It Might As Well Rain Until September

We have all heard hair-brained and stupid comments throughout our lives, but for do-gooders and some politicians to openly suggest that the Australian tax payers should be morally and financially responsible for a group of people engaging in criminal activity, by hiring people smugglers to smuggle into Australia through the backdoor - is a complete nonsense.

So, the Australian tax payers now have to be morally and financially responsible for anyone who consciously makes a personal decision to engage in criminal activity? Yeah, right!

I have walked on this planet a fair amount of time, and I have never heard a more moronic and ridiculous statement.

I suppose Australia’s easy long-term welfare system; immediate government housing; free health care; free schooling and free everything else, is not the reasons why these people are paying people smugglers $8000 to smuggle them here, and why they are willing to risk their lives.

Stop all the “freebies” and lock the backdoor, and then see how many genuine refugees are still willing to risk their lives on boats to get here.

 

To do that we would have to unsign the UN convention on refugees, and also presumably pay some other state (ie Nauru) to take them if they're unwilling to return to their own country.

In my opinion that's realistically the only way to both "stop the boats" and keep our humanitarian intake from going over the quota.

Otherwise you just have to accept that boats will come, and a certain number of people will die.

Or you could just provide free safe transport for anyone who wants it and abolish the quota. (Also known as political suicide).

 

All we have to do is TELL the UN that we are amending our commitment on refugee and asylum seeker status. Therefore, Australia determines who and by what method refugees and asylum seekers get accepted into Australia, not a bunch of Bureaucrats in the UN, who don’t have to live with decisions and restraints they decided and dictate that countries and their people should abide too.

If the UN don’t like it, then they can p.i.s.s-off, and create a country of their own for the refugees and asylum seekers to go too, and lets see how good they are at administering and managing the whole affair.

The UN began its life as an organisation to stop wars between nations, but its created more wars between nations than its ever stopped. Therefore, why is Australia and the Australian people taking any significant notice to this two-bob organisation that cannot even get its own house in order first.

If the UN want us to help criminals enter our country through the backdoor, then its time they started to provide the Australian public with the appropriate funding, instead of the money always coming out of the Australian tax payers wallet all the time. Time for the UN to put-up, or shut up!!

 

Can't blame the UN for something that we agreed to.

 

of course you can't, Tony is relying on that fact

 

Maybe it's because such a small number of refugees come by boat, most come by plane and most of the illegal immigrants come by plane, maybe we should stop the planes!

 

Why do you guys need the same old information over and over again. Most people that come to Australia and stay illegally do so by aeroplane. Being a refugee is not illegal, didn't they teach you that in drag queen school

 

What about the one you said, please tell me what law the asylum seekers have broken.

 

So you are the genius who knows all, what law is there against seeking asylum in Australia?

 

Illegal immigration is a big problem, 10's of thousands a year, not a lot by boat though, most fly here on visitors visas, nothing to do with seeking asylum though. Seeking asylum is not illegal

 

So we don't accept asylum seekers, good call. Let's ship out all our disabled people too, they are a burden, then all the mental health patients, then all the dole bludgers, then all the old age pensioners, lets get rid of all we don't understand, make it easier for us dumb people. I can remember our government sending planes to pick up asylum seekers, oh but they were catholics, not muslums.

 

drug smuggling is the obvious issue...I swear!

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/public...files/asylum-stats-september-quarter-2012.pdf

For year 2011-12:

Non irregular maritime arrivals: 7036
Irregular maritime arrivals: 7379

Sept Qtr 2012-13

Non-IMA: 1988
IMA: 2516

"NEARLY 1000 asylum seekers have died trying to reach Australia in the past decade"


Compared to 0 plane deaths.

 

No surprise a brain dead tool like you would think there is no issue surrounding criminal refugees hiring people smugglers to smuggle them into your own country through the back door.

Think becoming a do-gooder, you are going to get absolved for pervious bad behaviour, and shoot to the head of the line for that gold star?

 

I'm guessing he probably fits some of this criteria, so you can expect it to go over his head!

 

Some of these blokes see nothing at all wrong with back door smuggling, can`t get enough of it.

 

You haven't got a hope in hell of grooming us, so can you please keep your explicit bedroom talk between yourselves, it's not something that the rest of us really want to read! And it's a forum to discuss politics not your fantasies!

 

On the 7.30 Report tonight:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3779567.htm

http://expertpanelonasylumseekers.dpmc.gov.au/panel/aristotle

 

DV's figures were correct I think for 2008-2009. The interesting point is that significantly more boat people have been found to be genuine asylum seekers as opposed to plane arrivals! The greater issue is the deaths at sea I agree, but how do you stop desperation. Numbers have increased internationally, but has australias numbers increased by percentage? Our arrivals represent 2 or 3 % of asylum seekers the world over! Are we overly precious about this issue?

 

At least Mark Latham had the depth of character to admit the failure of the ALP`s policies on this issue. Honesty such as this from the left is ultra rare. They`d rather play dodgy little spin games whild people drown.

 

I don't think we are being precious.

It is not simply a case of increasing percentages to make ourselves feel better. There are sustainability issues here, otherwise we may well of increased our percentage decades ago.

