Arrived in London on the 18th of September for research trip. Attended the University of Sussex for a week. Gave a seminar presentation in the Sussex Centre for Migration Research on Monday with mixed responses. I think some of this has to do with different disciplinary perspectives coming together on issues of migration. Had some really useful feedback, however, particularly in relation to how I define my migrant groups (i.e. cannot really call them skilled-migrants unless they specifically arrived in a country through a skilled-migrant visa/points system). Which rules out many in my research who entered as international students or even refugees but ended up being 'skilled'. Am thinking now that I need to refer to the research participants instead more broadly as transnationals but who are working in professional positions. Furthermore, that their transnational ties are expressed both through corporeal and imaginative mobility.
Was talking with a person today who had spent extended periods living and working in several developing countries during the past thirty years. Now that their children have left home they are considering relocating to another country for a few years to work in a volunteer capacity. When I asked where they would go they suggested the country that was the first place they relocated to when they were in their 20's. They said this was because your first place of relocation often has the strongest effect on you (e.g. emotionally, socially, environmentally etc).
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Emerging from darkness
the Age
Arnold Zable
August 2, 2008
THE Rudd Government's proposed changes to the mandatory detention system for asylum seekers signal the termination of an enduring nightmare. When Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced the reforms last Tuesday, I recalled the brutal images that defined a dark and disturbing era. Images of hunger strikers squatting in the desert dust, behind razor wire, in outback camps whose names have become linked with infamy: Woomera, Port Hedland, Curtin and Baxter. And further afield, on Manus Island and remote Nauru. Images of men, women and children driven to madness, cut off from scrutiny. Isolated from the outside world.
My initiation into the nightmare occurred much closer to home. In January 2001, I made my way to the Maribyrnong detention centre, in Melbourne's west.
From the moment the buildings came into view, I realised that I was approaching a prison enclosed behind barbed cyclone fences. After signing in I was scanned by metal detectors through two electronically locked doors into the visitors' room. I waited 20 minutes before the Iranian family I had come to see were ushered in from their locked quarters: a father and mother, and two daughters, aged seven and nine. They had been in detention for more than 15 months.
Weeks earlier, the girls had glimpsed the body of 52 year-old Tongan Viliami Tanginoa lying in a pool of blood on a basketball court. Tanginoa had dived headlong to his death from the basketball ring after an eight-hour stand-off with detention centre guards. He had just heard from the Immigration Department that he was to be deported back to Tonga for overstaying his visa.
The children at the centre had come to know him as a gentle man.
Two days earlier, 17-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker Ali Kedem had cut his throat. I met him in the small courtyard adjoining the visitors' room. Strips of bandages were plastered to his wound. The tension was palpable. Inmates paced the courtyard like caged animals. Above them a telecommunications tower rose into a patch of sky. Detainees told me they had been harassed for telling the media that they saw Tanginoa being taunted by guards as he perched on the basketball ring. "We are surrounded by death," the girls' father said. "All around us is dying, dying, dying."
That first night I found it difficult to sleep. I thought of the girls and their parents confined in their cramped room. I imagined the sounds of the night, the endless chatter of guards, the blaring of the TV at all hours, the sound of doors opening and closing. I thought of the sadistic guard who, if on duty that night, would shine his torch into the room every hour and disturb their sleep. I thought of the girls' nightmares from which they awoke screaming.
The family was imploding through the prolonged agony. "Why did you bring us here?" the girls asked.
Echoing remarks I would hear from many inmates over the next few years, the girls' father pointed out that his family's predicament was worse than that of common criminals, who at least knew the length of their sentence. "I am going lazy and crazy," he often said.
Yet he had not committed any crime. Like millions before him, including the forebears of many Australians, he had exercised his right to seek a new life free of oppression and persecution, a right enshrined in the 1951 UN refugee conventions to which Australia was a signatory. The conventions had arisen as a response to the murder and displacement of millions in the carnage of World War II.
The many stories I heard in detention centres were a revelation. There were accounts from Afghan refugees who had fled the brutal persecution of the Taliban; Iraqis who had been intimidated, tortured, and had family members killed under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein; and Iranians who had fallen victim to the bigotry of religious fundamentalism. Now their trauma was being compounded by imprisonment in Australia.
On Sunday evening, October 7, 2001, at the outset of a federal election campaign, Philip Ruddock announced that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard when the HMAS Adelaide intercepted a fishing vessel carrying 223 asylum seekers. In the following days then prime minister John Howard and senior ministers Alexander Downer, Peter Reith and Ruddock relentlessly sang the same tune. What a way to treat children, they fumed. We don't want people like that in Australia, they chorused.
As it turned out, the accusation proved to be untrue, but at the same time, there were 663 children being held in Australian detention centres, including 73 unaccompanied minors. At its height, in September 2001, 842 children were incarcerated, with about half in Woomera. By December 2003, the average detention period for a child had blown out to more than 20 months.
The statistics do not reveal the barbaric reality. Numerous cases of abuse and suffering were documented in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into children held in immigration detention. The comprehensive report, A last resort, published in April 2004, reported children trying to commit suicide by swallowing shampoo. It recorded many cases of well-behaved children finally snapping, slashing themselves, banging their heads against walls. Children witnessed forced deportations, hunger strikes and their parents sinking into depression. Mothers with babies were rendered lifeless, their faces blank and unfocused. Children were trapped in riots, deluged by water cannon, sprayed with tear gas, and caught up in beatings and baton charges.
Emulating the utter despair of the adults, some children attempted suicide, sewed their lips in protest, or threw themselves on the razor wire. Others were subjected to sexual abuse. Many endured arbitrary identity checks instigated at any time of night. Like the girls I met in Maribyrnong detention centre, children who were escorted by guards in vans to local schools were called criminals in the schoolyard by students aping their parents' views.
The plight of the children was embodied in the fate of six-year-old Shayan Badraie. Shayan stopped eating, drinking and speaking when he saw a fellow detainee in Villawood bleeding profusely after slashing his wrists. Previously, while incarcerated in Woomera, he had witnessed many acts of violence and self-harm. He had seen a man holding a shard of glass to his chest and threatening to kill himself, another threatening to jump to his death from the branches of a tree. Even though detention centre psychologists had diagnosed him as severely disturbed, he remained imprisoned in Villawood.
