Dear Foxy

I think you will enjoy reading the article link below. It redefines the term 'fathead' as well as casting a new spin on 'its not size that counts it is how you use it."

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=does-brain-size-matter&sc=CAT_MB_20090414

Cheers

Foxy, I think we speak a different language here in Western Australia,
for terms that we commonly use every day as part of colourful
language, ruffle your feathers. Sorry, I did not inherit the
PC gene. Many of the young are called young and silly, which
also translates as gullible.

The problem with the UN 1951 Convention is that it is a good 60
years out of date. It needs altering and updating, so that it
cannot be misused as it is now.

But no politician has the testicles to tackle that one, so they
just paper things over, spend lots of money and pretend to be doing
something, then pass it on to the next Government. So the saga
continues, nothing is solved.

If you look at the huge horde of millions of Mexicans heading north
to the US, they are openly economic migrants. They want a better life
and more money. Those Mexicans have one problem, they are not
as tribal as much of the rest of the third world, so they can't
just claim asylum, tell a hard luck story of being persecuted and
gain a passport.

To claim asylum you only have to show that you fear persecution,
because you are Hazara, or Shia, or a Kurd, or any other tribal
minority and if you are a good story teller there is no way that
authorities can prove that you are lying. Bingo, you have your visa.

Marr is correct, most of the public are against the UN convention
as they know what is going on and how much of their taxdollars
are being thrown at this. But what about the genuine refugees
in refugee camps, who don't have two cents to rub together? They
are largely forgotten.

The West is spending a fortune on barricades to stop asylum
seekers arriving. Those resources could be spent on helping
genuine refugees in camps, if the Convention was updated and
all these loopholes closed.

Horus

" If you think ‘1000’ was the full extent of our post-Vietnam war intake you are seriously mistaken."

CJ was correctly quoting the numbers of boat people who arrived as a result of the Vietnam War, not the total refugee intake.

".. the sudden flood of refuges had had little to with the Taliban, or the war – they were peasants fleeing a famine .."

The famine could well have impacted. So what? It wasn't the primary motivating factor, in spite of whatever an author of a less than dispassionately entitled, ‘Overloading Australia’ might say to the contrary.

Would you be hanging around knowing the US was about to launch its revenge-fuelled obliterative fire power in your skies? I think not.

Besides, the Russians had recently occupied the country for ten long years at that stage, and had left behind widescale destruction that the once resilient Afghanis had never recovered from. Climate change factors only further exacerbated the already immense difficulties for them in trying to resume their former way of life. The thought of American bombs raining down on them was no doubt the last straw for many impoverished and understandably fearful Afghanis.

What would you have done? Stood your ground and waved your fist at them?

Many were also fleeing because they'd already stood up to the Taliban and were being persecuted as a result. And by 'persecuted', I'm not meaning some low-level idle threat. Many had already seen friends and family members killed and knew the threat that they were next was indeed very real.

In spite of all that has occurred, most Afghanis love their homeland and don't want to leave it. Fleeing the land they were brought up in and have grown to feel part of is not a decision they make lightly. It's a last-ditch attempt motivated by fear for their lives, not some fascile desire to improve their level of material comfort, meagre as it might be.

Dear Yabby,

Fair enough.

Very well argued.

Dear Fractelle,

Thanks.

I needed that.

Yabby

"The problem with the UN 1951 Convention is that it is a good 60 years out of date."

The need for certain groups of people to leave their homeland and seek asylum is a perennial problem which has always been with us and always will. The unfortunate people who find themselves in this situation need the surety that they can escape persecution in the best way they can manage and have their case for asylum heard fairly and dispassionately. This fact is not something that dates. The Refugee Convention is as relevant today as the day it was signed off on.

Telling asylum seekers they should wait in a squalid overcrowded refugee camp is effectively condemning them to years of suffering in the most intolerable conditions, where many will contract life-scarring illnesses and many others will die slowly and tortuously. Unless you can categorically state that you'd be prepared to do that yourself, Yabby, you have no right to condemn others to that fate.

"If you look at the huge horde of millions of Mexicans heading north to the US, they are openly economic migrants."

The Mexicans have nothing to do with asylum seekers in Australia.

There is at least one common thread however. Just as many Mexicans have to cross borders to feed themselves, after years of having their resource base plundered by their powerful imperialist neighbour, so too many Afghanis and Iraqis have been forced to move as that same imperialist power has inexplicably invaded and destroyed their part of the world.

".. if you are a good story teller there is no way that authorities can prove that you are lying. Bingo, you have your visa."

Just like that, hey Yabby. You have no idea of the hoops asylum seekers have to jump through to prove their legitimacy, and all the while being locked up like criminals and deliberately isolated from the advice and support they so desperately need. It takes more than a good story to fool the hard-nosed bureaucrats whose decisions seal the fate of these poor hapless souls, entirely at their mercy.