Tags: Australia, Europe, Illegal Immigrants, Refugees
John Pilger is clearly an idiot. His opinion piece earlier this month is a testament to that. This man has been suffering from delusions of grandeur. This ageing Communist dinosaur is happy to criticise the Australian Government in the use of detention centres for illegal immigrants-cum-asylum seekers and call them concentration camps. Yet he refuses to criticise the Sri Lankan Government for its use of internment camps for holding internally displaced people-cum-refugees. Are they not concentration camps? This is the country where the illegals are coming from, fleeing persecution.
And lets set the record straight. he says: “The use of the term ”illegal immigrants” is both false and craven. The few people struggling to reach our shores are not illegal. International law is clear – they are legal. How ironic; the people in those leaking boats demonstrate the kind of guts Australians are said to admire.” The man has clearly had a stroke. Anyone who enters the Commonwealth of Australia without a valid travel document is committing a crime. It is illegal to travel internationally without a valid visa. So international law is clear they are illegal up until the moment they land on Australia’s migration zone and claim for asylum. Then they become asylum seekers because they are seeking asylum. If some higher authority approves these economic illegal immigrants as refugees then they are called refugees.
I say economic because a refugee often, usually and should find refuge in the first country of safety. Travelling past several nations to seek a better economic life clearly indicates that they are economic migrants and they are illegal and using the refugee badge to win the sympathy of misguided people, like Pilger and the other members of the loony left.
I am amazed at the illegals in Calais. What is wrong with staying in France? Why do they need to cross over to the UK? Are these real refugees? They are simply opportunistic people who play on the heart strings of these who should know better. Wake up and smell the bloody coffee.
Comments
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Syndication
Prashanth, I think you make a really good point: “..a refugee usually should find refuge in the first country of safety.”
But it is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers who manage to make it to Australia are recognised as legitimate refugees. It can be hard though to tell if the end justifies the means.
I found this interesting reading:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/smuggling-of-migrants.html?ref=menuside
Thanks Ben.
Yes I realise that asylum seekers are granted refugee status in Australia, I do not know the numbers. But that is because the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol applies, it was written with the view of post-war European refugees later amended to include all. It does not discriminate against people on account of their methods of arrival into a country. People smuggling and economic illegal migration was not on the minds of the drafters I assume.
But Ben, people smugglers tell their ‘cargo’ to rip up and destroy papers and IDs, they go with babies to get sympathy, they claim to be from another minority group to get refugee status.
I a good debate on migration was at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas in July this year. See: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2009/2708494.htm
I do not agree with all of Julian Burnside’s comments. One should not get too emotional about this. And no, the end do not justify the means.
Just a small update. See: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,665060,00.html
“The authorities suspected that a few thousand Turks had come to Germany in the 1980s as part of a large wave of refugees claiming to be victims of the civil war ravaging Lebanon.”