Dr Aamer Sultan, an Iraqi asylum seeker detained in Villawood for more than two years, observed the dehumanising effect of an impersonal and bureaucratic system that drove detainees to madness. Sultan coined the term "detention syndrome", and singled out its common phases. At first detainees were optimistic, sustained by the hope of a successful resolution of their cases. As the weeks became months, became years, and the prospect of forcible repatriation increased, they sank into clinical depression and an overpowering fear of being targeted by authorities. Health workers assigned to detention centres, including the head of psychiatric services in Nauru, resigned in protest at the mental health nightmare they were forced to confront. They understood that the only cure was freedom and loving care in a secure environment.
Introduced by the Labor government in 1992, mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals reached its zenith in 2004, when the High Court, responding to a challenge by refugee advocates, ruled that the draconian provisions of the Howard government's laws provided for indefinite detention. In effect, asylum seekers could remain imprisoned for life. Peter Qasim spent almost seven years in detention before his release in mid-2005, after a long campaign on his behalf.
The support Qasim received while imprisoned exemplifies the saving grace of this dark time. Pockets of support for detainees expanded into a vast network of Australians who defied the callous policies of the Howard government. People across the political spectrum visited detention centres and provided a vital link to the outside world for asylum seekers who had gone directly from the boat or plane to detention. They brought in food, toys for children, phone cards, and most importantly, provided companionship.
Asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus islands, and in remote outback centres, received countless letters of support. Detainees who were accustomed to being addressed as, for instance, "detainee No. NBP451" regained their names and recounted their stories to empathetic listeners.
Refugee advocates defied political leaders who had demonised asylum seekers as queue jumpers, illegal immigrants and even terrorists. They helped restore a sense of humanity and dignity to the severely traumatised. They engaged in campaigns on behalf of individuals and relentlessly lobbied politicians. They undertook the long journeys to detention centres such as state-of-the-art Baxter, enclosed in an electrified perimeter that Ruddock referred to as energised fences.
They were on hand when asylum seekers were finally released, and helped those left stranded without accommodation and basic material needs. Lawyers acted pro bono for long-term detainees and took test cases all the way to the High Court.
The network included organisations such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project, Chilout, Project SafeCom, A Just Australia, Rural Australians for Refugees, the Refugee Council, Amnesty, Oxfam and the Romero Centre, to name just a few Australia-wide. They provided material support to the destitute, and human contact to the abandoned.
Individual politicians defied party policies and campaigned for reform. One of the unsung heroes was Democrat senator Andrew Bartlett, who visited detention centres many times and was willing to fast in support of hunger strikers on Nauru.
Senator Chris Evans and the Rudd Government are to be congratulated on their proposed reforms. There remain many details to clarify and issues to be resolved, such as the level of government support to asylum seekers who will be released into the community. A hostel system, for instance, would provide secure accommodation while residents wait for a resolution of their cases.
The critical test for the new regime will come if, and when, the boatloads begin to arrive on our shores again. But while it remains to be seen how the new policies will operate, the proposed overhaul of the detention system is a humane and principled move. Already there are opposition rumblings and threats of veto in the Senate on the pretext of border security.
Most of those detained were eventually found to be genuine refugees. Many will bear the scars of their incarceration for the rest of their lives. Some have become addicted to drugs first prescribed behind the razor wire. Others require counselling years after release. I have seen the tears suddenly come at the mere mention of detention. And I have also seen children, such as the two Iranian girls I first met in Maribyrnong, grow into strong and resilient human beings. Australia is enriched by their presence.
Arnold Zable's latest novel, Sea of Many Returns, documents the journeys of earlier generations of immigrants in search of new lives. Published by Text Media
Arnold Zable
August 2, 2008
THE Rudd Government's proposed changes to the mandatory detention system for asylum seekers signal the termination of an enduring nightmare. When Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced the reforms last Tuesday, I recalled the brutal images that defined a dark and disturbing era. Images of hunger strikers squatting in the desert dust, behind razor wire, in outback camps whose names have become linked with infamy: Woomera, Port Hedland, Curtin and Baxter. And further afield, on Manus Island and remote Nauru. Images of men, women and children driven to madness, cut off from scrutiny. Isolated from the outside world.
My initiation into the nightmare occurred much closer to home. In January 2001, I made my way to the Maribyrnong detention centre, in Melbourne's west.
From the moment the buildings came into view, I realised that I was approaching a prison enclosed behind barbed cyclone fences. After signing in I was scanned by metal detectors through two electronically locked doors into the visitors' room. I waited 20 minutes before the Iranian family I had come to see were ushered in from their locked quarters: a father and mother, and two daughters, aged seven and nine. They had been in detention for more than 15 months.
Weeks earlier, the girls had glimpsed the body of 52 year-old Tongan Viliami Tanginoa lying in a pool of blood on a basketball court. Tanginoa had dived headlong to his death from the basketball ring after an eight-hour stand-off with detention centre guards. He had just heard from the Immigration Department that he was to be deported back to Tonga for overstaying his visa.
The children at the centre had come to know him as a gentle man.
Two days earlier, 17-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker Ali Kedem had cut his throat. I met him in the small courtyard adjoining the visitors' room. Strips of bandages were plastered to his wound. The tension was palpable. Inmates paced the courtyard like caged animals. Above them a telecommunications tower rose into a patch of sky. Detainees told me they had been harassed for telling the media that they saw Tanginoa being taunted by guards as he perched on the basketball ring. "We are surrounded by death," the girls' father said. "All around us is dying, dying, dying."
That first night I found it difficult to sleep. I thought of the girls and their parents confined in their cramped room. I imagined the sounds of the night, the endless chatter of guards, the blaring of the TV at all hours, the sound of doors opening and closing. I thought of the sadistic guard who, if on duty that night, would shine his torch into the room every hour and disturb their sleep. I thought of the girls' nightmares from which they awoke screaming.
The family was imploding through the prolonged agony. "Why did you bring us here?" the girls asked.
Echoing remarks I would hear from many inmates over the next few years, the girls' father pointed out that his family's predicament was worse than that of common criminals, who at least knew the length of their sentence. "I am going lazy and crazy," he often said.
