*he must have been holding his own for too long*

Lol Horus, you have CJ all figured out :)

I noted today, that Alex the poor Sri Lankan asylum seeker,
has paid a price for his exposure on international tv. He's
had to come clean and admit that he has a criminal record
in Canada, was in jail there and was eventually expelled.
So now he decided to try his luck in Australia, it seems.

Under our laws, with no documents to prove his real name,
he would have simply had to sign a form to say that he
had no criminal record, thats good enough for Aus.

Rstuart does make one valid point. Its us who are the
suckers, they are simply pushing their self interest
to the max and we let them get away with it.

Our bleating hearts make sure of it.

Horus - you're raving.

Yabby - typically puerile response.

I know I'm on track when you guys are babbling about me and engaging in schoolboy humour. It keeps you from being really nasty to others with thinner skins than mine.

Do keep it up.

Britians special envoy to Sri Lanka quote:

'We take the view that it is safe to return people, including Tamils, to Sri Lanka,'' Mr Browne said.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/sri-lanka-deal-aimed-at-smugglers-20091109-i5d6.html

What I though all along, war over long ago. Genocide claims from extremists website that are easy to debunk as mythical and people called Alex.

I could not believe some claims made here against many countries, so terribly colonial..oooh those savages type of rhehtoric. So insanely arrogant worse than the yanks.

TheMissus

Thanks for that link it was most interesting reading.

CJ Morgan: "Horus - you're raving."

I read this and thought "oh here CJ goes again, attacking the person and not the issue". But when I went back and read your replies Horus - he is right. Remarkably Horus "raving" is a fairly objective summary of what you have written. (Apologies, CJ.) In your 3 posts, all I see is wild accusations like "Just between you and me RStuart, you’re not connected with a people smugglers ring are you?" and logic like "It’s a safe bet the majority of Tamils have not been incarcerated or shot" - ergo they are cowards.

I can't see the point of engaging you further Horus. My goal here was to show how the facts were being distorted to suite some political viewpoint, but you have out classed me completely. I could not do a better job showing that in your case, no matter how long I worked at it.

TheMissus: "What I though all along, war over long ago."

The victory was declared on 18 May 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/tamil-tigers-killed-sri-lanka But for the Tamils the war didn't end then, as in they didn't just return to their homes and to go peacefully about their business. Rather the government then forced the Tamils into camps, stating they wanted to weed out Tamil supporters. Since foreigners were expelled we won't know what this "weeding out" process entailed for a while yet - particularly for the weeds, but in terms of refugees streaming out of the country probably worth noting the rounded up Tamils didn't know what fate awaited them in their own country either.

You are right on one thing - the war is winding down. I imagine within a year or so, with the resumption of a free access and free reporting we will get a clear picture of what conditions are like there. With luck, they will be as harmless as you are making our here and the refugees can be repatriated in confidence.

It is clear we can't be confident now however, yet you seem very keen on forcing them home regardless.

Yabby: "Under our laws, with no documents to prove his real name, he would have simply had to sign a form to say that he had no criminal record, thats good enough for Aus."

The problem with this assertion Yabby is you provide no evidence it has actually happened on a regular basis. This would not be so much of an issue if you hadn't shown such propensity here for gilding the lily.

For what it is worth, Paul Sheehan faces the same problem. Now that I have come to doubt his figures, his statement:

"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"

has a fair chance of just being another case of Paul seizing on a single atypical case to further his political agenda. And as I said to Shadow, we are discussing practical outcomes here, aren't we? If so one off bureaucratic mistakes in implementing the law aren't particularly relevant to the discussion.

In any case, before I would put the weight on Paul's assertion you say it deserves, I would have to see evidence that it is in fact an endemic problem in our handling of refugee claims. If it is, you have made a fairly strong point to support your contention we are all being taken for suckers.