Australia: Conservative immigration spokesman rejects "extremist" tag
THE opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, has rallied to the defence of "the mob" who oppose the carbon tax and boat arrivals and said "sound-minded" Australians were being demonised by Labor as extremists.
In a National Press Club address, he hit back at race-baiting claims and said the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, "needs to stop insulting Australians for disagreeing with her".
Reviving a theme from his election blog last August, Mr Morrison said "the mob" raised families and paid taxes. The Liberals would stay faithful to them because they were the same people as Menzies' forgotten people and Howard's battlers.
However the extremist tag has caused ructions within the Liberal Party, particularly after the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, appeared beside offensive posters at a rally opposing the carbon tax and Mr Morrison made comments on talkback radio about asylum seeker funerals.
Questions about "the moral burden" of decisions in the immigration debate should also be applied to the government's policies, Mr Morrison said yesterday.
"What we are seeing in the absolute mess and misery of our detention network - of those who are drowning at sea, or crashing against rocks at Christmas Island, or those who are wasting in camps as group after group come … I don't accept that as a morally acceptable outcome," he said.
Another boat, carrying 37 asylum seekers, was intercepted yesterday and will be taken to Christmas Island, the first since riots broke out this month.
Refugee advocates said yesterday a man held at the Curtin detention centre was in hospital after trying to hang himself.
A 20-year-old Afghan man took his life at the same centre on Monday, and another 20-year-old Afghan committed suicide at the Scherger centre in Queensland a fortnight ago.
A mental health adviser, Professor Louise Newman, has warned of "suicide clusters" in detention centres and has asked the Immigration Department to review its policy. The government has said the deaths would be investigated.
Linda Briskman, chairwoman of human rights at Curtin University in Perth, said mandatory detention had criminalised people seeking refuge.
Refugee groups expressed concern that overcrowding at North West camp on Christmas Island, which was partly responsible for riots, was now occurring at mainland detention centres. About 300 men from Christmas Island arrived at the Curtin centre at the weekend.
Ms Gillard said she was "determined" to have a mandatory detention system and it was "the right thing" for Australia.
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said asylum applications should be processed on the mainland because it was cheaper, easier and faster. "We have very vulnerable people locked up with very little access to information."
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Canadian Minister defends anti-smuggling ad Tamil group deems 'xenophobic'
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is defending his party's use of an ad that a Tamil group has called "xenophobic." The ad touts the Tories' proposals to crack down on human smuggling and features an image of the cargo ship MV Sun Sea which brought 492 Tamil migrants to B.C. last summer.
"Canada welcomes people who want to build a better future," the announcer says. "But our openness doesn't extend to criminals who target Canadian generosity."
A statement from the National Council of Canadian Tamils on Wednesday said the ad appeals to the "worst instincts of Canadians to score political points and votes" and urged the Tories to remove the ad and to apologize for labelling the asylum-seekers as criminals. "This election ad is xenophobic and borders on racism," said Krisna Saravanamuttu, a council spokesman.
But Kenney, who spent part of Wednesday morning watching the India-versus-Pakistan cricket match at an East Vancouver restaurant serving South Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine, defended the ad and said the "vast majority" of Canadians support a crackdown on smuggling.
"Anyone who's coming to Canada illegally is breaking our laws. It's illegal migration," he told reporters. "It's not the right way to come to Canada, especially if they're paying a criminal network — a gang of criminals and often thugs — who run the smuggling syndicates. "We make no apology for making that point in the course of this election campaign," the Conservative candidate added.
Kenney added that there are asylum-seekers around the world waiting to come to Canada through the United Nations Refugee Agency. "We bring in about 14,000 of those people a year. It's not fair to them if someone in the same region pays a smuggler 50-grand, frankly, to jump the refugee queue."
Following the arrival of the Sun Sea last year, the Tories put forward an anti-smuggling bill, which proposes tougher penalties against human smugglers and more restrictions on migrants who use them. Opposition parties immediately denounced the bill as "draconian" and said it would deprive legitimate refugee-seekers of certain rights.
In the television ad, the Tories accuse the opposition of being "weak on border security."
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Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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