THE AGE http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000316/A11339-2000Mar15.html Queue jumpers and other myths By GLENN NICHOLLS Thursday 16 March 2000 WE ARE demonising boat people. It's in our interests, as well as theirs, that we stop it. Fallacy 1: They are illegal immigrants People fleeing persecution in their country of origin are entitled to seek asylum here under the international conventions we have signed. Asylum seekers have a right to explain their fears of persecution and to have their claims adjudicated, after which they will be granted legal residence status or will be required to leave. The vast majority of recent boat arrivals have satisfied the international legal standard. Accordingly, they now have legal status here. They were not illegal immigrants. Fallacy 2: They are queue jumpers The very basis of seeking asylum is being compelled to leave or to stay away from one's country, making it impossible to apply in advance. Only when a person is at risk of a serious human rights violation in their country of origin is a grant of asylum made. Such a grant does nothing less than protect a person from persecution. Portraying people deserving of such urgent protection as opportunistic queue jumpers is abhorrent. It's like portraying the recipients of overseas aid as profiteers. The queue is an entirely inappropriate image for asylum. Fallacy 3: They are not really needy Policy makers maintain that our help is being diverted from the real needs of refugees. Most refugees come here as part of the humanitarian immigration program. Officials maintain very firm control over who and how many come. They also maintain a very firm idea of how refugees should come here, namely after having been selected or accepted overseas. This inclines them to view those who don't come that way as "bogus". In fact, asylum seekers have to satisfy the same international legal standard as off-shore refugees, the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees agreed by the United Nations. By definition, all people who satisfy this standard are needy: they are at risk of persecution if they return to their homeland. Fallacy 4: They rob real refugees of places in the migration program It is pernicious to pit people in dire need against each other. For several years, Australia's offshore refugee intake has been reduced commensurate with the number of grants of asylum (nominally set at 2000 places). Now the Minister for Immigration has suspended the offshore intake altogether, citing the number of asylum seekers. This pits refugee resettlement against asylum. Blaming asylum seekers is as crude as blaming the ill for occupying hospital beds. We need to leave this fallacious thinking behind by developing policies that deal justly with both asylum seekers and refugees seeking resettlement. This will involve three steps. 1. Australia must maintain its refugee resettlement program, which is a highly successful program. 2. Australia must work to restore international trust in the protection of refugees so that countries share rather than shift the burden. The breakdown in international protection has left many refugees in the hands of people smugglers. Some pay to be smuggled from perilous situations to refugee camps; others to countries farther afield, including Australia. Australian officials abhor the latter, but it will continue in the absence of effective international cooperation. 3. We must accord respect to the human rights of asylum seekers, including boat people. This will necessitate overhauling our detention policy and meeting our international obligations to ensure that we don't return anyone to a country where they face torture or death. Fallacy 5: Putting them in detention is a necessary deterrent Most asylum seekers in Australia and elsewhere live in the community. Independent US studies show that few asylum seekers abscond when living in the community. Asylum seekers do not abuse a welcome; they entreat us to consider their circumstances according to international law. They have a right to be received humanely. Few countries resort to mandatory detention, and Australians should not be inveigled into accepting its necessity because of the misconceptions that dominate our discussions. Australia has contributed significantly to relieving refugee situations worldwide, and refugees have made great contributions to Australia. But can we reflect on this with pride when, as Amnesty International documented in a major report, our treatment of many asylum seekers is "a continuing shame"? Glenn Nicholls is a member of Amnesty International Victoria's refugee team. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