We have obviously discussed population sustainability for this country before in other threads, so no real need to touch on this. Another issue is financial sustainability. TV as you have alluded to before on other topics, a lot of families are doing it tough, raising taxes to compensate for the financial support of increased numbers would surely only add to that burden. We would be foolish if we did not realise that a large percentage of these refugees would be wholly dependant upon welfare for long periods.

Not saying its fair, but we have to be realistic that this issue has many many layers to it and can not and will not be solved any time soon.

 

I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a bit of blaming, reluctantly, for the problem with asylum seekers on boats. When we received asylum seekers from South Vietnam back in the mid-1970s our government and the opposition refused to politicise the issue. Then PM Malcolm Fraser and his government handled it well. There are questions as to whether or not the people who arrived were genuine asylum-seekers but I think that the prevailing view at the time was that we'd failed these people by intervening in their civil war and those that wanted to get out had good reason for doing so and they were welcomed. For what it's worth I agree with that. Don't forget that other countries also took asylum-seekers from South Vietnam.

Fast forward to the Tampa. When John Howard saw that ship on the horizon he took the chance to politicise the issue of asylum-seekers. I think Kym Beazley didn't know how to respond when it happened. I remember my impression of his response being initially the traditional Labor response, expression of humanity, then backing off when he realised that Howard had scratched Australia's considerable xenophobic itch. Too late Kym, Howard had won the election on a single, manufactured issue.

Now where are we? Living with the Howard legacy. Both parties are a disgrace on this issue. Because of the politicisation we can't begin to have a decent national policy debate on the issue of asylum-seekers. The polarisation at both ends of the debate has stuffed it up completely.

Not that I have any answers, only my personal views.

Okay then, I'll inflict them on you.

Queue-jumpers. Yes, valid point. There are people who have been languishing in camps for years who are waiting to see if they can get humanitarian entry and settlement into Australia. I can understand though the motivation of those who are under threat in their home nation who want to get out. They have the means to approach people-smugglers to avoid the camps I suppose. Do I blame them? No. If I were in the same situation with my wife and children I'd do exactly the same. Perhaps we should be working in the camps – we probably are but if we are then we might need more DIAC resources in there to shorten those queues and perhaps even deter people from approaching smugglers by doing so.

Afghans. We tend to lump Afghans together without realising that there are such huge differences between the groupings and that there has been internecine strife between those groupings for hundreds and hundreds of years. In the main the Taliban are Pashtun Sunnis. They are making life very difficult for Hazara Shi'a. When the West pulls out of Afghanistan and the current regime falls and the Taliban is back in power the Hazaras are going to suffer badly. We need to consider this in discussing policy.

Turn back the boats. Won't work and the Opposition knows it, but it's on a winner with that faux policy so it will keep blasting away at the government with it. As DV and others have pointed out, we have to abide by the UN treaty on humanitarian refugees although I think we're observing it more in the casual breach than sticking to it assiduously. The excision policies begun by Howard and continued under Labor have sought to get around this commitment.

Solutions. Dunno, but when I see a problem I always like to search for the causes – the real causes. And I don't like jumping to a quick solution. We are in this sticky situation because John Howard politicised something that should not have been politicised. Those who accuse the government of spin should understand they are playing by Howard's rules, not that removes the opprobrium from their policy position.

It would be good if we could, right here, discuss the causes and possible solutions without political partisanship getting in the way but I doubt we can.

I am currently working in Adult and Community Education, among other things teaching newly arrived NESB persons basic conversational English. I realise this is not useful to the debate but if you could speak to those people, who have been found to be bona fide asylum-seekers and who are now settled in Australia, you would perhaps see it differently. During each session I like to get away from the formal curriculum and just discuss various issues with the group. Without fail the one phrase I keep hearing from them, in various accents is, "Australia is good".

I wish it were so.

 

You bet Australia is good! Our welfare system is absolutely bloody incredible!! These mostly economic refugees have won the lottery, they cannot believe that everything they were told by the people smugglers is TRUE!!! They are given enough money to live on for nothing, they don't have to work. They get better housing than they could have ever dreamed of having back where they came from, for nothing. They are given first world standard health and dental care for nothing. Their children go to good schools for free and I bet they are not paying for your english lessons either, and the list goes on. Yep, everything the people smugglers told them is TRUE!! All they had to do was pay the smugglers $8 or $10 grand then tell a few lies and play the victim card when they got here.

 

Lucrative welfare system

1) Woman and a couple of kids: $1500 per fortnight in welfare payments

2) Immediate welfare benefits

3) Government report stated 85% of boat arrivals were still on welfare benefits
for up to 5 years

4) They only accept first grade detention accommodation, or they riot in protest.

5) If the accommodation is not up to standard, they get transferred to 4 start motels.

6) Free health care

7) Free schooling for their kids

Free language classes, and free TAFE classes

9) Priority Government housing over Australians

10) $100 worth of transportation vouchers

11) $50 per day to buy personal items while in detention


Maybe the above is the reason why these boat criminals travel trough 7 other countries, and “cherry pick” Australia as their favourite destination

 

You really do not have an idea do you? You cannot base everything on your personal experience you know