Re-located refugees from Australia

[What Your Name?]

The Australian immigration policy has to be the joke of the century. Boat people who endevour to land on Australian shores are escorted to detention centres on Christmas Island, Nauru or Manis Island(Papua New Guinea), never mainland Australia. The Australian government sees fit to 'bribe' these countries, at exhorbitant cost, to 'temporarily' house them until a re-location country can be found.

The Australian government has provided the Cambodian Government with entitlements of $A55m to repatriate the on forwarded asylum seekers. Now here's the punchline, so far 5 refugees have been sent, but 3 of those have opted to return to their countries of origin, leaving a remaining 2. In all, a costly exercise in the extreme, approx $10m per person, and a highly convoluted farcical solution.

Why should the Aussie taxpayer not see red?

[LTO]

Okay, I am very hesitant to make any comment at all. This is all way too political and emotional and I in no way know the ins and outs of this particular debate, or the refugee issue in general, not even enough to get the vocabulary right. But one question, (and leaving aside all of the Aussie politics, money and treatment of the 'refugees'), if these people are 'refugees,' thus presumably escaping some intolerable horror in their own country for a new home, why isn't Cambodia, our home, good enough for them? If they are really refugees, why is going to a 1st world country the only acceptable destination? Seems rather like claiming that you are starving and need help but will only accept imported steaks and fois gras to assuage your claimed hunger. Doesn't fried rice and noodles fill the belly just as well?

[kinard]

Denying asylum to people who are not even allowed on 'strayan soil is a bit like bowling an underarm ball.

[dunderish]

As the previous poster pointed out, they are not genuine refugees piled up in NAuru and Xmas island. And 5 million is peanuts if it gets the message out that phony refugees will be treated as such. Australia would be overrun like Sweden has already been if silly policies based on leftist ideas of human rights were applied. The refugee advocates always assume that the numbers will stay small and manageable. They would be right if most refugees were running for their lives like the vietnamese boat people in the 70's but the reality is that fake refugees only want to get to places where they can receive government provided benefits

[badboybubby]

if these people are 'refugees,' thus presumably escaping some intolerable horror in their own country for a new home, why isn't Cambodia, our home, good enough for them? If they are really refugees, why is going to a 1st world country the only acceptable destination?

i don't think this is the central issue though often you'd think it was from the way that things get reported...the prejudice is that most people arriving by boat are not seen as genuine refugees and i don't think this is supported by the evidence...

the central issues are the legality/morality of offshore detention (i think australia's the only country that has it as their principal policy)...then there are the often poor conditions of detention which can drag on for years without favourable outcome...

[Barang_doa_slae]

if these people are 'refugees,' thus presumably escaping some intolerable horror in their own country for a new home, why isn't Cambodia, our home, good enough for them? If they are really refugees, why is going to a 1st world country the only acceptable destination?

i don't think this is the central issue though often you'd think it was from the way that things get reported...the prejudice is that most people arriving by boat are not seen as genuine refugees and i don't think this is supported by the evidence...

the central issues are the legality/morality of offshore detention (i think australia's the only country that has it as their principal policy)...then there are the often poor conditions of detention which can drag on for years without favourable outcome...

Australian refugee camps and immigration policies are fascist by nature, period.

[LTO]

if these people are 'refugees,' thus presumably escaping some intolerable horror in their own country for a new home, why isn't Cambodia, our home, good enough for them? If they are really refugees, why is going to a 1st world country the only acceptable destination?

i don't think this is the central issue though often you'd think it was from the way that things get reported...the prejudice is that most people arriving by boat are not seen as genuine refugees and i don't think this is supported by the evidence...

And yet 3 out of 5 of the admittedly small sample of them we have here chose to go back home when they ended up in Cambodia rather than Australia. That would seem on the surface to be evidence that most (at least of this group) were not 'genuine refugees.'

[prahocalypse now]

Australian refugee camps and immigration policies are fascist by nature, period.

Are you saying that the experience of being a refugee in one of the Australian detention centers is similar to that allegedly
experienced in Nazi Germany?



http://www.smh.com.au/national/border-f ... ndz4a.html

[ali baba]

It isn't $10m per person since it is an open ended deal and more fugees may be sent in the future and the Aussies probably count the reduction in the number of arrivals by boat, which has been impressive. It is a good policy and should be extended to asylum seekers arriving in Australia by air since by Australia's own standards these ASs are less likely to be genuine than those who arrive by boat.

[prahocalypse now]

It isn't $10m per person since it is an open ended deal and more fugees may be sent in the future ...

I hope they don't send Lauren Hill.

[RainMan]

I followed this debacle for a while, Scott Morrison was the minister for border protection at the time and drinking champers while handing over 55 mill to Cambodia, a year or so later he is now Australian treasurer, I give up, the whole thing is laughable.

[Lucky Lucan]

It isn't $10m per person since..........

Thanks for being one of the only people who seems to have noticed this. The $40 million or whatever is part of a larger program, which will likely save the Aussie tax-payers a lot in the long term. I don't particularly agree with the program, but as others have noted, it isn't exactly hell on earth around here.

[RainMan]

It isn't $10m per person since it is an open ended deal and more fugees may be sent in the future ...

I hope they don't send Lauren Hill.

The refugees have to volunteer, they can't be sent involuntarily.

[Falcon Randwick]

I heard today on the ABC that another one has bailed and there's only 1 ex-Nauru reffo left in Cambodia. Great piece of asshat policy...