Yet he had not committed any crime. Like millions before him, including the forebears of many Australians, he had exercised his right to seek a new life free of oppression and persecution, a right enshrined in the 1951 UN refugee conventions to which Australia was a signatory. The conventions had arisen as a response to the murder and displacement of millions in the carnage of World War II.
The many stories I heard in detention centres were a revelation. There were accounts from Afghan refugees who had fled the brutal persecution of the Taliban; Iraqis who had been intimidated, tortured, and had family members killed under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein; and Iranians who had fallen victim to the bigotry of religious fundamentalism. Now their trauma was being compounded by imprisonment in Australia.
On Sunday evening, October 7, 2001, at the outset of a federal election campaign, Philip Ruddock announced that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard when the HMAS Adelaide intercepted a fishing vessel carrying 223 asylum seekers. In the following days then prime minister John Howard and senior ministers Alexander Downer, Peter Reith and Ruddock relentlessly sang the same tune. What a way to treat children, they fumed. We don't want people like that in Australia, they chorused.
As it turned out, the accusation proved to be untrue, but at the same time, there were 663 children being held in Australian detention centres, including 73 unaccompanied minors. At its height, in September 2001, 842 children were incarcerated, with about half in Woomera. By December 2003, the average detention period for a child had blown out to more than 20 months.
The statistics do not reveal the barbaric reality. Numerous cases of abuse and suffering were documented in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into children held in immigration detention. The comprehensive report, A last resort, published in April 2004, reported children trying to commit suicide by swallowing shampoo. It recorded many cases of well-behaved children finally snapping, slashing themselves, banging their heads against walls. Children witnessed forced deportations, hunger strikes and their parents sinking into depression. Mothers with babies were rendered lifeless, their faces blank and unfocused. Children were trapped in riots, deluged by water cannon, sprayed with tear gas, and caught up in beatings and baton charges.
Emulating the utter despair of the adults, some children attempted suicide, sewed their lips in protest, or threw themselves on the razor wire. Others were subjected to sexual abuse. Many endured arbitrary identity checks instigated at any time of night. Like the girls I met in Maribyrnong detention centre, children who were escorted by guards in vans to local schools were called criminals in the schoolyard by students aping their parents' views.
The plight of the children was embodied in the fate of six-year-old Shayan Badraie. Shayan stopped eating, drinking and speaking when he saw a fellow detainee in Villawood bleeding profusely after slashing his wrists. Previously, while incarcerated in Woomera, he had witnessed many acts of violence and self-harm. He had seen a man holding a shard of glass to his chest and threatening to kill himself, another threatening to jump to his death from the branches of a tree. Even though detention centre psychologists had diagnosed him as severely disturbed, he remained imprisoned in Villawood.
Dr Aamer Sultan, an Iraqi asylum seeker detained in Villawood for more than two years, observed the dehumanising effect of an impersonal and bureaucratic system that drove detainees to madness. Sultan coined the term "detention syndrome", and singled out its common phases. At first detainees were optimistic, sustained by the hope of a successful resolution of their cases. As the weeks became months, became years, and the prospect of forcible repatriation increased, they sank into clinical depression and an overpowering fear of being targeted by authorities. Health workers assigned to detention centres, including the head of psychiatric services in Nauru, resigned in protest at the mental health nightmare they were forced to confront. They understood that the only cure was freedom and loving care in a secure environment.
Introduced by the Labor government in 1992, mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals reached its zenith in 2004, when the High Court, responding to a challenge by refugee advocates, ruled that the draconian provisions of the Howard government's laws provided for indefinite detention. In effect, asylum seekers could remain imprisoned for life. Peter Qasim spent almost seven years in detention before his release in mid-2005, after a long campaign on his behalf.
The support Qasim received while imprisoned exemplifies the saving grace of this dark time. Pockets of support for detainees expanded into a vast network of Australians who defied the callous policies of the Howard government. People across the political spectrum visited detention centres and provided a vital link to the outside world for asylum seekers who had gone directly from the boat or plane to detention. They brought in food, toys for children, phone cards, and most importantly, provided companionship.
Asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus islands, and in remote outback centres, received countless letters of support. Detainees who were accustomed to being addressed as, for instance, "detainee No. NBP451" regained their names and recounted their stories to empathetic listeners.
Refugee advocates defied political leaders who had demonised asylum seekers as queue jumpers, illegal immigrants and even terrorists. They helped restore a sense of humanity and dignity to the severely traumatised. They engaged in campaigns on behalf of individuals and relentlessly lobbied politicians. They undertook the long journeys to detention centres such as state-of-the-art Baxter, enclosed in an electrified perimeter that Ruddock referred to as energised fences.
They were on hand when asylum seekers were finally released, and helped those left stranded without accommodation and basic material needs. Lawyers acted pro bono for long-term detainees and took test cases all the way to the High Court.
The network included organisations such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project, Chilout, Project SafeCom, A Just Australia, Rural Australians for Refugees, the Refugee Council, Amnesty, Oxfam and the Romero Centre, to name just a few Australia-wide. They provided material support to the destitute, and human contact to the abandoned.
Individual politicians defied party policies and campaigned for reform. One of the unsung heroes was Democrat senator Andrew Bartlett, who visited detention centres many times and was willing to fast in support of hunger strikers on Nauru.
Senator Chris Evans and the Rudd Government are to be congratulated on their proposed reforms. There remain many details to clarify and issues to be resolved, such as the level of government support to asylum seekers who will be released into the community. A hostel system, for instance, would provide secure accommodation while residents wait for a resolution of their cases.
The critical test for the new regime will come if, and when, the boatloads begin to arrive on our shores again. But while it remains to be seen how the new policies will operate, the proposed overhaul of the detention system is a humane and principled move. Already there are opposition rumblings and threats of veto in the Senate on the pretext of border security.
Most of those detained were eventually found to be genuine refugees. Many will bear the scars of their incarceration for the rest of their lives. Some have become addicted to drugs first prescribed behind the razor wire. Others require counselling years after release. I have seen the tears suddenly come at the mere mention of detention. And I have also seen children, such as the two Iranian girls I first met in Maribyrnong, grow into strong and resilient human beings. Australia is enriched by their presence.
