You know, I finally worked out why we are now getting an influx of “refugees”.

It’s all to do with Halloween .They arrive on our door step suitably made up & with matching made up stories and cry: “trick or treat”.
They trick us into accepting them, and then we have to treat them for the rest of their lives.

Bronwyn
Re: “Amnesty International has stated that the camps are filthy, overcrowded and dangerous. Heavy rains in September caused rivers of water to cascade through the tents,”

With all due respect ---that description could equally apply to many of the poorer suburbs, in many of the third worlds cities. Do we go around handing out passes to everyone in that predicament , or, do we only hand passes in places that are topical/in the news!

Examinator,
Re : “If we re instituted the pacific policy sooner or later it would back up into our poorer neighbours how do you think they will react?”

Perhaps it might be enlightening(for you) to learn something about our “poor neighbours” illegal immigration polices .They are no strangers to influxes of illegals –their politicians just handle it a lot better than our politicians do.
Incidentally, I seem to recall that countries like India are being touted as the new industrial giants.
And countries like Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia are no slouches either. It is a little antiquated /1950ish to describe them as “poor neighbours”

Examinator, even in Western Australia, we have access to the news
media! According to the AFR, a poll by the Lowy Institute showed that
76% of Australians said they were worried about asylum seekers
arriving by boat. In fact this issue won Howard the elections,
against Beazley in 2001.

*How do you know these people are not in desperate need of asylum?*

Bronwyn, you should read this morning's papers.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26289156-23109,00.html

Whatever makes you think that people on a boat are also people
who come directly from refugee camps? Any Tamil with enough
money can sail from Sri Lanka. Millions already live there.

Being Tamil would now however be a good reason to justify
leaving Sri Lanka and having a go for an Australian visa,
under the claim of fear of persecution.

Yabby,
Yeah, this mornings revelation simply verifies what I said about the illegals being liars and cheats. They sucker in the likes of Bruce Haigh, the Greens and Bronwyn and examinator. Fleeing persecution and death, be damned, they have been laying around in Indonesia for years. I'm somewhat amused by the stupidity of the 78 Sri Lankans. If they had sailed a bit further into our waters near Xmas Island before sabotaging the boat, they now would be enjoying life in our care, which is what they wanted.

Bronwyn,
While I do not have much time for Rudd, I hope he is successful in doing a deal with Indonesia because if the illegals cannot get here they will stop coming. Same as Howard eventually did by not giving them what they want.

At least 42 have died trying to get here on Rudds encouragement, so putting a stop to the boats will save lives. He should admit it was a mistake to entice them by 'permanent residency'. Sometimes one has to be tough to save people from themselves. Parenting teaches that.

TZ52HX

"There's 2 lies that the uneducated minority believe
(1) boat people "queue jump" and deny refugees a place here
(2) the so called 'pacific solution' stopped illegal entry"

"Can anyone here produce the name of even ONE, I repeat **ONE**, refugee who was in a so called "queue", who was denied asylum because too many boat people were coming here?"

Shows a complete ignorance of how the system works. There is a quota, (about 13000p.a.) and there are probably hundreds of thousands of refugees that meet the criteria. Visas will be allocated to a certain number and whether they come in on boats or otherwise the No is the same. No one is rejected, just not given a visa.

That the majority of boat people have been resident in Indonesia for up to 5 years would indicate that their decision to depart to Aus in mass is due to the perception that acceptance is now easier. The reason they did not before was that they faced incarceration and rejection. This information indicates that the relaxation of the regulations was the single greatest motivating factor, and that the "push" factor had little to do with it.

There is absolutely no doubt that the pacific solution was the major reason why influx of boats stopped.

If Rudd just stopped trying to BS the electorate and said, the pacific solution was wrong, and we accept that we will get 10s of thousands of refugees on boats, then we would believe him.

It seems to me that there is no satisfactory solution, except to look
the problem straight in the eye and find a way to send them back home.

Countries with a refugee source problem should have a UN administed
resettlement protocol. The procedure would be something like this.

In each country the UN would have register of returnees.
A UNHCR team would make regular visits to the returnees to check that
they are not being mistreated in any way.

If problems are found the UN would call the government to account and
publicise their mistreatment.

A start could be made with those that have been in camps for years.
I doubt if their home country would even remember them.
Very quickly it would become apparent if the scheme was working or not.

Some will not like this but do they have a better solution ?
No one has come up with any other better solution.

*Bronwyn
Re: “Amnesty International has stated that the camps are filthy, overcrowded and dangerous. Heavy rains in September caused rivers of water to cascade through the tents,”*

Bronwyn, I am sure that you are very caring, very sweet, with a huge
sense of empathy. But I really think that you don't have the foggiest,
when it comes to what is going on in the third world.

The BBC is presently showing a series called "Hot Cities" This
weekend its been about Dhaka. There are literally millions of
people, living in even worse conditions, with nowhere to go.

Many are fleeing rising floodwaters and things are getting worse
every year.

When you remove all the fog and haze of this discussion, what it
comes down to is that even if it wished, Australia cannot solve
the world's problems and trashing Australia to make ourselves
feel better, solves nothing. Sadly that is the reality of it,
much as we would wish to deny it.