Asylum Seekers are not Illegal

On this issue I think I must part company with the Australian Labor Party and align myself with the Greens. I do find it regrettable that the Prime Minister had spoken so intemperately and that he has chosen to speak with the same inaccurate language as the media and shrieking classes.

An Illegal Immigrant is a person who overstays or breaks the conditions of a visa with which they entered another country legally. Some people do this in order to gain the protection of the country in which they are illegally living, but most simply want to migrate without going through all the usual migration processes, often because they would not meet to conditions (skills or money) that are applied to migrants.

Some Asylum Seekers make their way to a third country legally, travelling on visitor or student visas, for example, but once they arrive make a claim for protection. Others make their way to a country from which they will seek protection by whatever means is at their disposal. Because Australia is an island, most commonly they come here by boat.

Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.

As a signatory to that convention Australia has an obligation to test the claim being made by the Asylum Seeker, and should they meet the criteria in the definition, provide protection to the refugee.

While I totally abhor human trafficking, I find the customary castigation of "People Smugglers" while protesting that Asylum Seekers do not deserve the same disdain, bordering on hypocracy. It provides people with a sanitised way of saying Asylum Seekers should stay where they are.

The media has been running stories about the possibility of Tamil Tigers being "hidden" among legitimate Asylum Seekers, implying that we should therefore not allow any to make it to Australia. Two thoughts strike me in response to this. Firstly, such persons should be readily identified during the screening process all Asylum Seekers go through. Secondly, what would we do if such a person was found among a group of Asylum Seekers? As a "freedom fighter" on the losing side, they would certainly face the kind of threats to their life and well-being that usually qualify one for protection.

Australia, I know, is one of less than a dozen nations in the world that offers protection to those seeking asylum and it does so because it has bound itself to the UN Convention mentioned above. What this means is that we do not have the same "freedom" as Indonesia to treat Asylum Seekers in an arbitary manner. Nor should we make their treatment subject to political whim.

The commentary on this issue borders on racism. People find convenient nuances to avoid being directly racist, but at the heart of the shreiking is the view that "those people are different from us and should stay where they are."

I think Kevin Rudd has been badly advised on this matter. We all know he has a great heart for justice but the rhetoric he has been spouting on this seems to be directed at a political objective. By doing this he has politicised the issue in exactly the same abhorent way John Howard did during the Tampa Crisis.

Rather than trying to negotiate the off-shore detention of Asylum Seekers in Indonesia, I think what he should be seeking to achieve in Indonesia is some movement by that government towards accepting the UN Convention on Refugees and Asylum Seekers, thus enabling the UN to do its good work of supporting and processing Asylum Seekers there, too. This won't stop Asylum Seekers from arriving in our Territorial waters, seeking our protection, but it will provide another option.

Finally, it is my view that the only reason that the Christmas Island Immigration Reception Centre is struggling to cope with the current inflow of Asylum Seekrs is the forlorn attempt by the Rudd Government to maintain the same structural approach as its predecessors to Refugee policy. The excision of all off-shore islands from the Australian Migration Zone was a legal construct intended to deny Asylum Seekers their rights in seeking our protection. As a consequence one small island community has to bear the burden of this work. Government staff must be relocated to a remote community to carry out this work, and Asylum Seekers are held in isolated conditions that deny them access to proper support and advice.

I would like to see proper Immigration Reception Centres (not High Security Detention Centres) located in every Capital City for the purpose of porcessing Asylum Seekers claims for protection. In such places, government staff would not be isolated from all the services they need to support the work they do, and Asylum Seekers would be able to contact and be supported by people from their own communities who have come here ahead of them, and access proper legal and advocacy support.

Such centres would make the workload much more manageable and would create a level playing field for the Immigration Department's dealings with all persons seeking our protection, regardless of whether they arrived here with a visa or not.