Originally posted by cro_angel
tanzania (a country in africa) lets in 1 refugee for every 83 people there.. and i dont remember the population there but its still quite alot more than australia offers
also australia is the only place in the world to put refugees in detention..
Yes it's all well and good to say things like this without analysing or mentioning why Tanzania lets so many refugees into the country as opposed to Australia. Hell, I can't even find figures about that except from biased sources, I'm assuming you got your info from a site like <
http://www.erc.org.au/issues/text/se01.htm>...
(Yes, I know it sounds like a right-wing rant at the moment but it'll get more leftist soon enough
). Most of these African nations are too poor to have any sort of real army anyway, it's just a bunch of loosely cobbled together people they picked up off the streets or some random militia. Plus the conditions in the refugee camps there are squalid and another ethnicity often comes along and kills/slaughters/massacres the other one, so it's not really a much better solution than what's happening in Australia. So drawing that distinction it's not really that good. Also, you'll notice that Britain and France are beginning to crack down a tad more on their asylum seekers too, I know that recently the French and British have been trying to stem the problem of the Calais immigration camps from where asylum seekers escape on lorries over the channel and head to the UK. This might be just a sign of the right-wing elements taking more hold, a backlash to terrorism etc or who knows, but it's going to be a trend that's going to continue and it probably won't be stopped any time soon either...
What is a Refugee?
A refugee is a person who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country..."
Personally, I don't think that the imprisonment of asylum seekers, especially children, is right. It's wrong, the Howard government ought to find a better solution. In countries such as the Netherlands the asylum seekers are put up in large housing developments (similar to Housing Commission in NSW) and allowed access to the health system and to gain employment. This is ultimately a better system. Not to mention that they aren't stealing anyones jobs, what they are doing is creaing more jobs (due to the support services needed for the refugees) and they are taking up the crap jobs in society that no one wants to do (e.g. cleaning). After the initial outlay of training refugees, they are much more beneficial to society if they are accepted.
The way the Howard government is using the issue is to gain votes, to play on the conservatism and xenophobia of most Australians. It's disgusting but it's how conservatives play politics, on the whole it works, especially when the media gets on side as they almost always do.
