Illegal immigrants
There has been renewed debate in our local papers lately about the issue of illegal immigrants. I’d like to state my views:
Australia has to protect its borders. The Government and the Opposition agree on that and they mostly agree on the methods.
Many of the boat people arrivals were economic refugees, who paid others for their illegal transport. Australia can’t be expected to unilaterally accept every person who lands on our shores via unauthorised commercial vessels.
Some of them may be genuine refugees, but others may just be seeking a change of scenery. How do we know without papers and proper assessment?
First-world nations like Australia have a moral obligation, in my view, to accept some escapees from war and political persecution. We need limits though and there has to be a proper process.
Everyone in Communist China is politically persecuted, but we can’t take everyone who wants to come here. There are 50 million persecuted Christians in India, but we can’t take them all.
The boat people who came after the Vietnam War deserved resettlement because we contributed to their circumstance.
The latest wave of boat people may well have contained as many fare-paying opportunists as it did genuine refugees. We shouldn’t be expected to resettle people who arrive here illegally under unknown circumstances.
It’s often impractical to take the compassionate approach of the ‘do-gooders’. The government needs to control the flow of people into this country, for obvious reasons. At least, I hope they’re obvious.
As far as I can tell, Labor and the Coalition have similar policies on illegal immigration.
My only deviation from government policy relates to the Kosovars. It was wrong to give them temporary asylum and then send them home again.
We welcomed them to our country, encouraged them to assimilate, and then told them to go home! That’s wrong.
Apart from that, I support the policies of the government and the Labor Party.
These articles might be of interest:
The trouble is that not all illegal immigrants are refugees.
I have no trouble inviting bona fide refugees into our country, but people who abuse the system in order to jump the regular immgration queues should be sent straight back home.
Case in point. After all the hullabaloo from Greens, Lefties, Wets and of course the uninquiring ‘common man in the street’ (who is feed his opinions daily by the media) where are the apologies now that the Bakhtiari boys have themselves fessed up to the fact that their family lied when it claimed to be Afghan refugees?
Andrew Bolt reports in today’s Herald Sun that “First it was dad Ali who sailed here, claiming to have fled the Taliban. Then came the rest of his family. Only this time officials noted mum couldn’t even name the Afghan currency. Fake, they said. From Pakistan. Now the Bakhtiari boys admit they had indeed lived for years in Pakistan.”
Your point about sending people back who arrived on genuine refugee visas many years ago is a good one, Michael. I agree wholeheartedly.
Andrew, your first sentence summarises the issue. The left wants an “open door” policy because they can’t or won’t distinguish between refugees and queue jumpers.
Mandatory detention is harsh, but how many illegal boats with paying passengers have arrived since the policy was introduced? None.