Plan to Deal With Seekers of Asylum Roils Australia

Source: The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia — Just how tough should Australia be in its campaign to dissuade asylum seekers from undertaking perilous voyages to its shores?

Over the years, as tens of thousands of refugees from the world’s trouble spots have sailed to Australia on rickety boats, the government has instituted ever sterner policies: mandatory detentions; criminal background checks that leave asylum seekers languishing for months or years; transfer to camps in the blistering heat of remote parts of western Australia or to islands in the Pacific, like tiny Nauru, Papua New Guinea and the particularly isolated Christmas Island.

But the latest idea — a refugee-swap deal with Malaysia meant to serve as a cautionary lesson to future boat people — has come to at least a temporary halt, and Australia has been forced to revisit a touchy issue that has bedeviled both Labor and Liberal governments for nearly two decades and exposed deep societal divisions.

The plan, pursued by the government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, would send up to 800 newly arrived migrants from Australia to Malaysia over the next four years to be handled by immigration authorities there, lengthening their arduous progress toward some kind of legal home. Videotapes of the deportations would be widely disseminated. The government says the intent is to deter human traffickers as much as future asylum seekers.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/world/asia/11australia.html

Members of the government tell us that the asylum seekers sent to Malaysia will be treated "differently" to other refugees, and that in particular, children will be "looked after". When asked whether these "different" conditions will still apply if the asylum seekers are still in Malaysia in ten years' time, there is never an answer.

It's particularly distressing for the children - they can be scarred for life by being held in detention even on mainland Australia, never mind being subjected to the tender mercies of the Malaysians. Children should never be locked up; the situation is not of their making, and they should be given every chance to live a normal life.

The Opposition don't like the situation either - for them, it's not tough enough. They believe the asylum seekers should be sent to the island of Nauru, which has been condemned by the U.N. as totally unfit to house human beings. But that will discourage them, so it's good!

There are no simple answers, but the government's big problem seems to be that they're trying to please everyone and end up pleasing no one. "We're tough – but we're not as mean as John Howard, so it's okay". No, it isn't.

yeah, I have heavy British ancestry on Mom's side...I'm a long lost daughter of England. Yeah, that may work.

:rofl:

Sorry to see Australia has gone this route to the degree they already have and some are striving to make it more draconian. I have to think there were indigenous Australians who weren't all that crazy about Britain claiming ownership of a large segment of Australia and using it as their penal colony. It's amazing how so many in countries settled by taking them over from the indigenous peoples later get haughty about "their" country's willingness to blend people like asylum seekers into the society. Humans in general are just massive fucking hypocrites. It's okay if I do it, but not okay if you do it.