Arnold Zable's latest novel, Sea of Many Returns, documents the journeys of earlier generations of immigrants in search of new lives. Published by Text Media
Normalizing Migration
Immigration Daily
May 9, 2008
by Patricia S. Mann
Reporting about any aspect of the current immigration situation with a calm, reasonable tone is very difficult. The new documentary film, Beyond Borders: The Debate Over Human Migration, directed by Brian Ging, and shown on May 1, as part of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, manages to be calm and reasonable, and very low key, even as it presents its inclusive, but finally provocative message: Every school child learns that the United States was founded upon immigration, and even that it has grown and thrived through a continuing series of immigration flows. Immigrants today, documented and undocumented, continue to contribute to the economic vitality of the United States, and indeed, a large inflow of immigrants is absolutely necessary for the continued economic - and political - well-being of the United States.1 Migration should be a human right.
Beyond Borders is not written or presented from the perspective of an immigration lawyer - legal references are kept to a minimum. But when AILA national leaders gave assembled AILA members a pep talk at the Lobby Day breakfast meeting on April 3, 2008, in Washington, D.C., the message they suggested we take to our representatives was strikingly similar: "Tell your legislators that immigration is a core American value, and the current broken system is hurting America." In fact, our problem as advocates that day was that legislators were prepared to readily agree with us, but they were not prepared to promise any legislative initiatives to cure the huge problems, or even to reign in the increasingly inhumane system of raids, detention, and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The gap between reasonable discourse, and immigration law and policy today is huge, shockingly, unnervingly, almost unspeakably huge. Perhaps the ultimate challenge for any documentary on the current immigration situation would be to confront the viewer with this cruel disjunction, posing it as one of the major political challenges of our time. But such a film would not be calm and reasonable.
Beyond Borders positions itself a bit above this embattled fray that we are immersed in as immigration lawyers. Through a series of talking heads, Beyond Borders makes the case for the economic, and finally political, logic of immigration today. The film unwinds as a series of close-ups, sometimes discomfitingly close close-ups, of 26 talking heads. In a non-ideological, utopian yet pragmatic tone characteristic of our post-socialist twenty-first century, Beyond Borders wants to persuade its audience that at a time when global flows of goods and capital are taken for granted, the global flow of bodies should be as well, and migration should be a human right.
One noteworthy aspect of the current immigration debate is that conservative intellectuals, ensconced in think tanks like the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C, are as likely to argue for the economic and political logic of immigration as are left-wing intellectuals like Noam Chomsky. In one of the most thought provoking interviews, Ben Wattenberg, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, explains that birth rates have declined precipitously in the past 50 years, and continue to decline, to a level below the replacement level, often far below the replacement level in Europe, Russia, Japan, the United States. He maintains that only large-scale immigration will allow the U.S. to maintain a population level to support a continuation of our political dominance. Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains that immigration has always presented the challenge of assimilation, but points to the fact that succeeding waves of immigrants have been successfully educated in America's core values, suggesting it will be no different for the current cohort of immigrants.
The film begins with a brief explanation of the three general categories according to which individuals may legally immigrate to the U.S., on the basis of either a family relationship, an economic relationship, or as a refugee fleeing persecution. Beyond Borders then examines the plight of those immigrants who choose to come without proper documentation, wisely choosing to focus on our treatment of undocumented immigrants from several small neighboring countries as exemplary of the larger problem. Cuba provides a great example of the capriciousness of U.S. laws, given that the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act allows those who reach American shores to adjust after a year, but mandates sending back those who are intercepted before reaching land. However, Cubans are treated far more generously than intending immigrants from Haiti, insofar as our country has no special laws allowing Haitians who currently reach our shores to apply for adjustment, and we send back a large proportion of those who attempt to emigrate from Haiti.
Without raising their voices, a number of talking heads make clear that our disparate treatment of Cuban and Haitian immigrants has both historical political roots (our opposition to Castro's rule), as well as continuing racial overtones (the blackness of Haitian immigrants). Beyond Borders' talking heads finally go on-sight in Haiti, showing us the crushing poverty, the multitudes of street children, the large numbers of intact family units in which neither parent has any possibility of finding employment to feed or house themselves and their children. An earnest young man, Sandro St. Jean, is interviewed. He was a street child, but was rescued from the streets by a missionary who encouraged him to paint pictures which the missionary then helped him sell. Mr. St. Jean explains his great fortune in meeting the missionary, but then further explains that the missionaries have all left due to ever higher levels of violence, and consequently he can no longer sell his paintings. The point is made that the poverty in Haiti is beyond our imagining, even when aided by the film's images. The further point is made that those who seek to emigrate do so out of a will to survive, and see no other choice.
It is a brilliant strategy to focus on Haiti as the example of a country from which undocumented individuals emigrate to the U.S. for economic reasons. Those of us who do asylum law are familiar with the plight of the hapless asylum applicant who has admitted in an airport interview that he or she was hoping to find a good job in the U.S. It is a coup for DHS when asylum candidates admit to economic motivations, for Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers construe economic motivations as undermining and contradicting claims for asylum. "So you were just coming to find a better job, you were coming out of personal greed, not in order to escape persecution," sneers the IJ.
We all know that even if people are fleeing persecution, they choose to flee to the U.S. rather than, say Mexico, because of the U.S.'s stellar reputation as a place where anyone who is willing to work hard can make enough to live on, and even enough to send money back home. As one talking head in Beyond Borders puts it, the U.S. has been known as a great economic machine, producing wealth for all those prepared to submit to its discipline. In any case, the example of Haiti, with its extreme levels of near universal poverty, implicitly juxtaposes economic motivations with asylum motivations, suggesting that in either case the appropriately humane response is one of welcoming the desperate immigrant. The immigrant fleeing Haitian poverty is not fleeing personalized death threats, but nevertheless is fleeing death by malnutrition, or roving street gangs, or right wing militias, or the death in life of absolute hopelessness.
