The Australian reported yesterday that Iraqis waiting in Indonesia for United Nations processing are ready to hop a boat to Australia now that the tougher enforcer of immigration, John Howard, is no longer in power. Rudd denies it.
KEVIN Rudd has brushed off suggestions Iraqis waiting in Indonesia for their refugee claims to be processed plan to head to Australia due to his government’s policies.
The Prime Minister’s comments come as two Indonesian men, aged 32 and 40, faced Perth Magistrates Court charged with people-smuggling offences. They were remanded in custody until May 15.
An Iraqi man, who has been living in Indonesia for nine years and is a confirmed refugee awaiting resettlement by the UNHCR, says he was aboard a boat from Lombok to Australia in 2001 that was intercepted by the Australian navy and turned back to Indonesia. But he has since heard from family in Australia that things have changed under the Rudd Government.
“Kevin Rudd, he change everything about the future,” he told ABC Radio.
“If I go to Australia now, different, different. Maybe accepted. But when John Howard (was the Prime Minister of) … Australia he said come back to Indonesia.”
Read it all.
It’s pretty much a ‘given’ isn’t it, if a country loosens its rules, asylum seekers will take more chances?
One bit in here that interested me is that the Iraqi quoted above says he tried to get into Australia in 2001. To hear the refugee lobbyists tell it, the Iraqi refugee problem sprang up in 2003 with the US arrival in Iraq. They NEVER mention how severe the problem was under Saddam Hussein. And, as I have said on previous occasions I would have more respect for groups like Refugees International if when they blamed the US for the refugee problem, they would each time acknowledge it existed under Saddam Hussein too. See this post from almost a year ago on the topic of hiding previous complaints about Saddam Hussein creating refugees.