The Sri Lankan authorities are reportedly happy with the idea that Australian Immigration has decided to increase the intake of legal refugees into the country from these shores
The Sri Lankan authorities are reportedly happy with the idea that Australian Immigration has decided to increase the intake of legal refugees into the country from these shores. This move comes in tandem with the agreement with Papua New Guinea and Nauru to process the boat people who leave Sri Lanka and other countries, with the intent of being taken in as refugees in Australia.
The new so called Houston document which earmarks the plan has however come in for criticism. Some Sri Lankan experts have been quoted in the Australian press and elsewhere saying that any loosening of immigration regulations in relation to refugees, would in fact encourage new boatloads of people. Their reasoning is based on the fact that these people go on the basis that any call for migrants — albeit one for legal ones — is a signal that Australia is willing to entertain more people from abroad.
It is apparently correct that Australia has a shortfall in labour anyhow, and that the country is looking for numbers to augment the population, but not necessarily as unskilled undocumented boat-persons, who are mostly uneducated!
Irrespective of what the general policy may be regarding these unfortunate people, it is by now clear that Australian attitudes with regard to the issue have been at best confused, and at worst utterly hypocritical. Recently, the Australian High Commissioner here more or less admitted that since Australian humanitarian policy compels that the boat people are processed once they land in Australian shores, the onus is on the Sri Lankan government and naval forces to see that the boats don’t leave this country in the first place!
Does that policy in effect mean that anybody who successfully gets on a boat and gets there Down Under, is considered a persecuted person or some kind of refugee, economic or otherwise — while their brethren, however similarly dire their circumstances are, must be considered people leading perfect lives back in Sri Lanka, the country from which the boats originate?
The hypocrisy of the position is risible — but also what’s tragic is that nobody seems to take into account the ugly facts about human smuggling in considering any of these equations.
Most of the people who get on boats are not in themselves, desperate seekers of refugee status. They are not being persecuted, though there may be isolated cases of police excess, etc., in relation to some — a phenomenon certainly not peculiar to people in this country. However, not un-typically in a country such as this, they are people whose economic prospects are not very sanguine, to put things mildly.
It’s the rapacious human smugglers that prey on such individuals, aided and abetted of course by the unscrupulous elements in the so called ‘Tamil diaspora’ who would make use of any stick with which to beat the Sri Lankan government.
That so many hundreds of thousands of people are feeling ‘persecution’ in Sri Lanka, is a story that they can milk for good advantage and therefore this nexus of ignorant people susceptible to being duped, the vultures who prey on them, plus the diaspora which cheers on, and the authorities that want to keep up the charade going, makes up for a cocktail of misery and misfortune that could not have been imagined in a Dickensian novel.
Nobody believes that the new Houston plan would make this sad situation any significantly better. It certainly does help the Australians because having outsourced the problem, they are not constrained by the human rights laws and conventions they swear by as long as these apply on home soil...
But that would still not deter the ignorant boat people, or the rapacious smugglers. What it means then, is that there is bound to be a lot more misery, unless of course the Sri Lankan government steps in to help these hapless people by patrolling the seas to ensure that they do not purchase that ticket to a miserable limbo in Papua New Guinea, or Nauru.
The entire situation is unbelievable. The government is being asked to step in to save the people from their own folly, while the Australians are able to retain their own fig-leaf of morality that turns roughly on the principle ‘we do not turn back those who may be legitimate refugees.’
You could say it is the way things turnout, the way the ‘cookie crumbles.’ The poorest, and the most desperate and ignorant suffer, while the powerful maintain their facade of morality and those in-between struggle to ensure that the exploitation and human suffering, though severe, is somehow mitigated.
The best way to tackle the problem is to crackdown on the human smugglers, but that’s easier said than done, and the Australians are not helping a whole lot on this score either, though some lip service is bound to be paid in that cause. In sum, expect a lot more people to suffer before this story ends, and of course, expect a lot more lofty sentiments from Canberra, and cheering from Sydney, Montreal, Toronto or London where the Diaspora is watching this ongoing pornography of misery unfold, eagerly awaiting more.
(LB)