By BON NGUYEN
The Canadian Government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accepted another 10,000 Syrian refugees – up to 35,000 in total, and this could reach 50,000 while Canada’s budget is hitting C$30 billion in deficit.
In 2015, we welcomed the Australian Government’s decision to permit 12,000 Syrian refugees to come to Australia and settle here.
The suffering of the refugees has been shocking. There is still more to be done.
Labor’s decision at its 2015 National Conference to make “the turning back of the boats” part of its immigration/refugee policy has, in fact, brought the two major parties closer together on this policy.
However, Labor will only send such boats to a safe country. Labor would refuse to send such boats to the country of origin as required by the current Federal Government.
This Federal Government policy may cause grave risk to the refugees including imprisonment, economic sanctions or even death.
I have received information, confirming the number of failed asylum seekers who were arrested within weeks of the Australian Government returning them to Vietnam as their country of origin in 2015.
Some of those not arrested are believed to be on the run as fugitives.
This current policy should be discontinued.
It’s understandable that Australia’s borders need to be protected, but surely not from the refugees.
For someone who has a different culture and language but prepared to get on a boat with their family, risking their own safety, fleeing from their homeland in trying to search for safety in an unknown destination, they have to be desperate in order to consider the option.
At an international level, Australia can’t afford to break the 1951 Refugee Convention as Australia is one of the signatories.
Are we making the assumption that all that the refugees want is to come to Australia?
Clearly, during the Vietnamese refugees era, the majority chose to settle in the USA and others settled in other countries including New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Europe and Australia.
While I understand that the major political parties hold a non-negotiable position on having control of our borders, I call upon the Australian Government to consider these three options:
1. Re-open the refugee processing centre in the South East Asian countries.
There are safe countries in South-East Asia – Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines – where such boats could be sent or to where refugees could go under their own steam.
2. Increase the intake of refugees, which is important as it gives us a good reason to further canvass other nations to shoulder some responsibility on this international refugee crisis.
Increasing the intake would reduce the processing time and allow asylum seekers to resettle much quicker.
By doing so, the asylum seekers will see real hope at their last leg of the journey which is at processing centres, and there is no benefit of risking their lives by travelling longer distance directly to Australia. Only then Australia would be in the righteous position to send asylum seekers back to the queue.
3. Grant an amnesty to the 30,000 asylum seekers in Australia, Nauru and Manus Island.
This is not unprecedented as Australia has granted amnesties before, for example, following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Prime Minister Bob Hawke made the decision to accept Chinese refugees into Australia.
These asylum seekers are here at our doorsteps, it is our issue. Let’s start again.
Stop playing politics with the very lives and health of the refugees who have been left in limbo for far too long.
