Pearls and Irritations

Category: Immigration

  • Let them Work. John Menadue

    Last month, Bruce Kaye (guest blogger) and I wrote articles about the need for a change of government policy to allow asylum seekers to work. This is important for their dignity and self-respect and their integration into the Australian community. It would also be less costly to the Australian taxpayer and the Australian community.

    Today the Asylum Seekers Centre, Sydney, and fifty other organisations have joined together to call on the Australian Government to allow all asylum seekers to work, whether they came by air or boat.

    A press statement by the CEO of the ASC, Melanie Noden, follows:

    United call for all asylum seekers, regardless of mode or date of arrival, who are released into the community on a bridging visa to be granted the right to work.

    The Asylum Seekers Centre is proud to stand with over 50 organisations and 1200
    individuals across Australia who believe asylum seekers should have the right to
    work. The right to work is a basic and fundamental human right that we as a country
    should proudly and loudly uphold.

    CEO of the Asylum Seekers Centre, Melanie Noden, said finding work is of utmost
    importance to asylum seekers. “It restores their self esteem and provides them with
    the financial independence they so desperately need in order to start a new life. It
    also provides them with a connection to society and gives them the opportunity to
    contribute.”

    And it’s not just us who thinks so. ‘Not allowing people the right to work is a
    disgrace. We signed the Refugee Convention to protect people, not punish them.
    The only reason the Government has implemented this is to punish people. Asylum
    seekers are not illegal and should not be treated as such. Everyone should have the
    right to work,’ says former Prime Minister, Mr Fraser.

    As history has shown, having asylum seekers live on welfare, without any training or
    skill development for years, deliberately hinders their potential to gain employment
    when they do achieve permanent residency – and for boat arrivals 90.8% do become
    permanent residents.

    It is estimated that in 2013, 10,000 asylum seekers will be released nationally into
    the community without work rights. There is no guarantee of the level of support
    provided to these people. This will put strain on an already under resourced sector
    and will impact the mental health and self-agency of thousands of asylum seekers.

    John Menadue, Patron of the Asylum Seekers Centre, former diplomat and business
    leader says the present policy of denial of work is cruel, denies the dignity of people
    and does not deter future asylum seekers. “There is a persistent myth that refusal of
    work rights and other penalties will deter new asylum seekers and particularly boat
    people. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this deterrent works. In almost allcases asylum seekers are escaping appalling conditions, from the Taliban for
    example. Those situations are far worse than anything that we can throw at them.
    “But the burden on the individual is the greatest worry. Most asylum seekers have
    escaped from terror and violence and many are traumatised. To deny them work
    rights is likely to worsen their mental state. It makes it harder for others to help them
    if they are forced into idleness.
    “We need a breakthrough in this toxic political approach to asylum seekers.
    Australia can do better than this. We have shown it in the past.”

    The Government’s announcement in November last year prompted a group of
    concerned not for profit organisations, individuals, businesses and community
    groups to address the lack of right to work for asylum seekers. This includes those
    who have arrived post August 13, 2012 and are subject to the new policy and those
    who arrived prior to August 13, 2012 who have not been granted work rights.
    Today, we have sent letters to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and Minister for
    Immigration, Brendan O’Connor calling for the right to work for asylum seekers. As a
    group, the signatories to the united statement call for:
    • An undertaking from the Minister for Immigration to make a policy change
    extending the right to work to all asylum seekers released into the community
    on bridging visas, regardless of mode or date of arrival or stage in the refugee
    determination process.
    • The right to work is accompanied by the provision of basic employment
    support services to increase the asylum seekers chance of employment.

    To support asylum seekers and the work of the Asylum Seekers Centre, contact  http://givenow.com.au/asylumseekerscentre
    For a full list of agencies supporting the statement please see
    http://righttowork.com.au/take-action/supporters/

  • Prejudice compounded by ignorance. John Menadue

    The Scott Morrisons and Ray Hadleys of this world have had a field day vilifying one asylum seeker living in the community who came by boat. The prejudice is bad enough, but their ignorance is just as appalling.

    In the last ten years, 65,000 asylum seekers came to Australia. 47,000, or 72% of them, came by air. The fact is that those 47,000 who came by air all went directly to living in the community on bridging visas. Scott Morrison and Ray Hadley showed not the slightest interest. There is no campaign against the much larger number of asylum seekers who have come by air although one would expect that some of them would have committed offences in the same way as offences occur in the general community.

    But talk of boat arrivals living in the community and the prejudiced and ignorant go ballistic. Air arrivals are not detained in Immigration Detention Centres but released immediately into the community until their refugee status is determined. Furthermore, boat arrivals have twice the rate of successful refugee determination as air arrivals.

