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“Captain Cook was the very first queue jumper, it was immigrant labour that made Australia plumper” The Herd – 77% (An Elephant never Forgets, Elefant Traks)
One of the greatest delusions the current government have presented to the Australian people it the threat of invasion by floods of illegal immigrants arriving from our northern shores. In actual fact, these people are not “illegal” nor are they arriving in invasion levels.
In actual fact the number of refugees that come to Australia are significantly less what end up in Europe and America. In 2000 Australia had 13, 105 asylum applications. The USA and Canada had 84, 588 and just 4 European countries had a combined total of 220, 068. For that year alone, there were 14,500,000 people who were considered asylum seekers or refugees.
Australia’s biggest immigration cheats are actually people who fly in on tourist visas and then over stay. According to the Refugee Council of Australia, in the 1999 to 2000 financial year 58, 748 people overstayed their visas compared to the 5, 870 people who were deemed to be unauthorised arrivals
Our latest line of “defence” is to remove islands from our migration zone. The theory is that if refugees land on any of these islands then they will not have made it to Australia and therefore not eligible for protection.
Six months ago an application was made in the parliament to include the Tiwi Island group just north of Darwin. It was rejected.
“If Australia is the first place they have laid claim to asylum, then Australia cannot refuse to process them. Excising the islands does not change that” UNHCR regional representative, Michel Gabaudan
Tuesday afternoon while the rest of the country was preoccupied with the Melbourne cup, 14 Turkish asylum seekers, along with 4 crew from an Indonesian fishing boat landed on Melville Island, and the government went into damage control.
Phone calls to the Governor General excluded the Tiwi Islands from the migration zone, retrospectively as at midnight Monday. Backdating this exclusion by only hours was enough to wipe out any claim for sanctuary. As the parliament isn’t currently sitting, this exclusion will be effective until it is voted upon.
Even if rejected, the Turkish boat people have no hope of having their case heard under Australia’s oppressive migration laws as they landed on the island while it was still part of the exclusion zone, laws that disregard International treaties that we are signatories to.
“This is a Government that has acted in haste again to try to whip up a frenzy in terms of asylum seekers, by moving to set up regulations that are backdated 24 hours so these people aren’t able to access their rights under migration laws,” Northern Territory’s Labor Senator, Trish Crossin
“There really is no cause for hysteria – if there is a small number of people they can be dealt with through our normal migration program and it isn’t something we need to get into a panic about” Labor’s Nicola Roxon
The West Australian even went as far as to call the refugees “illegal immigrants” on the front page. What hope do these people have when everyday Australians are being lied to by their government and the lies are being perpetuated by the main stream media?
Map of Northern Territory
CNN
News.com.au
The Australian
ABC
ABC
The West Australian
Refugee Council – Statistics
