I AGREE with Michael Cashman (CL 2/3/14) “governments are obliged to look at the broader picture”.
But that is just where we are not well served by our current and previous leaders.
There is no attempt to present us with the world situation regarding movement of asylum seekers and refugees, the reasons for this movement or the proportionate flow to different nations and, in particular, the disproportionate numbers arriving at the borders of developing countries.
Australia is portrayed as a country being overwhelmed by the arrival of asylum seekers by boat.
Your lead photo reminds us that people arrive by boat on other shores.
In the years following our signing of the Refugee Convention when we did not have people in any number coming to our shores to seek protection, we offered to take a quota from overseas.
These refugees were people we chose just as we did with migrants.
This then became the acceptable way genuine refugees came.
We were not accustomed, as is the case in many other nations, to have people at our borders.
It became easy for politicians and others to demonise as “illegals” coming the wrong way, those exercising a right we had agreed to under the Convention.
With no reference to the numbers throughout the world who seek asylum we, who over many years have chosen a fixed quota for resettlement, have repeatedly been told we are among the most generous.
In reality through this quota system only a small percentage of the world’s refugees are accepted for resettlement by a handful of nations.
Most seek protection by arriving in countries that respect human rights.
People with experience in the refugee area recommend a proper regional solution.
I do not believe the trade or the people smugglers will ever be entirely stopped.
Possibly interrupted if, as at present, force and indefinite detention are used.
Certainly it will be slowed if alternative pathways give hope of resettlement.
People motivated by different goals will always be prepared to risk their lives – soldiers doing their duty, missionaries spreading their faith, aid workers helping their fellow human beings, lifesavers preventing drownings, adventurers answering a challenge and especially, asylum seekers needing safety and freedom.
And the latter in their vulnerable situation will continue to have recourse to intermediaries, among whom will be the unscrupulous.
Devising acceptable policies is not easy.
However, politicians seeking the support of their people should not in the process contravene universal principles such as “doing unto others what we would wish done to ourselves” or disregard the conventions we have signed which respect the dignity and rights of men, women and children.
Leaders of another era have shown what is possible.
Genevieve Caffery
Greenslopes QLD
[divider]