    The ‘debate’ about boat arrivals living in the community is mired in prejudice and ignorance. When will our Prime Minister stand up and make a principled case for decent treatment of asylum seekers. I have never heard her do it. Where are the values that the ALP used to espouse?

    Ignorance can only be countered by facts and the government is failing to properly inform the community. Prejudice must be tackled head on with beliefs about the value and dignity of every human being. Tony Abbott leads with opportunism. Julia Gillard continually runs for cover.

    John Menadue

  • ‘I was a stranger and you took me in.’

    ‘I was a stranger and you took me in’ (Matthew 25)

     Well not really, according to Scott Morrison.

    In her article in the SMH on 3 November 2012, Jane Cadzow describes Scott Morrison as ‘a devout Christian who worships at Shirelive, an American style Pentecostal Church. The Shirelive website says its members believe the Bible is the ‘accurate authoritative word of God’.

    Formerly, Scott Morrison belonged to Hillsong. In his maiden speech to the House of Representatives in 2008 he said ‘from my faith I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness’.

    I am confused.

    The Torah, which is a key part of the Jewish/Christian tradition places great store on welcoming the stranger. The Torah repeats its exhortation more than 36 times. ‘Remember the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt’.  This caring for the stranger is repeated more than any of the other biblical laws, including observance of the Sabbath and dietary requirements…

    As Leviticus 19 puts it, ‘When an alien resides with you in your land, do not molest him. You should treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the native born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were aliens in the land of Egypt.’

    The Gospel of Luke asks ‘Who is my neighbour?’ and then tells us the story of the Good Samaritan. Matthew’s Gospel tells us about the Holy Family’s flight from the ‘slaughter of the innocents’ to safety in Egypt. They were indeed fortunate asylum seekers in that the Pharaoh was generous and did not play to public prejudice by calling on his subjects to ‘stop the donkeys’.

    Scott Morrison has been hostile to strangers and demonises asylum seekers and refugees at almost every opportunity.

    • He has said that they bring disease ‘everything from tuberculosis and hepatitis C to chlamidya and syphilis’. This assertion was rejected by an infectious diseases expert, Dr Trent Yarwood.
    • He told 2GB Talkback radio audiences that he had seen asylum seekers bringing in ‘wads of cash …and large displays of jewellery’. Desperate people will bring whatever portable assets they have.
    • According to leaks from the Shadow Cabinet, and according to Jane Cadzow, Scott Morrison suggested that the Coalition ‘ramp up its questioning to … capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment’. He used the dog-whistling defence that he was only listening to what people are saying ‘we’ve got to listen to what their concerns are’. But please, lend me a megaphone!
    • In early 2011 he complained about the cost of holding funerals in Sydney for asylum seekers who died in a shipwreck off Christmas Island. An eight year old, whose parents had both died in the shipwreck, was one of 21 people flown from the Christmas Island Detention Centre to attend the funeral ceremonies. Scott Morrison said these were ‘government-funded junkets’ and that the relatives would be ‘taking sightseeing trips and those sorts of things’. He later apologised for the timing but not the content of his remarks.
    • Only last month, he called on the government to suspend asylum seekers being released into the community on the basis of a single violent attack. Fairfax Media pointed out that these people were about 45 times less likely to be charged with a crime than a member of the general community.

    Time and time again, Scott Morrison injects hatred towards the ‘stranger’.

    Perhaps he reads a different translation of the Bible.

    That other biblical scholar, Tony Abbott has supported him every step of the way.

  • The Greens and Asylum Seekers. How the ‘perfect’ became the enemy of the ‘good’.

    The policy ‘purity’ of the Greens has helped deliver us Nauru and Manus where asylum seekers are suffering. Furthermore, and as the former Secretary of the Department of Immigration told us last year, the Nauru/Manus approach would not work again to deter asylum seekers. That now seems tragically borne out by more tragedies at sea

    In the Senate last year, the Greens voted with the Coalition to defeat Government legislation which would have allowed cooperation between the Malaysian Government, UNHCR and the Australian Government on processing in Malaysia. This legislation was in response to the High Court striking down the Malaysian agreement.  As a result of the combined actions of the High Court and the Greens in the Senate, we saw a three-fold increase in boat arrivals.

