By Lyle Shelton first published in Online Opinion here
Chief of Staff, Lyle Shelton
The global refugee crisis is overwhelming. According to the United Nations, there are 20 million refugees displaced from their homelands mainly because of war or persecution.
Millions live in squalid conditions waiting for their claims to be processed by the hopelessly under-resourced United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
For the past five years, Australia has accepted just 13,000-14,000 refugees per year. We can do better.
Since the Rudd Government relaxed the former Howard Government’s much maligned border protection policies, around 11,000 people have paid up to $18,000 US to criminal people smugglers and risked life and limb on the ocean.
Hundreds have died unseen at sea but the danger faced by those who buy passage on a smuggler’s boat was rammed home by the images of the wooden craft crashing into rocks at Christmas Island and the public grief of relatives of the deceased at the Sydney funeral this year.
Detention centres at Christmas Island and Villawood are overcrowded and burning.
While it is difficult for us to judge whether or not someone is a genuine refugee as opposed to someone seeking a better life in a prosperous and free country, the reality is that every asylum seeker who has money to pay people smugglers displaces a penniless UN-assessed refugee waiting in a camp or a slum in Malaysia.
People smugglers have been able to sell some asylum seekers a product that allows them to bypass the UNHCR for a fast track to Australia.
A long wait in an Australian detention centre is no deterrent because most know conditions are more tolerable there than in the camps or slums, notwithstanding the razor wire.
Meanwhile one of our regional neighbours, Malaysia, has 90,000 refugees. Many of these are fleeing the brutal military junta in Burma.
Thousands of these people have already been processed by the UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur and have been found to be genuine refugees.
Four thousand of these will now have the chance for a new life in Australia that the crime of people smuggling has arguably denied many of them.
Many refugee advocates argue that “there is no queue”. But Prime Minister Julia Gillard this week begged to differ with this mantra.
Even the far left Greens are now saying there is a queue when it comes to bringing in skilled migrants to help with the labour shortage in the mining industry.
Gillard’s deal with Malaysia, which is yet to be consummated, will see 800 people smuggler customers sent to the back of the queue.
There is no doubt that people who pay for passage with a people smuggler are desperate and that many of them will be assessed as genuine refugees.
It is high praise for Australia, a country profoundly shaped by its Christian heritage, that these people, the majority of whom are Muslim, prefer to by-pass other Muslim states such as Malaysia and Indonesia which practice Sharia Law to varying degrees, to make their new life here.
But a penniless person in Darfur, on the Thai-Burma border or living in a slum in Malaysia is also desperate.
The difference is the means to pay a people smuggler.
Because the global refugee crisis is overwhelming, the global community must find a way to help these people as justly and as fairly as possible.
Allowing people smugglers to exploit our compassion for refugees does not deliver justice to those who cannot afford to pay.
Then there are those refugees out of the media spotlight like the Christian Afghan community in New Delhi. Like Malaysia, India is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees.
However, unlike Malaysia, India has given notice that it will forcibly send some Christian Afghans back to Afghanistan where they face the death penalty for the crime of converting to Christianity.
This will come as shock to most Australians who are generally proud of the fact that our military is playing a role in restoring civility to a country that once harboured Osama bin Ladin’s terrorist training camps and whose barbarian Taliban rulers trampled the human rights of women and girls.
How could it be that the new Afghanistan where our troops are based can be contributing to the global refugee crisis by denying religious freedom through the application of no less than the death penalty?
Labor’s ‘Malaysian solution’ is a step in the right direction because it puts the focus back on the enormity of the global humanitarian crisis and seeks to address it in a much more compassionate manner.
ACL has long called for increased resources to process the claims of refugees in source countries. We have long argued for Australia to be more generous with its humanitarian intake. We have also supported off-shore processing as a means of deterring people smuggling.
Sunday’s announcement shows compassion to the forgotten refugees while disrupting people smuggling which will save lives on the open sea.
“Since the Rudd Government relaxed the former Howard Government’s much maligned border protection policies, around 11,000 people have paid up to $18,000 US to criminal people smugglers and risked life and limb on the ocean”
Sorry but anyone who has that kind of money is not a refugee in any sense of the word. That is more money then this “rich westerner” has and shows they could make a life for themselves in any country.
Then they come here and 85% of them will be on benefits within 5 years, this is all just costing Australia money we don’t have
I agree with PaulW. The $18,000 in Australian terms is a lot of money. But in the third world, this amount is equivalent to a million dollars!
These people catch a nice comfortable jet flight to Malaysia or Indonesia, and then the smugglers con them into believing a short, safe boat ride will follow to a country of suckers.
Personally, I doubt any of these so called “refugees” are in fact real refugees. If they were, I’d have much, much more sympathy!
But the reality of their arrival and travel through many other countries to reach us, shows they are not real refugees. They and activist lawyers, are taking advantage of our misguided compassion, and in so doing, genuine refugees actually miss out.
I know of a family that took refugees into their own home. As a result their own kids suffered and felt unloved, and the family is now completely dysfunctional and their kids juvenile delinquents. Those parents first responsibility should have been to God, then to each other, then to their own children — that is clearly laid out in the Bible. Once these priorities are assured, then help others as much as possible. But instead they lost perspective and let their compassion override their common sense and their own family is now broken.
Isn’t what we are doing with refugees somewhat similar to that family?
Both PaulW and David need to take a reality check. The vast majority of people arriving by boat are coming from areas of war. The ARE refugees who are fleeing for their lives. To go back to their homeland means persecution or perhaps death. (This has occured). They are willing to risk the sea journey because the alternative is worse. David, you invoke the Bible. How do you explain away God’ command in Exodus 22:21 “Do not ill-treat an alien, or oppress him….” and Jesus’ command to “Do unto other as you would have them do unto you”. Try to imagine yourself in their position.