Know the Facts
WHEN YOU KNOW THE FACTS YOU WILL OPEN YOUR HEART
- Australia receives very few asylum seekers compared to other countries.
The number of unauthorised arrivals has never been much more than 4000 in
any one year. Sweden, with about half our population, receives a similar number.
Iran and Pakistan, two of the world's poorest countries, each host over a
million Afghan refugees.
- No other country has non-reviewable mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
In Australia they are placed indefinitely in detention camps with limited
access to services; in most other Western countries they live in the community
while their applications are being processed. For example, in Sweden they
are allowed out of detention as soon as they have gone through identification
and criminal screening.
- Australia's annual quota of refugees is only 12,000. And most years
we don't even manage to fill that. This is minuscule compared with the numbers
other countries take.
- We treat children like criminals. Children are not exempt from mandatory
detention in Australia. Some have been imprisoned for years. In Sweden the
maximum time a child is kept in custody is six days.
- 60% of refugees are victims of torture or severe trauma. But in Australia
they are treated like criminals rather than ordinary people fleeing persecution.
PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR SHOES
- Anyone can be a refugee. Boat people are ordinary men and women, many of them urban professionals, who are fleeing their countries because of war or persecution.
- Most asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq are legitimate. 93%
of Afghans and 97% of Iraqis are found to be genuine refugees.
- Boat people are not illegal. Under the UN Refugee Convention, which has applied for fifty years, Australia has an obligation to take in asylum seekers and assess their claims. They are in a totally different category from immigrants. The real 'illegals' are the 14,000 Britons or Americans caught each year for overstaying their visas.
- There is no queue to jump. Australia has no embassy in Iraq or Afghanistan for people to apply to for a visa. In overseas refugee camps there is frequently no resettlement process available. Where one exists it is often ad hoc, agonisingly slow and corrupt.
SOME FACTS
- Number of Refugees and Asylum Seekers Worldwide in 2000. 14,500,000
people (World Refugee Survey 2001, U.S. Committee for Refugees)
- In the three year period from July 1999 to June 2002 some 9,160 unauthorised
boat arrivals, mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq, applied for Protection visas
within Australia's migration zone. of these over 90% were found to be genuine
refugees (source Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous
Affairs (DIMIA) 2002
-2003 Annual Report)
- Number of Children and Adults in Australian Detention Centres as at 11
Feb 2004. At least 174 children in detention and approximately 977 Adults
A further 277 asylum seekers are detained on Nauru. (These figures are
based on DIMIA
statistics as at Februaru 11, 2004 and the Senate
Estimates report, February 2004).
- Numbers of People Estimated as Illegally Overstaying Visa's as Compared
to Unauthorised Arrivals. (These figures are based on DIMIA
statistics as at30 June 2003)
- Illegal Overstayers: 59,800 (as of July 2003, 20% of all overstayers
came from either the UK or the US)
- Unauthorised Arrivals: 1,277 people arrived on seven boats for
the year ending June 2002 (ie., approx 2% of Illegal Overstayers !!!)
LET US NOT CONFUSE REFUGEES WITH THE TERRORISTS AND MURDERERS THEY ARE FLEEING
- Many of the 'boatpeople' from Afghanistan and Iraq have fled the very regimes our Government has condemned and been prepared to go to war over. Asylum seekers see Australia as a safe and democratic country in which they hope to have a far better future.
After World War II the Snowy Mountains Scheme was built largely with the labour of thousands of refugees. Let us again give refugees a chance to contribute to this country in the twenty first century. Let's give them a fair go!
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