The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
When it comes to asylum seekers, Australia is no Malta
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In Crikey last week, Bernard Keane made the point that Australia accepts a disproportionately small number of asylum-seekers given our population size. So, where exactly do we rank in the world in terms of generosity towards displaced persons? The United Nations Refugee Agency provides a wide range of statistics about refugees and asylum-seekers. The latest monthly data gives the number of asylum-seeker applications by country for 2009 up to and including August. The chart below shows a ranking of the 44 countries who reported accepting asylum-seekers over this period. Australia finds itself well down the list in 20th place. Mind you, the United States ranks a few spots behind us and, despite having a better reputation when it comes to taking refugees, New Zealand is even further behind. Malta is by far the most welcoming country for refugees.
So, how many more asylum-seekers should we be taking to be accepting our fair share? Keane approaches the question by considering the relative size of our population to the population of the world. However, there are many countries that are a source of refugees that could not realistically accept asylum-seekers. So, instead the baseline should be an equal share of asylum-seekers based on the relative size of a country’s population to the combined population of the 44 countries who have been taking asylum-seekers (a total of 1.14 billion). The magic number, shown as a grey line in the chart, is 197 asylum-seekers per million population. This means that Australia’s fair share for 2009 to August should be 4,197 rather than the 3,666 we have taken so far. So, we could easily accept the 255 Sri Lankan boat people currently seeking asylum in Australia, and still have room for more. Mind you, Australia only just falls below the average rate, ranking just behind Germany which takes in slightly more asylum-seekers than average. Of course, as Keane noted, it’s not just about population, there’s also the question of money. Australia is a rich country and so ranking asylum-seekers count by size of GDP we do even worse, falling down to 24th place. See the graph below. Surely we can afford to do better! Political debate on the subject refugees if probably inevitable, but it is worth trying to keep a cool head and get some perspective from the numbers. Australia is a long way away from most of the rest of the world, so it should not come as a surprise that we get only a modest number of asylum-seekers by international standards. Unfortunately, this fact is unlikely to penetrate the consciousness of the more hysterical commentators.
Data sources: asylum-seeker application counts from the UNCHR, population and Gross Domestic Product from the CIA World Factbook. |
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11 Comments
It doesn’t matter how you play with statistics, the bias of the statistician must also be taken into account. Do-gooders and other members of the chattering classes who get their rocks off by pursuing feelgood factors like support for so-called refugees can play with the numbers as much as they like. Of course Australia could accept another239, but what it was 239,000 or 2.39 million? It’s not a question of whether we can or should accept refugees, it is the method by which we select them and how we control our borders. Self-selection by paying to USD 15,000 to a people smuggler, notwithstanding the justice or otherwise of the individual concerned sends a clear message that due process is to be ignored. This together with the much bigger problem of visa over stayers, especially in the so-called training market is a clear challenge to governance and must be stood up to, otherwise the law of the jungle prevails.
If we are to have an increased asylum seeker quotas, do we use United Nations or self-assessment using people smugglers as the selection process. Judging by the amount reportedly paid for people smuggling, it would seem that an equity basis, the penniless refugees sitting in United Nations campst are much more deserving of sympathy, but they are unable to buy the publicity that the current crop sitting in Indonesia can buy at $15,000 per head. My sympathy is with the penniless refugees who are being bypassed in this sordid process.
The much maligned
Thanks for this. Unfortunately confirms my sighing sadness at our response to this. Its not just the rich-country-can’t-do-more-because-it-threatens-our-way-of-life syndrome. It is also that we have this strange myopia that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD wants to come here. They don’t. They would rather be in the UK or Europe, or Canada. Just because it is close to what is still perceived as the ‘real world’. (Casual question to me by Afghan Hazara taxi-driver in Bamyan last week: “Any other way to get to Australia these days except through the traffickers?”. No people smuggler nicety here. Afghans are aware of Australia’s refugee policy, as they are many countries’ refugee policies. Its called international communications. The Sri Lankans are in our immediate neighbourhood, still we don’t get many coming our way).
What continues to be a theme in the lives of my generation is
Australia’s pitifully unconfident attitude to the world. I am sick to death of brain-challenged politicians and those in the media who pander to a pathetic shut-the-borders on everything that comes in - except the plasma TVs. I guess its the price for living in an oversized island with oversized fears and, in the end, oversized pockets. The more we have the more we seem to fear.
