFAT takes immigration very seriously indeed. I reckon they should run tours of the incredible high-tech lab they use to analyse refugee documents, and have seminars explaining the great lengths they go to to establish the identities of refugees in their country of origin.

Sancho, I don't think that is the assumption.

The point is that it won't be Immigration making those decisions if all potential immigrants opt for the faster asylum seeker route. There was a documentary some time ago about rich and middle class families paying for passage on these leaky boats leaving Indonesia. Not humanitarian refugees at all.

I understand the desire for refugees to flee from intolerable conditions and there is much room for Australia to help with these situations both through a humanitarian refugee program and direct help within the countries where famine or oppressive rule exists.

The problem of what to do with asylum seekers has been a problem way before the obsession with Al'Quaida. As I stated previously, not an easy problem and there are probably no win-win solutions.

Changing the shameful mandatory detention for refugees is long overdue.

Pelican, do you know what rich and middle class illegal aliens are called? Visa overstayers. They don't do the rickety boats by the way, they fly in on planes.

The department for Immigration estimates there to be some 50,000 'visa overstayers'- http://www.apo.org.au/linkboard/results.chtml?filename_num=44973- in Australia. That's 50,000 illegal aliens.

Considering our fabric of life has not been destroyed by such a large number of illegals lurking in our midst, I doubt that the pitiful few thrown behind barbed wire in the middle of nowhere would have made one jot of difference to any of our lives if they had been housed in our communities at a fraction of the cost.

Risk your life and come in by rickety boat: despicable queue jumping illegal alien; arrive in comfort by plane by the jumbo load: visa overstayer; leave your poor country taking your much needed skills required to pull your country out of poverty: skilled migrant.

Australia is a country made up of migrants. Many arrived here seeking their fortune 'jumping ship' throughout history and after WWII paperwork was neglible. Conflict areas just don't do council chambers real well where a person can pick up 'papers'. That was the case in the decade after WWII and still true today. Birth and Registrations are the stuff of orderly societies.

It is only in the last 12 years or so that there is a noisy paranoid section in Australia re new comers and an obsession with 'papers'. Some of you sound like frustrated public servants.

If we need migrants, we should only take the most needy, 'the huddled masses'. We should train our own people in skills and leave skilled people in their own countries to build their own nations.

What we are doing with our 'skilled migrant' intake is akin to rape of some of the poor countries and is at times used to keep the wages down of Australians in certain industries.

Yvonne.
I agree with some of you post but not all.

We should train all our own skilled workers. It is a blight on industry, all Governments both Liberal and Labor that this situation came about. It is wrong and immoral to poach these workers from other countries that need their skills more than we do.

Nothing much has changed in relation to assylum seekers, despite the rethoric. They will still be in detention while their bona fides are checked and health checks. Those bona fides that do not check out are refused and appeals made giving more information which has to be checked. And so on it goes. It has been the giving of false information to our officials that keep people in detention for long periods, coupled with appeals. The new minister announced 4 months ago that 24 would be deported but today 15 are still here. Presumably because they have appealed his decission. To make the process quicker is not easy and the ministers efforts will be of interest.

My opinion is that our immigration is far too high and if we take in some to balance those that leave (zero net), they should be refugees.

Of the 50,000 overstayers, some would be genuine and leave of their own accord, to be replaced by a similar number each year. Others are procured labor, forced to work off their fares in sweat shops, brothels, farms and building sites, etc. Media reports raids from time to time on premises and these illegals are usually deported, unless of mitigating circumstances. The balance are illegal immigrants who are deported when they get caught. Unless they commit fraud they do not get social security benefits.

Some are deported even though they have been here many years and others are allowed to stay because they are a parent to children born here. Its an ongoing problem. More investigation staff would be needed to reduce the number of overstayers.

Banjo, I'm in agreement with you re our migrant intake.

The vast majority should be refugees.

Visa overstayers are actually people who are the real queue jumpers. Cannot migrate here legally and have no chance at refugee status so come here 'on holidays' and stay.

