Refugees: Boats or Ships?
After WW2 migrants used to come to Australia on a big ship or by plane. Some were also helped by having their passage to this country subsidised. Many of these migrants went to work on the Snowy Mountain Scheme... creating for Australia one of its major water networks. Others remained on farms to help with agricultural needs and then becoming owners of farm lands themselves. My father worked building railway tracks in Northern and Central Victoria for the first few years. These migrants left a legacy of achievements for Australia. Benefits that still continue to contribute to our way of life. It is a little perplexing that we have not developed a more favourable policy for the resettlement of refugees who come across the dangerous seas on flimsy boats! They are paying top dollar for a dangerous journey to our land of opportunity!
Some people will claim that this illegal act must be stopped. Stop the Boats, protect our Borders and similar type slogans seem a shallow answer to what is a humanitarian reality on a global level. The United Nations should establish ports of call for refugees in countries of origin where people want to escape or in neighbouring countries that attract the 50 million refugees to be served with a first class opportunity to settle in more isolated areas within any particular country of resettlement. We in Australia need to develop the North of this vast continent. We need more people to go into regional Australia and into mining areas.
Our Government should welcome refugees but make it clear that whoever arrives will be resettled for a number of years in newer areas of settlement. This gives our Government the opportunity to monitor progress of resettlement with a view of ensuring that the refugees are actually genuine. After a few years, these refugee migrants will be given the opportunity to become Australian Citizens or Citizens of any Country of their choice where they have resettled. It would be only right that when this happens, the refugee migrant will move around their new country wherever they wish. Mobility with residency and citizenship are rights within a Nation.
I am surprised that a welcome mat has not been laid in front of desperate people who are escaping real or perceived personal dangers. People who are willing to risk it all for a better life. So identify the areas of Australia where people are needed and build these places with the necessary infrastructure that allows people to live with dignity. Coming to live in a large metropolitan area on arrival seems to be the least preferred option. In smaller communities or regional centres it is much more easy to provide all necessary assistance and maintain security within Australia. We have experience in the migrant and multicultural areas that are advanced by the standards of most nations of our Planet Earth. A planet that is a unified geographical reality seen from outer space. So we should develop and use the philosophies of our Indigenous people who believed that the Earth owned us rather than the other way round!
It's soon election time, refugees who are not able to access first class means of transport and the legal welcome that a United Nations led Refugee Program could provide, will keep on catching the only boats available to them to enter illegally the new country of their choice. This is a great compliment to Australia since we obviously have a good reputation around the world for our standard of living, education and health provisions, humanitarian record and many other positive attributes that others perceive in their judgement of this great modern Nation. Let's lead in this area of human suffering by providing assistance according to a formula worked out by the United Nations for our quota of refugees from around the world. Anyone who wants to arrive here illegally should be processed by a United Nations Refugee Organization and be allowed immediate entry ... with the proviso that they sign up to what their host country wants from them.
I am making these suggestions in the hope that people could back up these ideas and provide those in the seat of power alternatives to what has up to now been a very frustrating modus operandi! Give all Boat people a passage on World Class Liners, let the United Nations process these Refugees, put some order to this tragic reality of displaced people. Those people who are not genuine recipient of National generosity must be given a less favourable alternative! But if they are refugees... they are still human and they too need our help. Let fraternity be the answer!