    The Greens say that they believe in a regional framework on asylum seekers, as we all do. But they rejected a key building block, the agreement with Malaysia, which would have been a feature of a developing regional framework. As a result of the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement, the Government sided with the Coalition and amongst other changes, agreed to the reopening of Nauru and Manus which many had hoped was dead and buried for ever. The Greens stood aside and preferred to throw rocks

    The Greens must bear a heavy responsibility for what is now happening in Nauru /Manus and at sea. They played to the gallery of some of the NGOs rather than working on an acceptable compromise involving Malaysia. The ‘perfect’ became the enemy of the ‘good’.

    The UNHCR has said that it will not have a bar of Nauru / Manus. In contrast the agreement with Malaysia was described by the Regional Director of UNHCR in Australia to the Australian Parliament on 30 September 2011 in the following terms.

    ‘Many persons of concern to UNHCR stand to benefit from this program (with Malaysia) by having their status regularised. It would mean all refugees in Malaysia would, in addition to their registration and ID documents from UNHCR, be registered with the government’s immigration data base and thus protected from arbitrary arrest and detention. It would also mean that all refugees in Malaysia would have the right to work on a par with legal migrants in the country. This would also entitle them to the same insurance and health schemes as documented for legal migrant workers.’

    For Malaysia this agreement was quite remarkable progress. This is in a country that has a burden of much larger numbers of refugees than we have and is much poorer. But because the Agreement with Malaysia was not enshrined in law it was discounted.

    The Malaysian Agreement is now in abeyance. It would need to be updated and revised, beginning first in the Australian Parliament. And of course, its effectiveness would depend on good implementation. There is no doubt however that if implemented well it would be a significant step forward.

    The asylum seekers languishing in Nauru / Manus are paying a heavy price for the posturing of the Greens with their policy purity.

    John Menadue

  • Work rights for asylum seekers. Guest blogger: Bruce Kaye

    Having had direct experience of asylum seeker hosting it has become obvious at the ground level that the ‘no work’ policy introduced in August last year by the Federal Government is creating confusion and misery for the asylum seekers and frustration and despair for those involved in hosting.

    As citizens, my wife and I are happy to continue to provide this hospitality.  These people are in great need.  However it seems to us that the Government’s policy of not allowing these people to work simply makes it impossibly hard for them to live in the community at the end of their six weeks of homestay hospitality.  Not able to work they are driven into poverty, or the black economy. In any case dependence on Government resources is perpetuated instead of wages being earned and taxes paid.

    In order to live in the community they must be able to work.

    The new policy from August last year may look tough in the current political games of one upmanship, but it is inhumane and cruel and it simply will not achieve any effective settlement process for these people.  The longer they are forced into dependency and almost certain poverty by this new policy the harder it will be for them eventually to integrate into our society as contributing citizens.

    From where we are as hosts the new policy makes our contributions seem quite fruitless.  Extending humane personal hospitality to asylum seekers stands out in stark contrast to the cruel policy of the government.  As citizens and hosts that is a stark contradiction that is painfully embarrassing.

    Our experience on the ground shows the post August policy to be counter productive and makes us as Australian citizens feel really quite ashamed of our government.

    Bruce Kaye

  • The asylum seekers that we don’t talk about

    In the last ten years, 65,000 asylum seekers have come to Australia. 47,000 or 72% of those came by air. Only 28% came by boat. In the last five years, we received 47,000 asylum seekers, of whom 28,000 or 62% came by air. Only 38% came by boat. In only one year, in the last ten years, 2011-12, did we have more boat arrivals (7,379) than air arrivals (7,036). Air arrivals are fairly steady at about 5,000 to 7,000 p.a. whilst boat arrivals fluctuate more.

    Yet for years our whole debate is about boats, boats and more boats. As Fran Kelly on the ABC put it recently, ‘boats are coming thick and fast’. The fact is that many more asylum seekers come by air then by boat.

    Why does our public discussion focus overwhelmingly on boat arrivals? I suggest two reasons. The first is that the media is overwhelmingly focussed on the toxic politics of asylum seekers, rather than the facts and the policy implications. It is so easy to play to the latent fear in all of us and in our community about boats arriving on our doorstep. The media has little interest or understanding of the critical issues and features of the world wide flows of asylum seekers and refugees. It is domestic politics from beginning to end.

    The second is that stories about boat arrivals with scruffy looking asylum seekers in yellow vests are much easier to illustrate. Pictures are always available, often old file pictures. But asylum seekers coming by air through our international airports between 6am and 10pm at the rate of about 100  every day of the year are more difficult to locate  and even harder to get pictures about. But they are trickling through all the time with little public or media interest. The lazy media works on the proposition that if there are no easy pictures there cannot be a story.

