Comments on: ‘Queue jumpers’ tell: we came for Skippy, not visa softening

By: Rena Zurawel

Rena Zurawel — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:07:43 +0000

The whole debate about the asylum seekers does not even scratch the surface of the problems related.. And our refugee program is not refugee friendly, at all. Too much politics. Whether Pashtoon, Tadjik or Hazara - a person persecuted is entitled to seek asylum. During the Balkan war, Serbs could not even dream of getting a protection visa even if they were genuine applicants. (mixed marriages, political or religious cases.)
On the other hand, a 200 active soldiers got protection visas although they did not go through normal channels - they were never qualified under the Convention.
We had cases of visa refusal only on the basis that we did not want to ..upset our trading partners. (China). Fashion, trends and politics overshadowed our refugee program. At one stage, Australia accepted …50 upholsterers from Portugal on humanitarian grounds.
The program was ONE BIG MESS stuffed with heartless, and very often frightened, bureaucrats and totally unqualified decision makers. I remember at the Refugee Tribunal hearing , a Protection visa applicant was told that she was ‘too old to be kidnapped’. (Her minor daughter (14) had been kidnapped - after the release the girl got a protection visa along with her father; for some reason (age ?) the co- custodian mother was refused the visa).
The program was very costly, too.
As far as the ‘invasion’ on Australia by undocumented arrivals is concerned, many people from the Middle East had no idea they were going to Australia. And, many people did have close relatives in Australia but it only worked against them. Total circus.
A lunatic asylum.

By: j-boy57

j-boy57 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:31:29 +0000

Hey Pamela I think its a bit late to to ask is this the country we want to become,
its the country we’ve been

By: Pamela

Pamela — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:35:42 +0000

How hard is to understand that the Australian government cannot legally impose conditions on asylum seekers that are worse than the conditions from which they have fled?
All that detention debt, temporary visa and detention do is to make peoples lives miserable and destroy their spirit but these punitive conditions are still not worse than seeing your brother have his head cut off by the Taliban and knowing that you are next, or being penned up with 300,000 others in concentration camps in Sri lanka with soldiers pulling out young men and women every few hours who then are never seen again or being kidnapped and murdered in Iraq or having this happen to family members.
Lets get real- these countries are a mess - some of it western constructed- people will try to survive. To do this they move. Why dont we make this movement possible for those who have to and also put significant pressure and resources into supporting people in safe areas until they can return home. If we dont the boats will continue to come and nothing we do will stop them - short of shooting them out of the water. Is this the sort of country we want to be?