Mr Rudd does not use refugees as a political wedge: he just uses it to keep the door wedged shut on refugees. Tell me what is the ultimate difference between that and Howard’s Way. We had such hopes Mr Rudd, that you speak OK Chinese was a point of pride and a pointer to future possibilities. Where is Paul Keating’s directness when you need it? Like, lets grow up, the world is moving fearfully fast out there, but, like a lot of resource-rich countries, we just lie back and take it rather than leveraging the income for creating stuff, encouraging outward savvy with the world. And being generous - in our own interests.
I just hope against hope for a younger generation who are more engaged with the world, not just the Gallipolli backpackers but those who see the complexities ahead and want to engage with them. Sigh………..
Jan: as evidence in support of your theory that refugees would rather make it to Western countries other than Australia, I was impressed (and somewhat amazed) to discover that a group of Sri Lankan refugees seem to have made it all the way to the West coast of Canada.
Greg Angelo,
We do not protect our borders through the refugee intake. Many people are ‘smuggled’ through official channels and airports. Even Mr. Ruddock admitted that there were over 40.000 people illegaly staying in Australia. They were usually ‘overstayers’, and I understand that under the Howard government there were at least twice as many. I do not have current figures. Student visas are the best example of how one can sneak into the country on false pretences because we are too greedy not to accept the money for a very costly visa. Our borders are wide open for drug traffickers and other ‘scums’ of our planet like weapon smuggling. For some funny reasons we concentrate on a non-issue.
Australia could well treat refugees as human resources. Many of them are highly qualified people who can really contribute to our community.
During the Sudanese refugees hysteria I met a couple of Sudanese refugees working at the university in Adelaide as lecturers. Many Tamils are quite smart in maths and have very good educational background.
On the other hand, an Australian citizen can marry anybody and bring him/her to the country; old, uneducated, non-English speaker, ‘ugly with no dowry’ who will remain with Centrelink for the rest of his/her life. For many no-hopers, spouse visa is the only way to get here.
Greg, people who are in a camp are already safer than the ones that have no access to any camp. Why is it so difficult to understand the obvious? The Convention criteria are not means tested. If you have no money Australia would not accept you, anyway.
Australian Government grants over a hundred thousand permanent visas every year. Not even one tenth of them are protection visas. So, how do YOU play with the statistics?
I have made it clear in other comments on this subject that I do not support the government’s position on those seeking asylum; but these graphs are I think a little misleading for several reasons. For example most of the European countries well ahead of Australia wish they were not. But have porous borders due to being contiguous or nearly so with many of the migrant sources, or at least have a continuous land mass for migrants to utilize.
They don’t, that is the figures, take account of the fact that most of the European countries only have significant migration between the open borders for citizens of the European Union, whereas Australia, and the US for example actively seek migrants. There is a limit to the number of migrants that a country can absorb without social tensions developing. Whether we have the balance right between asylum seeking migrants and ordered migration is of course another matter.
Stephen: you are certainly right about higher ranking countries wishing they ranked a bit lower. As I noted on this post, the top three countries on a per capita basis, Malta, Cyprus and Norway, are all finding dealing with asylum-seekers challenging in different ways. Another piece of evidence of the importance of geography is that New Zealand ranks below Australia despite having much more open policies towards refugees (as when they took people from the Tampa).
But in a way, that’s the point. Since it is so hard for most refugees to get to Australia, we don’t get very many, as noted in the Pollytics blog, boat people represent a very small percentage of asylum-seekers, and so the level of hysteria in some quarters about boat people is out of proportion to the true scale of the problem.
Sean: I think you are being a little hard-irrespective of the complete amorality of our elected parliamentarians-on us, in as much as a state such as Victoria has a very fragile ecosystem. We have hardly any water, our main river (anyone remember the Murray?) is now a rancid stream. The once beautiful city of Melbourne has, thanks to the amazing foresight of successive state governments, had the guts ripped out of it in order to give everyone a chance to build their own vast MacMansion, containing five bedrooms, two sitting rooms, a dining room, an entertainment room, a concrete garden, and a two car garage. There are no schools, no public transport, no libraries, no parks, no trees, nowhere for kids to play, no shops and so on.
The houses have been built with all creature comforts, such as dual control air con/heating, as the rubbish from which they are assembled would otherwise be boiling in Summer, and Freezing in Winter. And within three years enormous cracks will have opened up.
Our lovely city covers an area about the size of greater Buenos Aires whose inhabitants number about thirteen million people. Whereas, as you probably know, we are four million people.
