http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2562070.htm

William Shakespeare got it all wrong with the roses, as the human rights industry in Australia is fully aware. Call an illegal migrant, someone who buys a seat on a chartered boat in Indonesia and sets out for Australia an asylum seeker, and any measure to control this traffic becomes an immediate injustice.

It works the same way when Aborigines make land claims. The land may well have belonged to another tribe, now extinct. However claimants are always "traditional owners". So illegal migrants and land claimants come up smelling like roses.

"Reform" is another rose. Change the industrial relations laws, and put 100,000 people out of work; but because the change is a reform, it must be supported.

Issues are prejudged. Of course Aborigines should be given what they ask for. They are traditional owners. Of course people who are sufficiently well-off to fly to Indonesia and then to charter boats should be allowed to settle here. They are asylum seekers.
Kevin Rudd and the ALP got a lot of political mileage out of John Howard's method of dealing with illegal immigration by putting them in detention until their cases had been dealt with on an individual basis.

Except that it wasn't Howard's idea. Paul Keating introduced detention as a means of getting illegal immigration under control. Howard's innovation was establishing the detention centre outside Australia and beyond the reach of the human rights industry.

If Howard was in error, it was in not stating this basic fact, that detention for illegal entrants was both sensible, and in its essence bipartisan. He was certainly in error in condoning the continuing use of "asylum seekers" for people who are essentially, invaders.

Rudd chose to ignore the fact that the idea of detention centres began with his side. His mistake was that he came to believe, or appeared to believe, in his own propaganda and in his own misrepresentations.

His second mistake was in not thinking through the consequences of changing the visa system for illegal entrants, making them eligible for social welfare, and announcing that the illegal entrants would be held on the mainland where the human rights industry can get back into the act.

So now the boats are arriving in a steady stream. Soon there will be hundreds of illegal entrants lost in the community, while Kevin Rudd hunts down the "snakeheads", the Indonesian organisers of the trade.

All involved in this illegal trade must share in responsibility for the single great deception involved in designating the illegal migrants as "asylum seekers".

Definitionally, they ceased to be refugees as soon as they reached a country beyond their borders. They had found refuge.

So why do they then fly to Indonesia, and set sail on chartered boats for Australia.

Simple. They think Australia would be a better place to live. That makes them would-be migrants seeking to enter Australia other than through the proper channels.

In Europe, they turn them round and send them straight back. We don't. We issue them with them with temporary visas while we consider their cases, or did until Rudd ended the temporary visa system.

So now the are turned loose to merge into the population.
Logically, the illegal migrants from Sri Lanka should go to India. They are Tamils, and Hindus, members of a community that has been revolt against the elected governments of their country for more than 20 years. They share language and religion with a country on the other side of the strait. Why not go there?

Does the Buddhist government that has now defeated the Tamil Tiger terrorists intend them harm. There is no suggestion of it. If they are fleeing for their lives, the place to flee to is India. But of course they are not refugees. They are not asylum seekers. Australia looks as if it would be a nicer place to live, so they want to come here.

That is understandable, but it makes them illegal migrants, not asylum seekers.

Much the same applies to Iraq. Saddam Hussein is dead. The country has an elected government. It is becoming more orderly. The illegal migrants are Muslim, as are the great majority of Iraqis. Are they in fear of their lives? Nobody is saying that, although such a claim is made by individuals.

Australia had a system of temporary visas that allowed illegal entrants to remain while their cases were processed. Those temporary protection visas did not confer on the illegal entrants the access of Australian citizens to unemployment benefits, age and disability pensions and family tax benefits.

The Howard government took the view that people who arrived in Australia illegally should not then immediately become a burden on Australian taxpayers.

The Rudd government abolished the temporary protection visas and made illegal immigrants eligible for the full gamut of social welfare. In effect, the Rudd government put out the welcome mat. That is why the boats are arriving.

Grendel wrote on May 9^th, 2009 at 7:18am:


I agree with you on most of the above - but as far as people country shopping - I think their minds are already made up and they're getting to Australia one way or another.  We're the land of wealth,  opportunity and human rights.  Why else would they take such enormous risks to come here? 

Now that there are so many coming here - it is becoming worrying - but I would probably do the same thing in their situation.