Category: Australia

Iraqi says Rudd government will let them in

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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.

Comment worth noting: Muslims lie to get into Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Gosh, I got up this morning to find many interesting comments from around the world, so it was hard to decide which one I wanted to post as a ‘comment worth noting.’  Below is Anne from Australia, but so as not to leave anyone out, you might want to see Nicholas here, Abdi and Dave here, or Joyce here.

One thing that struck me about this comment from Australia is that it makes me wonder if there are no avenues to disseminate Anne’s message in Australia.  Do any of our regular Australian readers know if you have the equivalent of Refugee Resettlement Watch in your country?

Anne (hopefully not her real name) posted a comment to our most recent post about asylum seekers trying to get to Australia in the wake of changes in asylum policy which makes it easier to get  into Australia.

It was widely known in the Afghan community (Adelaide) in the last huge wave of boat arrivals that the Pakistani Afghans were granted permanent visas well before the true Afghan refugees received theirs. The proportion of true Afghan refugees was only about 10%. They spoke of Immigration actually telling them it is sometimes better if they don’t tell the truth. Those who did tended to be left until the last. This was the cause of many fights and arguments at the time. It is always harder to prove your case than to pay someone in Pakistan to give you false papers.

I have met many who claimed to be a 13-17 years old and in fact were either in their mid twenties or thirties. They were visibly older than they claimed but Immigration easily provided them with visas. Many of the so called orphan boys were actually married men with large families – 6 in Perth in one instance. My former partner was an Afghan refugee. I gave up working with refugees before the birth of our son. Now began the really scary time. I was to learn much about what was really going on but always under threat of losing my child if I spoke out the truth to authorities even now I am under a threat of retribution should I approach authorities.

I believe it is essential that the government is really careful when it determines who is to stay here or not. Some are genuine and some are not. Their concept of truth is so different to ours. Justice under our law and revenge under theirs. Woman – how sadly they are treated. The men that come here must be made to learn values of our society and accept the consequences when they break our laws rather than see it as a permission to take revenge on the victim.

To Abdi, this is what I mean by Muslims not assimilating.  It has nothing to do with paying taxes and working hard, but has everything to do with the advancement the Judeo-Christian ethic has given women in the West.  Islam is not there yet and likely never will be if you and others like you are not working to ‘assimilate’ in Australia or the US.

More Muslim asylum seekers caught attempting to reach Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Looks like Australia’s more lenient policy toward asylum has opened a floodgate of Afghan and Iraqi refugees attempting to reach ‘welcoming’ Australia.  This group was caught in Indonesia.  From the Herald Sun:

ANOTHER 68 Afghan asylum seekers poised to head to Australia have been arrested by Indonesian authorities and are being questioned tonight.

Read the whole story and learn more about Australia’s recent refugee problems in our category on the subject, here.

Update:  Just came across another story of an Iraqi family who may be trying to reach Australia.   See how it’s done, here.

Boat explosian kills Afghan asylum seekers in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you a week ago that changes in Australian asylum policy (toward more leniency) are encouraging Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers (probably others from the Middle East as well) to risk dangerous waters around Australia in an attempt to reach Australia by boat.   A controversy is now swirling around the most recent incursion which resulted in the explosion of one such trafficking vessel and the subsequent death of  three and possibly more Afghan aliens.

From the Australian today:

A NAVY officer has described the “horrific” scene where at least three people died after an explosion threw 47 suspected asylum seekers and two crew into northern Australian waters.

Lieutenant Commander Barry Learoyd said all 49 people aboard the asylum seekers’ boat had been thrown into the ocean.

“The scenes were pretty horrific,” he said.

[….]

The asylum seekers identified themselves as being from Afghanistan.

More Iraqi asylum seekers arriving in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The word has gotten out that the Rudd Administration has made it easier for refugees arriving by boat to be granted asylum in Australia, so now, not surprisingly, the numbers are on the rise.  From the Jakarta Post:

A boatload of suspected Iraqi asylum seekers skirted border patrols and landed Wednesday on a remote Australian island, officials said, becoming the third group of people to reach the country’s territorial waters in a month.

The opposition Liberal Party says the increase in boat arrivals is a result of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s relaxation of the country’s refugee policy last July.

When I first saw this story, I though how on earth were Iraqis getting to Australia on boats, but we learn that they first fly to Indonesia.

Australia has long been a destination for people from poor, often war-ravaged countries hoping to start a new life. Most of the asylum seekers in recent years have come from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. They typically fly to Indonesia before continuing to Australia aboard cramped, barely seaworthy boats.

Indefinite detention on remote islands by the Howard government  previously kept the numbers of asylum seekers low.

The number of boats had dwindled after the previous government imposed unlimited detention for illegal immigrants and made it difficult to get refugee visas. But since Rudd’s government relaxed some of those policies last July, 11 boats carrying more than 340 people have entered Australian waters, three of them in the last month.

[….]

Rudd’s government has limited detention to 12 months and gives accepted refugees permanent visas instead of the three-year visas provided by the previous Liberal government.

The article doesn’t mention if these are Muslim Iraqis or Christians.