Recent emigrés have always flooded into the main cities wherever they may be. As, not unnaturally, this is where the jobs are. At the rate we are going it is not beyond reason to suggest we may reach six million people in another ten years-never let it be said that we Victorians are slow when it comes to having children-by then the city will have doubled in area and we will need a fourth and fifth airport. Tullamarine, Essendon, Avalon will never be able to fit in the next generation of those gigantic Airbuses.
Hopefully the relatives of the impending immigrants will warn their nearest and dearest as to what an arid hell-hole Melbourne has become and will recommend they go to QLD instead.
Sure, come to sunny Brisneyland where they can camp on the Gateway Bridge with the rest of us, drinking XXXX cos there’s no bloody water up here either.
How this for a rational way of looking after ourselves and refugees better? Remembering that our quota of 13,000 a year is just a pitiful political gesture towards being a good internationally minded country because it makes practically no impact on the welfare of the approx. 25 million refugees and internally displaced persons in the world, and that it costs us many hundreds of millions of dollars a year to support our refugee policies why don’t we resolve to cut the numbers we take as assessed refugees substantially but spend all the money saved, and perhaps more, on helping them where the money can give real value. On East African wages the building of schools and hospitals and the provision of education and health care would stop the care for refugess making keeping people in prison look cheap. It would provide local employment which would be good for relations between refugees and countries of first refuge, it would keep them in an environment which was considerably less different culturally than Australia and it would give them, with training, the best possible chance of fitting themselves for productive life back in their countries of origin when it was, as it would be in most cases eventually, possible to return without excessive danger. We are doing only a small fraction any favour by bringing them to Australia and every one from Africa or other background where, in the words of an Age editorial in 2007 many of them are from recently tribal and nomadic backgrounds, is likely to do less well in Australia and for Australia than equally needy people from south, south-east or east Asia. (Other things being equal, why shouldn’t we choose people who are most likely to become positive contributors to Australian life. If one can imagine the right sort of bureaucrats handling it one can imagine that some of Africa’s greats, from Mandela and Gannibal to (let’s give him a guernsey) Obama and Kalenjin middle distance runners making the cut but, if we are honest, we know that people of Chinese or Indian origin are more likely on average to fill the bill for mutual benefit.
A way to allow us to feel generous is to make some rather obvious changes to immigration and citizenship law covering refugees and other immigrants. Why do we give away that precious citizenship with its right to vote for taking other people’s money and/or imposing new rules of conduct. What is the reason for the madness which makes us encourage people to take up a share of what is one of the few assets that existing poor Australians have? Instead of three years (or has it been extended?) it should be at least five years as a taxpayer (with concessions for family members) as well as adequate English and knowledge of our laws and customs. If non English speaking great-grandmother is admitted to permanent residence and we, for some reason, want to give away citizenship lightly, what about 15 years residence? True refugees should be allowed social services which, since this is very expensive, is a good reason for spending most of our refugee benefactions offshore, but immigration should normally require dependants to be supported to a considerable extent at least by the breadwinner or some guarantors.
Wouldn”t this benefit more people by a long way for the same money?
Venise Alstergren
I would argue that we either:
- cease contracts with foreign companies which suck our water resources in mining industry; alternatively we can ask them to use their own water (desalinated)
- stop bringing in over hundred thousand migrants annually and make sure that thousands and thousands of illegally residing aliens do not drink our water
- a decent public transport would encourage many people to live in small towns. We cannot even have fast trains.
- we can start doing something useful about our ecology. The Murray river has not been destroyed by overpopulation. Residential use of water is only… 7%.
Venise, we have been bringing migrants to this country for generations. I am not sure we are fully prepared for this. There is no logistics, no population policy and no vision for the future. Very little infrastructure; and, most of the jobs we have already delegated to China. Recent discussion about environmental issues by both sides of the Parliament is nothing short of a sick joke. We cannot even afford electrical filters over the chimneys.
Stephen
European countries have centuries long tradition of accepting refugees and handling, (and mishandling), different population movements after upheavals, revolutions, wars, religious persecutions etc.. That is how Europe has developed. Australia is a very young country. We have a lot to learn.
The difference between Europe and the USA is that Europe is very tribal and they have many well settled tribes and nationalities within certain borders. And people were migrating long before the Union was established. It is a different culture and attitudes towards newcomers.
Read some history books.
Migration changes things - see British migration to India, America, Australia, etc.
So do we accept Islamist migration to non-Islamic countries without some fears for the future?
How much immigration is acceptable?