[LINK] End of the filter? Better off without a Stalinist, censorious, Labor government.

[Kim Holburn]

Since it is not really in the remit of the link list I'll only say  
this and take any further comments to unlink.

On 2010/Aug/09, at 1:00 PM, Philip Argy wrote:

> I may be wrong, but I am not aware of any boat people having sailed  
> all the
> way from Sri Lanka

Actually I believe some of them did sail all the way from Sri Lanka.

> or Afghanistan.

It'd be pretty hard to sail anywhere from Afghanistan.

> Isn't the argument that they flee those
> places to a safe haven in Indonesia and THEN they seek to improve  
> their
> position by trying to come to Australia by boat instead of lodging an
> immigration claim with the Australian Embassy in Indonesia.

There's so many things wrong with this sentence I'm not sure where to  
even start.  It has such a parochial view, a view that looks good from  
a secure arm-chair in a stable country like Australia and subtly  
implies things about people's motives that other arm-chair sitters  
could understand.

Let me state this in another way.  Many of these people are escaping  
from extremely dangerous places in fear of their lives.  They may not  
make the best choices but they are trying to stay alive and reach a  
place where they think they might be safe.  They are coming from  
places without working societies, without rule of law and without nice  
neat queues to stand in.  They may not have documents because their  
own government might have had them killed if they had gone to their  
local post office to apply for their passport - like we can do in  
Australia - if they even had post offices, let alone someone to issue  
passports.  They usually don't have much money either, which is also  
probably the main reason we don't want them.

> The people
> smugglers assure them that they can get them to Australian waters  
> after
> which they are guaranteed being landed on Australian soil.

You know some do you?  Or are you just assuming this from your TV couch?

> Now there are a few more intricacies than this simplification  
> provides, but
> the gist of what I understand to underlie the offshore processing  
> rationale

It would be just as easy to process them in Australia.  We have all  
the facilities.  The problem?

> is that it prevents the people smugglers being able to give the  
> assurance,
> and makes it more likely than not that a conventional application  
> will be
> processed in the same time that an asylum claim will be processed  
> offshore,
> the end result being that legitimate claimants will get to Australia  
> at
> about the same time whichever route they choose, thus depriving the  
> people
> smugglers of a market for their services..

So we're just being equitable.  Yeah, right.

What about actual "illegal" immigrants: the roughly 14,000 per year  
that come to Australia and overstay their visa?  Are we going to be  
equitable to them too?  Put them in a concentration camp in a pacific  
island somewhere outside Australian law until we can be bothered to  
process their visas?  Why are a paltry few hundred boat people so  
different to them?

> Philip
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kim Holburn" <kim at holburn.net>
>
>> On 2010/Aug/08, at 3:52 PM, Robin Whittle wrote:
> ...
>
>>> In practical terms, their asylum seeker policies don't seem to
>>> be producing a better outcome than the Coalition's.  The
>>> people smugglers are back in business because there is, or was,
>>> again a benefit in turning up unannounced in Australian
>>> territories.
>>
>> I find this vacuous.  The Australian government has not and has never
>> caused boat people to come or not.  In the current case it is wars in
>> Sri Lanka and two wars we are involved in that have disrupted other
>> countries enough to make people want to come to Australia enough to
>> risk a boat journey
>
>
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-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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