The most well known talking head in Beyond Borders is MIT linguistics professor, Noam Chomsky, better known for the past 30 years as a fiery, radical political theorist, highly critical of American foreign policy. However, in Beyond Borders he is calm and understated in his suggestions as to how America can begin to resolve its problems with immigration. He explains that one part of the solution to our immigration problem is to attempt to ameliorate the very bad conditions in places like Haiti, that make people want to come here. Another talking head helpfully points out that the poorest countries in the western hemisphere are the countries where the U.S. has intervened the most. Haiti is the country with most U.S. interventions, and it is the poorest. Nicaragua is the second poorest, and lo, the country with the second highest number of U.S. interventions. The link between U.S. military interventions and poverty is not explored, however, and the even more obvious link between U.S. trade policies and poverty in the less developed world is not mentioned at all.
Beyond Borders also gives camera time to several representatives of contemporary anti-immigration politics. Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minute Man Project, a group whose aim is to prevent illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, is interviewed. Terry Anderson, a nationally syndicated black conservative talk show host from Los Angeles is also interviewed. These are engaged political activists, rather than conventional academic, talking heads, and their speech is emotional, rather than explanatory. They are emoting heads, representing the anger and fear of anti-immigrant politics. Their presence in the film reinforces the argument that opposition to immigration today is unreasoning and fear-ridden. What the film glosses over is the fact that the intense hostility of these anti-immigrant activists towards all those who arrive or remain on our shores without proper documentation is increasingly reflected in current laws and policies, from workplace raids to inhumane periods of detention, to expedited removal.
Beyond Borders was shown in early afternoon on May 1, as a lead-in to immigration rights activities planned for later that day, a march and a rally in NYC, corresponding with others across the country. May Day was historically celebrated by socialists as an international day of labor solidarity. In recent years, the day has been appropriated by immigration rights activists in the United States to emphasize the international labor solidarity issues under globalization, as international flows of workers ineluctably follow international flows of goods and capital.
It was only two years ago, on May 1, 2006, that huge immigration rights demonstrations took place all across the country, seeking to influence Congress to pass new comprehensive immigration reform legislation, enabling those millions of individuals who are working here undocumented to, as the phrase went, "come out of the shadows," and seek legalization. For various reasons, such legislation failed in 2006 and 2007, and is not a politically viable possibility currently. Undocumented, as well as documented immigrants today are ever more under attack, as politicians at all levels of government seize upon the expediency of anti-immigrant legislation, scape-goating those who cannot vote them out of office, laying all the problems of globalization at their tired, well-traveled feet.2 There are always many signs at May Day marches and demonstrations defiantly announcing, 'we are workers, not criminals.' But immigrants are scape-goated today precisely as workers.
The only jarring note in Beyond Borders is when, towards the end, someone intones that we need to find a "Middle Ground." Surely that is not the proper terminology to articulate an end to increasingly inhumane enforcement measures against the undocumented? Surely we do not yet have a conceptual framework within which a human right to migration could be won as any sort of Middle Ground. While Beyond Borders does not begin to suggest such a new framework, it encourages us to notice the possible need for one.
End Notes
1 Economists recognize the logic of immigration more readily than politicians. See, for example, "Open Letter on Immigration," June 19, 2006, signed by 500 economists, explaining the economic benefits of immigration to the United States. www.independent.org.
2 Migration, of course, is an age-old phenomenon, with many different historical causes. However, what is new with globalization is the systemic global movement of capital, goods, and also bodies, people providing labor to produce the goods, and to service the needs of those within richer societies within which birth rates have declined dramatically. Because of their vulnerability as new-comers within a foreign society, immigrants are easy scapegoats for whatever threats the society faces, or fears to face. Globalization, with all its momentous, but ambiguous and uncertain effects, has engendered such fears.This article was originally published on www.cyrusmehta.com on May 09, 2008
About The Author
Patricia S. Mann is an Associate at Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC where she works on immigration and nationality law matters. Before joining the firm, she successfully represented many clients in immigration court who had experienced persecution as a consequence of grass roots political activism in China. Pat received her J.D. in 2005 from New York University. Pat is admitted to practice in the Second Circuit, as well as the Eastern and Southern Districts. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, as well as the National Immigration Project, and the City Bar Committee on Immigration and Nationality Law.
May 9, 2008
by Patricia S. Mann
Reporting about any aspect of the current immigration situation with a calm, reasonable tone is very difficult. The new documentary film, Beyond Borders: The Debate Over Human Migration, directed by Brian Ging, and shown on May 1, as part of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, manages to be calm and reasonable, and very low key, even as it presents its inclusive, but finally provocative message: Every school child learns that the United States was founded upon immigration, and even that it has grown and thrived through a continuing series of immigration flows. Immigrants today, documented and undocumented, continue to contribute to the economic vitality of the United States, and indeed, a large inflow of immigrants is absolutely necessary for the continued economic - and political - well-being of the United States.1 Migration should be a human right.
Beyond Borders is not written or presented from the perspective of an immigration lawyer - legal references are kept to a minimum. But when AILA national leaders gave assembled AILA members a pep talk at the Lobby Day breakfast meeting on April 3, 2008, in Washington, D.C., the message they suggested we take to our representatives was strikingly similar: "Tell your legislators that immigration is a core American value, and the current broken system is hurting America." In fact, our problem as advocates that day was that legislators were prepared to readily agree with us, but they were not prepared to promise any legislative initiatives to cure the huge problems, or even to reign in the increasingly inhumane system of raids, detention, and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The gap between reasonable discourse, and immigration law and policy today is huge, shockingly, unnervingly, almost unspeakably huge. Perhaps the ultimate challenge for any documentary on the current immigration situation would be to confront the viewer with this cruel disjunction, posing it as one of the major political challenges of our time. But such a film would not be calm and reasonable.
Beyond Borders positions itself a bit above this embattled fray that we are immersed in as immigration lawyers. Through a series of talking heads, Beyond Borders makes the case for the economic, and finally political, logic of immigration today. The film unwinds as a series of close-ups, sometimes discomfitingly close close-ups, of 26 talking heads. In a non-ideological, utopian yet pragmatic tone characteristic of our post-socialist twenty-first century, Beyond Borders wants to persuade its audience that at a time when global flows of goods and capital are taken for granted, the global flow of bodies should be as well, and migration should be a human right.
