THERE can be no solution to the problem of illegal immigrants/boatpeople -- neither to the humanitarian tragedy of people drowning trying to get here or the policy crisis of the government losing control of its borders and its immigration system -- until all prospect of permanent resettlement in Australia is removed for people who arrive illegally by boat.
To do this would not contradict the Refugee Convention, which people write about but never read. The only requirement in the convention is that people fleeing persecution not be sent back to the countries they are fleeing from.
...
Under Fraser, only about 2000 refugees arrived directly by boat in Australia. In opposition, Fraser had called only for a "small number" of Vietnamese to be accepted here. The Vietnamese, it goes without saying, have made wonderful citizens and it is a joy for Australia that they came here. Fraser was far less proactive in the resettlement policy than he claims. It was essentially an American operation designed to pay a war debt to our South Vietnamese allies. But apart from the 2000 direct boat arrivals, all the refugees Australia settled were screened and chosen in refugee camps, a long way from Australia, by Australian officials.
Australia has continued this practice ever since. We are one of very few countries to offer permanent resettlement places voluntarily. We accept 13,750 each year under this program. Under John Howard's prime ministership, we accepted far more refugees than we did under Fraser or indeed under Gough Whitlam. Hawker, Burnside or Steketee might have commented that under Howard we accepted more than 10,000 refugees a year without any community disquiet.
This is because Australians, now as under Fraser or under Howard, will generously support the orderly intake of people processed and selected by Australian officials under Australian laws. What they rightly don't like is people self selecting to immigrate to Australia by showing up in boats, having thrown away their documents, and refusing to go home under any circumstances.
...
Many people in miserable countries are indeed desperate to live in rich countries. They will take great risks to achieve this. That does not mean they face persecution of a kind that would make them genuine refugees
. As the American author Christopher Caldwell has argued, the vast majority of those who went to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East as asylum-seekers were not refugees in the normal meaning of the word.
Nor were they traditional migrants who wanted to become Europeans. Rather, they wanted to maintain their Islamic lifestyle, with its distinctive norms and communal customs, but to do so at a European standard of living, courtesy of the European welfare state and financed by the European taxpayer.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/to-deter-the-boats-australia-must-r...
Forum
Pages: 