It is strange that this group is looked upon so benignly.

Yvonne,
I feel sorry for the illegals that have been forced to work here. They are lured here then have to work their fares off one way or another. The other overstayers are a different story and I suppose they do not have the same impact media wise as a boat laden with 200-300 people. They go underground and pay no tax on what income they get and usually discovered when they break the law or accident,etc.

Some years ago an illegal English couple were deported after being here some 30,or so, years. They ran a small retail business and were highly thought of in their suburb. Another Pacific Islander family were to be deported only a year or so ago and the last I heard the kids school and pupils were making representations to the Minister for them to stay. I don't know the outcome. Another Middle Eastern bloke was to be deported after being caught selling drugs. He won the right to stay because he had fathered a child here and the court found it may be not in the childs best interest. So the situation varies a lot, and some come to light occasionally.

All illegals are very vunerable to exploitation from unscrupulous employers and others.

Employ more investigators seems the only way to reduce the overstayers. But the boat people are different as they know they will be aprehended so they destroy their documents and are coached in what to tell our officials. Not all those that came via Indonesia were poor. There were some who engaged light aircraft to bush airstrips up north and had friends pick them up and then into hiding. Not hard with modern navigation gear and mobile phones.

It will be difficult for the new minister can speed the assylum seekers process up unless he curtails the appeals or rules that any false informatin given to our officials will void any application.

“Changing the shameful mandatory detention for refugees is long overdue.”

Yvonne, I don’t think that it was ever a shameful policy.

Mandatory detention evolved from an open centre in Port Hedland where asylum seekers could move around freely. Some tried to abscond and disappear. Hence the implementation of detention centres. Some still tried to abscond. Hence the implementation of high walls with razor wire.

The experience in other countries with no detention for asylum seekers is one of abscondment and a lot of effort and taxpayers’ money going into recovering them, sometimes unsuccessfully.

The deterrence factor was also very important. If prospective asylum seekers thought that they could quickly get to live in mainstream society, then the numbers coming here could have been much greater.

My main concern now is that new arrivals could appear due directly to the new policy of no detention if documentation and security checks are in order.

But then, very little has actually changed in that regard. Asylum seekers whose identity and status could be quickly determined were dealt with reasonably quickly. It was only the difficult cases, which were numerous due to the deliberate destruction of documentation, that resulted in some pretty long stints in detention.

In my view, detention had to be mandatory. We certainly didn’t want desperate people, who weren’t familiar with Australian society moving freely, especially when many of them had a strong desire to go underground.

There was a necessity to deal decisively with the onshore asylum seeker issue in 2001, as the rate of arrivals was increasing and by all indications was just about to blow right out. I remember Philip Ruddock in the media numerous times in the months leading up to the Tampa incident talking about the build-up of people-smuggling operations that was happening in Indonesia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Yvonne;
There is article in todays Aus that may interest you.
Opinion column; Paul Kelly

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24114136-12250,00.html

Apparently there are 357 people in detention now and most are overstayers. The Minister has ordered a review of these.

I think there is a need for caution here as if they are allowed into the community and the review goes against them, they may go underground again. If the conditions are relaxed and many are allowed to stay, it may well lead to an increase in visa overstayers.

I'm with you. We need to be really tough on the overstayers that are deliberately trying it on , to bypass the immigration system.

Yvonne,

From a humanitarian point of view, I agree with what you say. It's hard to say what proportion of migrants should be asylum seekers and what should be economic migrants. I'll play it safe and say that, overall, it should average out at 50:50. But when it comes to economic migrants, I see a silver lining.

"What we are doing with our 'skilled migrant' intake is akin to rape of some of the poor countries ..."

