RStuart,

“My pet dislike is people insisting their fantasy”—well then, lets disabuse them of some of those fantasies!

Fantasy No.1 & 2 There’s been a conflict in Sri Lanka –that proves those exiting are “ refugees”
i) If you’re a Tamil & your motivation is to --escape persecution-- why would you by-pass Tamil Nadu ( the land of the Tamils) India, where many other “refugee” & non-refugee Tamils reside –by pass Burma & Thailand where many illegals from the subcontinent already live/work ( don’t tell me they don’t --I’ve met them!) to transverse a dangerous ocean to get to OZ?
ii) Having made it to Indonesia ,why would you INSIST on a short-list of destinations. Beggars cannot be choosers–but apparently refugees can be very choosey!
iii) Why are the vast majority of Tamils continuing to live Sri Lanka –they are not all locked up –are they just cowards/fools?
iv) We have accepted BOTH Tamils & Singhalese as refugees –think about that a bit!

Fantasy No.3 “Most of the asylum seekers …have been vetted by the UNHRC”
What does this vetting entail: You say you’re applying for asylum, I ask are you being persecuted, you say yes , I give you a certificate ---you’re now a bona fide refugee. Unless the claimant is an idiot who mouths-off about the big house he wants in OZ –as the few rejectees apparently did--there is little chance they will be found against. The is no way any UN/OZ official can, verify, their claims –it’s a fantasy.

Fantasy No.4 “Over 90% of boat people have been deemed legit in the Howard years”
Ditto answer No. 3 -- Howard was by-and-large content to work with the existing UN refugee bureaucracy.

Fantasy No.5 “you think thing are just peachy back at home”
No – it is not peachy in much of Asia/Africa/Sth America unless you’re from the upper echelons.
But lack of peachiness does not a ‘refugee” make. The convention was never intended as an avenue to
trade-up to a more affluent country –but that is what it is increasingly being used for!

Horus: "but apparently refugees can be very choosey!"

I don't follow the logic. Once you decide to leave your homeland, if you then look around for the best place to move to you aren't by Horus's definition a refugee?

Horus: "are they just cowards/fools?"

Cowards? 100,000 were killed during the conflict. Fools? They were rounded up and put in camps at gun point.

Horus: "We have accepted BOTH Tamils & Singhalese as refugees"

OK, I have thought about it. I can't see why it is significant. You will have to spoon feed me.

Horus: "What does this vetting entail"

You don't have a clue what it entails Horus. You didn't bother to look it up. You just invented a story that suited your purposes, and then assumed I would believe you. You evidently think I am very gullible or a complete idiot. How do I know this? Because I did look it up. You can find the procedure here: http://www.unhcr.org/publ/PUBL/3d58e13b4.pdf

Horus: "Howard was by-and-large content to work with the existing UN refugee bureaucracy."

Yabby/Sheehan said the reason we accept these people is because we much more lenient than the UNHCR - that was the point I was addressing. Now you say we are accepting them because we work within it. For what its worth, I agree with you. I think the DIC officers processing asylum seekers arriving in boats are just as competent as those processing airline arrivals (who reject almost all). In fact in some cases they are probably the same ones. What's more I am confident our Australian bureaucracy is equal to the best in the world, setting a standard in interpreting the UNHCR most would like to emulate.

Horus: "it is not peachy in much of Asia/Africa/Sth America"

Correct. That is why we get refugees from them too.

Problem with boat poeple is we do not allow them to make their way to shore and find their own way. We have to deploy major search and rescue missions. We have a naturally difficult border but they are not trying to breach that, just our ocean borders. It is simply not viable as a means to apply for refugee status. In the US the wet back as they are called were drowning or perishing in the desert all the time but it was considered their choice. In a nanny state we are limited by our desire to take over the individual responsibility for their own safety.

Also economically. In the past and in countries of mass migration, whether economic or not, there is not the support refugees receive here. So again social welfare restricts the numbers.

There has been a few people here say they can go to rural areas for work displacing opportunities for locals suffering more than most from economic downturn. So there is a not in my backyard mentality. We will take them and palm them off onto struggling regional centres. Of course the farmer is happy, afterall no employment workplace laws seem to apply to them.