One noteworthy aspect of the current immigration debate is that conservative intellectuals, ensconced in think tanks like the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C, are as likely to argue for the economic and political logic of immigration as are left-wing intellectuals like Noam Chomsky. In one of the most thought provoking interviews, Ben Wattenberg, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, explains that birth rates have declined precipitously in the past 50 years, and continue to decline, to a level below the replacement level, often far below the replacement level in Europe, Russia, Japan, the United States. He maintains that only large-scale immigration will allow the U.S. to maintain a population level to support a continuation of our political dominance. Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains that immigration has always presented the challenge of assimilation, but points to the fact that succeeding waves of immigrants have been successfully educated in America's core values, suggesting it will be no different for the current cohort of immigrants.
The film begins with a brief explanation of the three general categories according to which individuals may legally immigrate to the U.S., on the basis of either a family relationship, an economic relationship, or as a refugee fleeing persecution. Beyond Borders then examines the plight of those immigrants who choose to come without proper documentation, wisely choosing to focus on our treatment of undocumented immigrants from several small neighboring countries as exemplary of the larger problem. Cuba provides a great example of the capriciousness of U.S. laws, given that the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act allows those who reach American shores to adjust after a year, but mandates sending back those who are intercepted before reaching land. However, Cubans are treated far more generously than intending immigrants from Haiti, insofar as our country has no special laws allowing Haitians who currently reach our shores to apply for adjustment, and we send back a large proportion of those who attempt to emigrate from Haiti.
Without raising their voices, a number of talking heads make clear that our disparate treatment of Cuban and Haitian immigrants has both historical political roots (our opposition to Castro's rule), as well as continuing racial overtones (the blackness of Haitian immigrants). Beyond Borders' talking heads finally go on-sight in Haiti, showing us the crushing poverty, the multitudes of street children, the large numbers of intact family units in which neither parent has any possibility of finding employment to feed or house themselves and their children. An earnest young man, Sandro St. Jean, is interviewed. He was a street child, but was rescued from the streets by a missionary who encouraged him to paint pictures which the missionary then helped him sell. Mr. St. Jean explains his great fortune in meeting the missionary, but then further explains that the missionaries have all left due to ever higher levels of violence, and consequently he can no longer sell his paintings. The point is made that the poverty in Haiti is beyond our imagining, even when aided by the film's images. The further point is made that those who seek to emigrate do so out of a will to survive, and see no other choice.
It is a brilliant strategy to focus on Haiti as the example of a country from which undocumented individuals emigrate to the U.S. for economic reasons. Those of us who do asylum law are familiar with the plight of the hapless asylum applicant who has admitted in an airport interview that he or she was hoping to find a good job in the U.S. It is a coup for DHS when asylum candidates admit to economic motivations, for Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers construe economic motivations as undermining and contradicting claims for asylum. "So you were just coming to find a better job, you were coming out of personal greed, not in order to escape persecution," sneers the IJ.
We all know that even if people are fleeing persecution, they choose to flee to the U.S. rather than, say Mexico, because of the U.S.'s stellar reputation as a place where anyone who is willing to work hard can make enough to live on, and even enough to send money back home. As one talking head in Beyond Borders puts it, the U.S. has been known as a great economic machine, producing wealth for all those prepared to submit to its discipline. In any case, the example of Haiti, with its extreme levels of near universal poverty, implicitly juxtaposes economic motivations with asylum motivations, suggesting that in either case the appropriately humane response is one of welcoming the desperate immigrant. The immigrant fleeing Haitian poverty is not fleeing personalized death threats, but nevertheless is fleeing death by malnutrition, or roving street gangs, or right wing militias, or the death in life of absolute hopelessness.
The most well known talking head in Beyond Borders is MIT linguistics professor, Noam Chomsky, better known for the past 30 years as a fiery, radical political theorist, highly critical of American foreign policy. However, in Beyond Borders he is calm and understated in his suggestions as to how America can begin to resolve its problems with immigration. He explains that one part of the solution to our immigration problem is to attempt to ameliorate the very bad conditions in places like Haiti, that make people want to come here. Another talking head helpfully points out that the poorest countries in the western hemisphere are the countries where the U.S. has intervened the most. Haiti is the country with most U.S. interventions, and it is the poorest. Nicaragua is the second poorest, and lo, the country with the second highest number of U.S. interventions. The link between U.S. military interventions and poverty is not explored, however, and the even more obvious link between U.S. trade policies and poverty in the less developed world is not mentioned at all.
Beyond Borders also gives camera time to several representatives of contemporary anti-immigration politics. Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minute Man Project, a group whose aim is to prevent illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, is interviewed. Terry Anderson, a nationally syndicated black conservative talk show host from Los Angeles is also interviewed. These are engaged political activists, rather than conventional academic, talking heads, and their speech is emotional, rather than explanatory. They are emoting heads, representing the anger and fear of anti-immigrant politics. Their presence in the film reinforces the argument that opposition to immigration today is unreasoning and fear-ridden. What the film glosses over is the fact that the intense hostility of these anti-immigrant activists towards all those who arrive or remain on our shores without proper documentation is increasingly reflected in current laws and policies, from workplace raids to inhumane periods of detention, to expedited removal.
Beyond Borders was shown in early afternoon on May 1, as a lead-in to immigration rights activities planned for later that day, a march and a rally in NYC, corresponding with others across the country. May Day was historically celebrated by socialists as an international day of labor solidarity. In recent years, the day has been appropriated by immigration rights activists in the United States to emphasize the international labor solidarity issues under globalization, as international flows of workers ineluctably follow international flows of goods and capital.
It was only two years ago, on May 1, 2006, that huge immigration rights demonstrations took place all across the country, seeking to influence Congress to pass new comprehensive immigration reform legislation, enabling those millions of individuals who are working here undocumented to, as the phrase went, "come out of the shadows," and seek legalization. For various reasons, such legislation failed in 2006 and 2007, and is not a politically viable possibility currently. Undocumented, as well as documented immigrants today are ever more under attack, as politicians at all levels of government seize upon the expediency of anti-immigrant legislation, scape-goating those who cannot vote them out of office, laying all the problems of globalization at their tired, well-traveled feet.2 There are always many signs at May Day marches and demonstrations defiantly announcing, 'we are workers, not criminals.' But immigrants are scape-goated today precisely as workers.