    How do asylum seekers come to Australia by air? In 2011-12, 40% came on student visas and 35% on visitor or working holiday visas. Some had genuine plans as students and visitors. Many did not. With the help of ‘agents’ they are persuaded to make false claims about their intentions in coming to Australia and are issued with visas. That is how they get into the country. Once here they then apply for refugee status.

    Where do most of these air arrivals seeking asylum come from? In 2011-12, 17% came from China which is always top of the list, 13% from India and 10% from Pakistan. Southern China has a particularly active people-smuggling network.

    How do air and boat arrivals compare in refugee determination? In the last 4 years the final refugee determination rate for air arrivals was 46%. For boat arrivals it was 89%. That is not to say that there are not many deserving asylum seekers amongst air arrivals. But we focus our attention and hostility towards boat arrivals who have double the ‘success rate’ of air arrivals in refugee determination.

    Our politicians and our media have a lot to answer for in the way that public debate is skewed in this country against boat arrivals.

    John Menadue

  • Minister! Let them work.

    There is a growing number of asylum seekers living in the community who are not allowed to work. The new Minister, Brendan O’Connor, could put his stamp on the portfolio by immediately making a decision to allow almost all asylum seekers to work. The present policy of denial of work is cruel, denies the dignity of people and does not deter future asylum seekers.

    The number who are not allowed to work is growing as the government, quite rightly, is releasing from immigration detention and into the community, asylum seekers on bridging visas. There are presently about 7,000 asylum seekers in immigration detention, of whom about 5,000 are adult males. Potentially and hopefully many of these people will be released progressively into the community. In future as more boat people are released into the community so work rights will become more important.

    Official figures are hard to find, but it seems that releases of asylum seekers from detention into the community are running at an average of about 1,000 per month. In some months, it is much higher.

    I am a patron of the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney. Currently 46% of our clients have no work rights. That proportion and the total number is increasing rapidly. It is up dramatically over the last 12 months where more and more of our clients come by boat rather than air. Basically, asylum seekers who come by air are allowed to work but those who come by boat are not allowed to work. What a nonsense this is, particularly as boat arrivals have about double the rate of successful refugee determination as those who come by air.

    Asylum seekers living in the community are already placing heavy strains on the NGO’s that are struggling to help. These strains will increase on such organizations as Red Cross and the Asylum Seeker Centres.

    But the burden on the individual is the greatest worry. Most asylum seekers have escaped from terror and violence and many are traumatised. To deny them work rights is likely to worsen their mental state. It makes it harder for others to help them if they are forced into idleness. They are often humiliated within their family.

    In this situation, desperate asylum seekers are likely to feel they have no other choice but to take up work illegally. In this situation they are often exploited. This will give the Scott Morrisons, Alan Jones and the Ray Hadleys of this world another opportunity to demonize ‘illegals and criminals’.

    There is a persistent myth that refusal of work rights and other penalties will deter new asylum seekers and particularly boat people. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this deterrent works. In almost all cases asylum seekers are escaping appalling conditions, from the Taliban for example. Those situations are far worse than anything that we can throw at them.

    Beyond denial of work rights, there are many other hardships and handicaps forced upon asylum seekers. They often have limited accommodation help and some have no access to Medicare. Under the government’s policy of ‘no advantage”, many could be waiting in the community for five years.

    The ‘support’ arrangements for asylum seekers in the community are chaotic and quite arbitrary. Arja Keski-Nummi and I have described them as Kafkaesque. (See article in publish.pearlsandirritations.com) These arrangements are a mass of contradictions wrapped up in confusion. But one thing the Minister could do, and do quickly, would be to cut through this confusion and allow almost all asylum seekers to work. Taxpayers would benefit. Allowing asylum seekers to work in the community would be far cheaper than keeping them locked up in those hellholes of Immigration Detention Centres. Those centres chew up enormous amounts of money as well as very vulnerable people.

    Historically Labor governments have espoused the dignity of labour and the self-esteem personally and in the community that goes with hard work. Where are those values today?

    Asylum seekers are not criminals. They are courageous people who have taken great risks in escaping persecution for the sake of safety for themselves and their children.  Asylum seekers and particularly their children, become great citizens and contributors to this country.

    Minister, please grasp the nettle and let asylum seekers work. Start a breakthrough in this toxic political approach to asylum seekers .Australia can do better than this. We have shown it in the past

    John Menadue

  • New leadership on Asylum seekers

    Yesterday, Crikey published an article by Arja Keski-Nummi and me on the opportunities for the new Minister for Immigration to break the impasse on asylum seekers. You can find it at my website publish.pearlsandirritations.com.