So if we do have open border policy they should finish the journey on their own.They should not recieve direct benefits. The government should fund NGO like the Red Cross to run the camps. You should expect shanty towns to pop up. Urban centres must accommodate them, the only towns with money in the country are mining towns and too prohibitively expensive for anyone not in mining. This is what happens in the real world.

Utopia is not an earthly place.

Horus,
There is one thing you did not say about these illegals getting refugee status.

In the ME the success rate of those seeking refugee status by the UNHCR, is 10%

I am trying to find the success rate for those persons arriving here legally and then seeking asylum but have not got the rate as yet,but think it is less than 50%

The success rate for those arriving here illegally and seeking asylum is 90-95%. One could put this down to a far more lax or accomodating criteria, however I believe it is the fact that the illegals destroy their identities, etc. thus preventing us sending them home, as their home countries will not accept them without proof of citizenship.

As an alternative to making the measures less inviting for all to come here, perhaps we could have a special catorgory for those without documents and hold them indefinately at say Nauru. that would stop the practice of destroying docs and attempts to enter illegally.

Yabby: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-real-reasons-for-asylum-seeker-arrivals-20091106-i0j3.html

That was a great link. You would have to read the response from his peers to get a real feel for how well the good professor's scale works. But taken at face value it shows Ken Parish's "Indian Ocean Solution" may work.

I find it easy to take it a face value. Unlike now, there were no huge changes in push factors in 2007-2008, so the 20% increase doesn't have too many other explanations other than the softer face shown by the Rudd government. I saw with some amusement the professor put those changes down to "John Howard grandstanding" - which is another way of saying the same thing and so sounds right. The pacific solution has been largely dismantled at the end of the Howard era because it was economically unsustainable, currently the laws governing handling asylum seekers haven't changed, and of course the practical implementation is unchanged - refugees are still incarcerated in an excised territory away from the mainland.

The article doesn't mention 2009, but I assume the same logic applies - given there have been no changes to the way the law is implemented the increase we see now is due to push factors.

The other reason this is all ironic is the article you posted doesn't support the rather extreme arguments being pushed here by you, Shadow and friends.

- There is no suggestion these aren't "real asylum seekers".

- There is no suggestion the change in government policies produced the surge we see now (ie the difference between 2008 and 2009).

And finally, this makes a mockery of TZ52HX's claim the Liberals don't have a "new" policy. Why do they need one? They still have their old one, and it for now is still the law. Well not quite - we no longer have Howard's grandstanding. Effective as the professor said it was, I don't miss it.

Shadow Minister: "[Rudd] will shortly be faced with either releasing the detainees with no proof, or publicly reversing his policy and continuing with indefinite detention."

I am tempted to say this is the first reasonable thing you have said. But that's churlish - without your continual needling, it would not have surfaced the laws are in fact unchanged. There have been no inflection points so far, but this 90 day time limit is one. It will be interesting to see what happens, won't it? If they are allowed onto the mainland without TPV's we will see the first real practical change in the way asylum seekers are handled.

Banjo: "The Melbourne woman is wrong. She also claimed they had spent 5 years in Indonesian camps. Untrue, They said "in Indonesia", nothing about camps."

I presume you read this from some web page. There have been so many claims and counter claims that have later proved to be misunderstandings, if would be helpful if you provided the link you are quoting.

Banjo: "however I believe it is the fact that the illegals destroy their identities, etc. thus preventing us sending them home, as their home countries will not accept them without proof of citizenship."

Try reading the UNHCR guidelines I posted above Banjo. Certainly destroying their identifies slows down processing. But in the end, if they can't prove they only have citizenship in some hell hole or other they can't return to, they won't be accepted as refugees. It is a UNHCR requirement. To put it another way, the contention that the UNHCR demands we accept all anonymous people as refugees is just absurd.

I don't dispute that some are making it as difficult and as time consuming as possible to verify their asylum claims. I guess it is a backup strategy. If they don't get accepted, at least they get to be safe here for a year or so. Who knows, after a year things may have settled down at home.

Given there are perfectly good and reasonable reasons for destroying documents, wrapping a conspiracy theory around it is unwarranted.