The only jarring note in Beyond Borders is when, towards the end, someone intones that we need to find a "Middle Ground." Surely that is not the proper terminology to articulate an end to increasingly inhumane enforcement measures against the undocumented? Surely we do not yet have a conceptual framework within which a human right to migration could be won as any sort of Middle Ground. While Beyond Borders does not begin to suggest such a new framework, it encourages us to notice the possible need for one.
End Notes
1 Economists recognize the logic of immigration more readily than politicians. See, for example, "Open Letter on Immigration," June 19, 2006, signed by 500 economists, explaining the economic benefits of immigration to the United States. www.independent.org.
2 Migration, of course, is an age-old phenomenon, with many different historical causes. However, what is new with globalization is the systemic global movement of capital, goods, and also bodies, people providing labor to produce the goods, and to service the needs of those within richer societies within which birth rates have declined dramatically. Because of their vulnerability as new-comers within a foreign society, immigrants are easy scapegoats for whatever threats the society faces, or fears to face. Globalization, with all its momentous, but ambiguous and uncertain effects, has engendered such fears.This article was originally published on www.cyrusmehta.com on May 09, 2008
About The Author
Patricia S. Mann is an Associate at Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC where she works on immigration and nationality law matters. Before joining the firm, she successfully represented many clients in immigration court who had experienced persecution as a consequence of grass roots political activism in China. Pat received her J.D. in 2005 from New York University. Pat is admitted to practice in the Second Circuit, as well as the Eastern and Southern Districts. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, as well as the National Immigration Project, and the City Bar Committee on Immigration and Nationality Law.
Migrants boost the economy
The Border Watch
Posted on August 25, 2008, 8.08am
A report by respected economic analyst Access Economics shows that new migrants to Australia deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to the Commonwealth budget and the broader economy every year.
The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, said the overall economic impact of migration is substantially positive and grows over time in real terms.
In its Migrant Fiscal Impact Model: 2008 Update, Access looked at the costs that migrants impose on health, education, welfare, employment and settlement services compared to the fiscal benefits from taxation and visa charges.
For the 2006-07 migration program, Access estimated a total benefit of $536 million in the first year, then another $856 million in year two, growing steadily over time to reach $1.34 billion by year 20.
“Applying the same modelling to the 2007-08 migration program, the net fiscal benefit is $610 million in year one, $965 million in year two then growing to $1.5 billion by year 20,” Senator Evans said.
“The forecast for the 2008-09 migration program is for an $829 million benefit in the first year, $1.16 billion in the second year, then $1.8 billion by year 20.”
Senator Evans said the Access modelling dispelled the myth that new migrants imposed a huge impost on the taxpayer.
“The positive fiscal impact is particularly pronounced for skilled migrants, which reflects their high rate of labour market participation and higher incomes which in turn leads to a high level of direct tax receipts,” Senator Evans said.
“Migrants also contribute to the broader economy through spending on goods and services.
“As well as the economic benefits, skilled migrants help Australian employers fill critical labour gaps at a time many businesses are facing capacity constraints.
“The bottom line is that our migration program is vital to keep the economy growing as well as helping Australian businesses overcome skills and labour shortages.
“Australia is facing a demographic shift that will see more people retire than join the workforce so the permanent skilled migration program provides a stable, effective and targeted source of skilled workers.”
Australia’s migration program increased annually over the last decade under the previous government to the point where the 2007-08 migration program was the biggest provided by Australia since the 1960s.
The 2007-08 migration program comprised 108,540 places (68pc) in the skilled migration stream and 49,870 places (31pc) in the family migration stream. Another 13,000 refugee and humanitarian visas were granted in 2007-08.
Last year’s intake represents a seven per cent increase on the 2006-07 migration program which totalled 158,960 places, of which two thirds (97,920) were skilled migrants.
The 2008-09 migration program is expected to total 203,000 visa grants, with 133,500 allocated for skilled migrants and 56 500 places in the family stream. A further 13,500 places are for refugee and humanitarian entrants.
The Access Economics Migrant Fiscal Impact Model: 2008 Update is available online.
Posted on August 25, 2008, 8.08am
A report by respected economic analyst Access Economics shows that new migrants to Australia deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to the Commonwealth budget and the broader economy every year.
The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, said the overall economic impact of migration is substantially positive and grows over time in real terms.
In its Migrant Fiscal Impact Model: 2008 Update, Access looked at the costs that migrants impose on health, education, welfare, employment and settlement services compared to the fiscal benefits from taxation and visa charges.
For the 2006-07 migration program, Access estimated a total benefit of $536 million in the first year, then another $856 million in year two, growing steadily over time to reach $1.34 billion by year 20.
“Applying the same modelling to the 2007-08 migration program, the net fiscal benefit is $610 million in year one, $965 million in year two then growing to $1.5 billion by year 20,” Senator Evans said.
“The forecast for the 2008-09 migration program is for an $829 million benefit in the first year, $1.16 billion in the second year, then $1.8 billion by year 20.”
Senator Evans said the Access modelling dispelled the myth that new migrants imposed a huge impost on the taxpayer.
“The positive fiscal impact is particularly pronounced for skilled migrants, which reflects their high rate of labour market participation and higher incomes which in turn leads to a high level of direct tax receipts,” Senator Evans said.
“Migrants also contribute to the broader economy through spending on goods and services.
“As well as the economic benefits, skilled migrants help Australian employers fill critical labour gaps at a time many businesses are facing capacity constraints.
“The bottom line is that our migration program is vital to keep the economy growing as well as helping Australian businesses overcome skills and labour shortages.
“Australia is facing a demographic shift that will see more people retire than join the workforce so the permanent skilled migration program provides a stable, effective and targeted source of skilled workers.”
Australia’s migration program increased annually over the last decade under the previous government to the point where the 2007-08 migration program was the biggest provided by Australia since the 1960s.
The 2007-08 migration program comprised 108,540 places (68pc) in the skilled migration stream and 49,870 places (31pc) in the family migration stream. Another 13,000 refugee and humanitarian visas were granted in 2007-08.
