Maybe some of our Australian readers are not perfectly happy with everything the Abbott government does, but we sure are loving them.
Can you imagine the sputtering and fuming going on at the United Nations over the latest comments by Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.
Keep in mind as you read this that international refugee law says that asylum seekers are to ask for asylum in the first safe country they reach, thus the mostly Muslim ‘asylum’ seekers should ask for asylum in Indonesia (a Muslim country***). But, of course, as we see in Europe every day, they are really ‘asylum’ shoppers (aka economic migrants) not truly persecuted people.
From the UK Daily Mail (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):
(Emphasis is mine)
Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison Wednesday said he was “taking the sugar off the table” in announcing that Canberra was slamming the door on UN-registered asylum-seekers in Indonesia.
Morrison said that from July next year, asylum-seekers officially recognised by the United Nations refugee agency in Jakarta would no longer be eligible for resettlement in Australia.
The move, he said, was part of the government’s work to “strip people-smugglers of a product to sell to vulnerable men, women and children” and stop Indonesia being used as a transit lounge.
“We’re taking the sugar off the table. That’s what we’re doing,” he told ABC radio.
“We’re trying to stop people thinking that it’s OK to come into Indonesia and use that as a waiting ground to get to Australia.”
The giant northern neighbour is not a refugee generating country, but has become a key magnet for others seeking to reach Australia, often through treacherous boat journeys that have left hundreds dead.
Since the government came to power last year, its hardline immigration policy — to deny asylum-seekers arriving by boat resettlement in Australia and instead send them to camps in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific state of Nauru — has halted the flow.
The move to shut the door on even those registered with the UNHCR refugee agency in Indonesia is the next step, Morrison said.
“While nine of 10 months of 2014 have passed without a successful people-smuggling venture to Australia, we know smugglers continue to encourage asylum-seekers to travel illegally to Indonesia for the purpose of seeking resettlement in Australia,” he said.
I wonder how Obama felt in the presence of real men in Australia a few days ago?
By the way, if those ‘unaccompanied alien children‘ who traveled through Mexico to the US border were legitimate asylum seekers they would have asked for asylum in Mexico!
See our entire archive on Australia, here.
*** Another element to consider is whether the Muslim government of Indonesia and the UNHCR are helping to advance the Hijra (Islamic migration) by attempting to send more Muslims to non-Muslim countries.