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.