Last year’s intake represents a seven per cent increase on the 2006-07 migration program which totalled 158,960 places, of which two thirds (97,920) were skilled migrants.
The 2008-09 migration program is expected to total 203,000 visa grants, with 133,500 allocated for skilled migrants and 56 500 places in the family stream. A further 13,500 places are for refugee and humanitarian entrants.
The Access Economics Migrant Fiscal Impact Model: 2008 Update is available online.
Spouses struggle with job search
The Border Watch
Posted on July 23, 2008, 6.06pm
The spouses of two skilled migrants said although they were happy in Mount Gambier, they would not hesitate to move away if their spouses found work elsewhere.
Marselle Young, a qualified electrician from South Africa, arrived in Mount Gambier on June 1 with his wife when she was sponsored on a Temporary Business Long Stay subclass 457 visa to work as a doctor at the Mount Gambier Hospital.
He told The Border Watch if he could not find work in the South East, he would encourage his wife to find work in a big city where it would be easier for him to also find work.
“I have applied for about 20 positions as an electrician, but I have not received a single phone call back - not even to say, sorry, we are not interested,” Mr Young said.
“Mount Gambier is a great city and the people make me feel welcome, but I get the impression employers are suspicious of my abilities simply because I am not an Aussie.”
Claudia Cecchi migrated from Italy to Mount Gambier with her husband, a qualified and experienced engineer, two years ago.
She said although she was a psychologist, she was regarded as unskilled because of her lack of confidence when speaking English.
Mrs Cecchi, who lived in Mexico and Italy for many years, said she attended English classes at TAFE and hoped it would enable her to find work.
“I am starting to feel old and depressed because life is not inside the home, but out there and I need to contribute to the community again,” she said.
“If I can’t find work here, we will move to another city where both my husband and I will find work.”
ANELIA BLACKIE
Posted on July 23, 2008, 6.06pm
The spouses of two skilled migrants said although they were happy in Mount Gambier, they would not hesitate to move away if their spouses found work elsewhere.
Marselle Young, a qualified electrician from South Africa, arrived in Mount Gambier on June 1 with his wife when she was sponsored on a Temporary Business Long Stay subclass 457 visa to work as a doctor at the Mount Gambier Hospital.
He told The Border Watch if he could not find work in the South East, he would encourage his wife to find work in a big city where it would be easier for him to also find work.
“I have applied for about 20 positions as an electrician, but I have not received a single phone call back - not even to say, sorry, we are not interested,” Mr Young said.
“Mount Gambier is a great city and the people make me feel welcome, but I get the impression employers are suspicious of my abilities simply because I am not an Aussie.”
Claudia Cecchi migrated from Italy to Mount Gambier with her husband, a qualified and experienced engineer, two years ago.
She said although she was a psychologist, she was regarded as unskilled because of her lack of confidence when speaking English.
Mrs Cecchi, who lived in Mexico and Italy for many years, said she attended English classes at TAFE and hoped it would enable her to find work.
“I am starting to feel old and depressed because life is not inside the home, but out there and I need to contribute to the community again,” she said.
“If I can’t find work here, we will move to another city where both my husband and I will find work.”
ANELIA BLACKIE
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Australia boosts skilled migration numbers in budget
May 2008
Australia will boost its skilled migrant intake 30 percent to record levels in a bid to overcome a shortage of skilled workers, the government said Tuesday.
As part of the centre-left Labor government’s first budget, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said an extra 31,000 skilled migrants would be allowed into Australia permanently in 2008-2009.
Evans said the extra allocation would take skilled migrant numbers to 133,500 for the year, by far the largest component of Australia’s total migrant intake of 190,300.
He said former prime minister John Howard’s conservative government had not allowed enough skilled migrants into Australia, leaving employers struggling to fill vacancies.
“This record increase in the number of places in the permanent skilled migration program … will help ease Australia’s skills shortage and help fight inflation,” he said.
Evans said research showed that labor market participation by permanent skilled migrants was more than 90 percent.
In addition, he said more than 100,000 temporary skilled migrants were expected in Australia in 2008-2009.
Evans announced another break with the Howard government’s policies with the abolition of the controversial Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) system for asylum seekers.
Under the system, asylum seekers who arrived by boat were eligible only for TPVs, meaning they had no travel rights, reduced access to refugee settlement services and could not be reunited with family members already in Australia.
Evans labeled the system unjust and said about 1,000 refugees holding TPVs would be granted permanent visas, provided they met security and character requirements.
“The Temporary Protection Visa was one of the worst aspects of the Howard government’s punitive treatment of refugees, many of whom had suffered enormously before fleeing to Australia,” he said.
“There is clear evidence that the TPV arrangements did nothing to prevent unauthorized boat arrivals.”
Source: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=118064
Australia will boost its skilled migrant intake 30 percent to record levels in a bid to overcome a shortage of skilled workers, the government said Tuesday.
As part of the centre-left Labor government’s first budget, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said an extra 31,000 skilled migrants would be allowed into Australia permanently in 2008-2009.
Evans said the extra allocation would take skilled migrant numbers to 133,500 for the year, by far the largest component of Australia’s total migrant intake of 190,300.
He said former prime minister John Howard’s conservative government had not allowed enough skilled migrants into Australia, leaving employers struggling to fill vacancies.
“This record increase in the number of places in the permanent skilled migration program … will help ease Australia’s skills shortage and help fight inflation,” he said.
Evans said research showed that labor market participation by permanent skilled migrants was more than 90 percent.
In addition, he said more than 100,000 temporary skilled migrants were expected in Australia in 2008-2009.
Evans announced another break with the Howard government’s policies with the abolition of the controversial Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) system for asylum seekers.
Under the system, asylum seekers who arrived by boat were eligible only for TPVs, meaning they had no travel rights, reduced access to refugee settlement services and could not be reunited with family members already in Australia.
Evans labeled the system unjust and said about 1,000 refugees holding TPVs would be granted permanent visas, provided they met security and character requirements.
“The Temporary Protection Visa was one of the worst aspects of the Howard government’s punitive treatment of refugees, many of whom had suffered enormously before fleeing to Australia,” he said.
“There is clear evidence that the TPV arrangements did nothing to prevent unauthorized boat arrivals.”
Source: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=118064
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