It depends on how you look at it. Why would a migrant come to this country in the first place if he/she didn't think it was in his/her interest? What's the point of them staying at home if their economies are not big and mature enough to do much with them? I reckon it's good that migrants of all stripes come here, so long as there is enough rotation, so that they eventually go back to their home countries after a number of years. That is, they effectively use Australia as an extended work experience program. By the time they go back, their countries will be more likely to have the economic capacity to usefully harness their new-found skills.

"If we need migrants, we should only take the most needy, 'the huddled masses'. We should train our own people in skills and leave skilled people in their own countries to build their own nations."

The people most likely to face persecution overseas should be given permanent resident status here, with an option to go back home at a later time if they are happy to do so or the heart beckons. I suspect many economic migrants to Australia, particularly Asians, will likely go back home voluntarily anyway when the Asian tiger starts roaring.

yvonne

I agree with you about overstayers and they are also a large part of the problem.

Boat people pay for their place no matter how leaky or unsafe the boat; sometimes anywhere from $7,000-$40,000 a place - not much room for those who are poor and unable to pay their way. There is a vast number of unscrupulous people in the people smuggling trade who exploit those who wish to emigrate to Australia who might be otherwise refused through normal channels perhaps because of a criminal history or other reasons.

The difference between flying in and overstaying as opposed to arriving by boat is that identification papers like passports are not required

Pelican,

>>That is a broad assumption you are making Robp. Do you really believe that this is the reason these checks are done - in a secular society like Australia I find that hard to believe given the broad range of migrants here (my father being one of them).<<

I was having a dig at some of the practices (as opposed to the professed strategies) in the migration program. The imigration test that was brought in by Howard being one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if some sweeping judgements based on culture and race were made at an institutional level in the Immigration Department as to the suitability of asylum seekers. This wouldn't be admitted by them or the politicians.

>>Are you advocating that there should be no checks at all? I would worry about someone that was not willing to indicate their true identity or refuse a health screening or a standard criminal records check etc. I have to do those things just to get a job these days.<<

In order to keep the migration intake to a manageable level, there must of course be a rational basis for deciding who stays and who doesn't. I thought Labor's criterion was the best one: allow for more humanitarian visas whilst keeping in detention those that were most likely to be a danger to the Australian community.

>>Most asylum seekers are probably bonafide refugees but if so there should not be any problem in providing a true identity.<<

Some of them have a deep and abiding fear of authorities that could cause them to hide their identities/details. I also accept that some could hide their details to hide some bad aspect about themselves.

"Why do goverments continue to push for population growth either via (immigration or baby bonuses) in a country where water supply and degradation of systems like the Murray Darling continue and where city infrastructures are struggling to cope with burgeoning numbers"

Pretty obviously they've swallowed the "greater GDP equals prosperity" proposition. Of course, when people's material wealth goes up, other things like the human side suffer.

Yvonne;
Here is another article. This time by Paul Sheehan in SMH today.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/paul-sheehan/the-challenge-of-migration/2008/08/03/1217701846375.html

I think I may file this info, for when the subject comes up again, and I think it will.

Pity our politicians won't discuss immigration, and related issues, at election time.

Banjo links to another good article by Sheehan that puts things into perspective very clearly and well.

From the earlier reporting of Labor's policy, I got the sense that humanitarian visas were increasing. Obviously, according to Sheehan, that is wrong. All Labor is doing is getting rid of the backlog of detainees, but is not increasing the humanitarian quota (unless of course it is generating a big news story by letting in 400 Iraqis who were interpreters for the Aussies in the US occupation).

Another interesting point he made is that many migrants have already been let into the country who shouldn't have been due to slack vetting procedures in the past. In my general experience of life, this is typical: the worst offenders get off scot free, while those that are a little bit bad or dodgy get the full treatment from the system (eg by being put in detention for an extended period). All proportion is lost as the human element is being sacrificed by being sandwiched between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

IMO, the true problem is in the imbalance in the whole immigration system because those in authority that can and should do better are too weak or gutless to do the right thing. Or too busy chasing a vote. In the latter case, the problem would only be solved if the bulk of society demanded a better and fairer system.