Refugees and Asylum Seekers

[Sorcha]

Now, as an Australian citizen, one who has everything I will ever want and ever need laid before my feet, I'm disgusted at my own government for their (illegal) actions towards refugees/asylum seekers. I'm not sure if it's been in world news but recently (Nov 4th) fourteen Turkish Kurds landed on Melville Island just off the coast of the Northern Territory.

Conveniently, a week preivously, about 4000 islands were taken off the list of Australia's migration zone. Melville Island was one of these. A week later, after the government protesting that none of the men claimed asylum, (although, they also said it wouldn't have mattered if it did cos where they landed prevented them from claiming assylum) sent these poor men back to Jakarta without access to a lawyer or even translator.

By doing this, the Australian government knowingly broke an internation law. Australia is a signatory on the 1951 Refugee Convention, and they sent these men back to Indonesia (which is not a signatory)! How bloody stupid can our government get?!

A few days after these men who were said to be "tired" but "okay" were sent to Jakarta to be processed, information came to knowlege that these men had actually mentioned that they were refugees to the military officers who detained them.

The fact that the government thinks that these men (ranging from ages 19-40) travelled to Indonesia, jumped on an unsafe boat and sailed to Australia just out of curiosity and had no intentions of claiming asylum or refugee status is absurd!

And on top of this, there are still people in our detention centres who have been there for 3 years, there are children in foster homes missing their parents (5 children made a plea on television a few weeks ago for the government to free their parents and new-born brother because they would rather die then not see them again) and all this injustice! It's insane! I would rather ingest toad eggs than have this happening to people in Australia.

[Take a peek at my sig.]

-------------------------------------

Okay, I've had my rant, if anyone else has opinions on this subject, I would love to hear them.

xoxo

[squealpiggy]

It's difficult to judge. What you will find is that governments are very keen on stopping economic migrants, because they seldom contribute anything to the country. Deciding who is an economic migrant and who is a political refugee can't be easy.

Don't worry about immigration in Australia though... It's the same story worldwide. Immigrants coming over and stealing our jobs, or worse living on welfare... It's a handy smokescreen for governments and opposition to cover up lack of policy or success in other areas. Immigration has a tiny impact in comparison to other things such as unemployment and poor health.

[Smeagle]

Originally posted by squealpiggy
It's difficult to judge. What you will find is that governments are very keen on stopping economic migrants, because they seldom contribute anything to the country.
That is one of the most untrue, manipulative lies that the govornment has ever created, and yet it is so widely believed by 99% of the British population. It all started shortly after the second world war, when labour began saying that they were going to lift all restrictions on immigrants, let anyone come into the country seeking assylum. I'll explain why later. Basically this gave the Tories a great idea and they took advantage of the racist British public, creating slogans such as "If you want a nigger as a neighbour, vote labour". That is an exact quote of one of their policies at the time. This made labour lose a huge amount of votes. So they had the fabulous idea to change their policies from the obvious, economy-helping truth, to the racist and stupid idea of making tighter laws on imigrants, just so they would get more votes. It worked. Unfortunately, this went on and on, getting tighter and tighter restrictions as time went along, the tories would make stricter laws and labour would try to compete, until it became taken as fact that immigrants were actually bad for the countries economy. This is going on even today, as Labour are now saying they want even stricter laws meaning even less immigrants will be able to get through. Not only does this break international law (although almost every country does it to some extent) it is also extremely bad for the country.

Let me explain. Statistics have shown that in countries such as Germany and Spain, where laws on illegal immigrants are much less severe, they have actually benefitted hugely from immigrants, with "profits" (couldn't think of a better word) the equivalent to £4 billion every year. What they cost the country in shelter, food and unemployment benefit they make up in taxes alone (yes, they are still forced to pay taxes!), so even if they don't work they still don't cost the country anything. Stupidly, this country doesn't allow any immigrants, legal or illegal, to work. It is actually against the law for immigrants who come to this country to get a job. Most of them get illegal, unofficial jobs which add a surprisingly large amount to the economy anyway, imagine how much richer the country could be if we actually let them do official work! It may sound far-fetched, but we do actually owe the success of our economy to the immigrants that come here, and our economy is now rapidly declining as laws are made more strict.

Not only that, our population is also quickly falling. Just to sustain our economy and popluation the way it is now we would need at least twice as many immigrants to travel to this country, and now we are facing this decline, the govornment are offering to make laws even tighter!

We are facing a potential economic disaster, and if we don't do something about it soon we may well find ourselves in more trouble than we expected. The solution is so blindingly obvious, let all immigrants in and let them work, but the govornment and the British population seem completely ignorant of the simple, important facts.

[Death]

it is not that the government is ignorant. put yourself in their shoes, they know full well how easily the British masses can be manipulated through race realted 'bendings of the truth'. they have gained alot of votes by playing on these misgivings and relied on news media to do the rest. now to U turn and suggest that we might actually need them would be disasterous. we recently had a speaker to our school for a lecture (we get one every week and more often than not they are really good) and he stated plainly: go down to your local hospital and slowly you will begin to see the sheer volume of those working beneath our noses who we percieve to be illegal immigrants. I belive that there is not a 'problem' with immigrants and the counter arguaments from friends who belive otherwise are often just little spouts of information from the Daily Mail or The Sun which I will leave to you to judge on how factual these arugaments are..

[smiley clown]

Not only that but immigrants bring us a multi-ethnic society combining the best of many countries. This means we can have our culture enriched by foreign influences. We can enjoy foreign foods, music and many other things we take for granted. If we didn't have many people coming in from other countries we wouldn't be the peoplewe were today! And as for those that say the immigrant steal our jobs, thats a gross lie as if anyone in this country wanted a job they could get one. errr. thats what the JOB CENTRE is for.

[squealpiggy]

That is one of the most untrue, manipulative lies that the govornment has ever created

I'm referring of course to economic migrants, not to all immigrants. The majority of immigrants are not economic migrants, they are opportunistic migrants. They want to go to a richer country to make something of their lives. Economic migrants are the ones that think the streets are paved with gold.

As for the 1970s immigration fiasco, there was a lot of immigration because of a boom in work. There were lots of jobs that noone wanted to do in the country and there were loads of people in other countries who were happy to be given the chance. Of course when they took the chance, stupid and lazy people began to get jealous of the success these immigrants had, and resented them being there. So sprang up the National Front, a nasty little party which is nowadays known as the only marginally less sinister sounding BNP. Now the National Front won a lot of support, and do you know what it was that stopped them from getting into parliament? Margaret Thatcher. She promised a "tougher stance on immigration". Many of the NF's supporters were uncomfortable with the "street politics" edge to the NF and so warmed to Thatcher's less criminal but equally austere approach.

Of course Thatcher wasn't the nicest of prime ministers (that was John Major... lovely man but jesus) but that was the one bit of good she did, no matter how unintentional.

[Sorcha]

NEWS FLASH!

Government Screws Everyone Over

Melville Island was put back in the Australian mirgration zone today! :rolleyes: