[LuxoJr]

Apparently this issue has gotten big coverage in England, but Australians should also be pretty familiar with it.

A couple of weeks ago, the Australian Federal government refused a boatload of about 420 refugees entrance into Australia. Apparently, our Prime Minister believed that we should no longer freely allow refugees entrance into this country because of the time-consuming processes necessary to verify whether or not these people are 'real' refugees.

Therefore, the only refugees allowed into Australia should be those specifically chosen by the government. This means that refugees are considered 'illegal' if they attempt to enter Australia without being selected first.

The idea behind this decision is that these 'illegal' migrants are jumping the queue ahead of 'legal' migrants that the government itself has allowed entrance before they are shipped to Australia.

I have a few problems with this:

1. This basically allows us to turn away so called 'legitimate' refugees (ie. those who are fleeing from some sort of threat in their own country) by labelling them as criminals who have broken a law. It's like trial without representation - Australia has turned away potential refugees without even considering their situation, putting the law before human safety.

2. There's also this idea that we're letting people screw the system by coming in illegally; without ID and claiming to be a refugee.

First of all, how many people are willing to hop on a leaky boat and pay more for it than a plane ticket to their destination? And even if somebody was doing this, wouldn't you expect it to be for a good reason - like, if they were to leave legally they would get caught by a force like the Taliban for violating dictatorial laws (eg. the Taliban prevents women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a man. When the Taliban took over with military force, 3 million females became widows; left without husbands to comply with this rule).

3. Thirdly, and most stupidly, our immigration minister has openly supported the federal government's decision because, following the recent WTC tragedy, Australia was restricting the flow of people from a country like Afghanistan that manufactures such atrocities.

Here's the idiocy in that argument: people leave countries like this to get away from regimes like the Taliban. Turning away a boatload of people because some of them could be terrorists is moronic, because terrorists can come across on planes with forged passports and documents. In fact, this is more likely, considering how organised Bin Laden's posse was and how much quicker, safer and more reliable illegal plane travel is.

I'm appalled that anybody in a position of power could be so idiotic, and I'm amazed at the racist undertones this issue has provoked. Questioning the validity of refugees because they're Afghani implies that anybody who leaves this country 'legally' or 'illegally' is a potential terrorist. Therefore, this issue can boil down to our suspicion of ALL migrants because of the countries they're from.

So we'd better be careful of those Germans - some of them were Nazis in the 40s! Watch out for those Chinese - they obviously support their government's ruthless tactics. But don't worry about Americans, even though some of them caused the worst nuclear disasters known to man, funded middle east terrorism which they're now trying to reverse, and are now prepared to sacrifice innocent lives to prove a point.

Any thoughts?