Immigration, refugees
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Saudi Arabia doesn’t ‘do’ refugees.
Saudi Arabia has shown that it is possible to accommodate three million people for the Haj. See link below. But it is unwilling to provide any sanctuary for refugees from Syria. Syrians must apply for a visa or work permit to enter Saudi Arabia. Under this visa/permit system many Syrians have entered Saudi Arabia, but Continue reading »
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Refugee Diary.
It is one thing to endure the terror of barrel-bombing by the Assad regime and the barbarism of ISIS in Syria. But this is only the beginning of a harrowing trek by Syrians in their journey to safety and freedom in Germany and elsewhere. Verica Jokic, an ABC journalist gave a compelling account on Radio National on Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Transfield, Manus and Nauru
Transfield and its subcontractors are profiteering from lucrative contracts to run detention centres on behalf of the Australian government on Manus and Nauru. All the indications are that there is widespread abuse and oppression particularly on Nauru. It is a disgrace. Present policies on Manus and Nauru are unsustainable yet Minister Dutton remains as Minister Continue reading »
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Tom and Rosie support the Syrian Refugees.
Two young students from “Prouille” Dominican School at Wahroonga have raised nearly $4,500 for Syrian refugees. It started as a street stall in front of their house. It led to community support. It is a lovely story – worth reading. See link below. John Menadue https://unhcrpersonalchallenge.everydayhero.com/au/help-the-syrian-refugees-with-tom-and-rosie Continue reading »
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Kenneth Roth. The European refugee crisis is on of politics not capacity.
European leaders may differ about how to respond to the asylum-seekers and migrants surging their way, but they seem to agree they face a crisis of enormous proportions. Germany’s Angela Merkel has called it “the biggest challenge I have seen in European affairs in my time as chancellor.” Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni has warned that the migrant crisis Continue reading »
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Arja Keski-Nummi and Libby Lloyd. Resettling Syrian and Iraqi Refugees: A Program for Government-Community Action
Australia has one of the best refugee resettlement systems in the world. So said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres some years back. We have achieved this reputation not by good luck but because successive Australian governments have understood that early intervention and support in the settlement process are fundamental to long term Continue reading »
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Bruce Kaye. Refugees in Australia and the Good Samaritan.
When I was a teenager a famous preacher of the day, Dr Gordon Powell, was the minister at St Stephens Presbyterian Church Macquarie Street Sydney. I recall hearing some of his sermons and in particular a sermon from a series of sermons he preached on the “Hard Sayings of Jesus”. He remarked at the Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Refugees and German redemption.
Imagine if Australia were to open its doors to 240 000 refugees. That’s twenty times our offer to take 12 000 Syrians, or around the same number as our total annual immigration in all categories. It’s what Angela Merkel’s offer of 800 000 places would come to if scaled to Australia’s population. Although some may Continue reading »
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“U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis”
Disastrous intervention by the US has been the cause of many major refugee flows including the current flows out of the Middle East. The people’s Daily published an interesting article on this subject on 7 September. The article refers to refugees from Syria, Lybia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It could have added that one of the Continue reading »
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Josef Szwarc. Resettling an additional 12,000 refugees.
The Government has announced that “Australia will resettle an additional 12,000 refugees who are fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq.” http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-09-09/syrian-and-iraqi-humanitarian-crisis This note publishes the statement with some comments about various aspects. “Our focus will be on those most in need – the women, children and families of persecuted minorities who have sought refuge Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Refugees, the community and civil society
It has been thrilling to see the warm response of many people, and particularly the Germans, to refugees fleeing from war-torn Syria and other countries. Over ten million people have been forced to flee their homes in Syria. Pope Francis has appealed to every Catholic parish, religious community or sanctuary in Europe to take in Continue reading »
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Culture and Religion, Defence and Security, Immigration, refugees, Politics, Religion and Faith, World Affairs
Ross Burns. Syria and Persecuted Minorities.
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the international legal instrument to which Australia was an original signatory, contains a clause making clear that ‘The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin’. It therefore seems curious that at least Continue reading »
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Peter Hughes. Designing a more generous Australian response to the Syrian crisis
The Australian government announcement of 12,000 additional permanent places for Syrian refugees is a reasonable scale of response, if implemented the right way. Taken together with the existing program of 13,750 refugees, the new program constitutes a manageable 13% of the planned 2015–16 migration intake of 193,485 permanent visas. It is only 4% of the Continue reading »
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Peter McNamara. Are all Australians just ‘Bad Samaritans’, or is it just the media?
I always thought Australians were good Samaritans, welcoming people from all backgrounds, all races, all religions, to their rich and prosperous nation. It belies belief to see the media reporting that Australian Christians, including Catholic Archbishop Fisher, say that preference should be given to Christian refugees from war-torn Syria. The Australian does not ring true Continue reading »
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John Menadue. A one-off increase in the humanitarian program rather than a safe haven is now possible.
In this blog several of us have advocated a safe haven arrangement, as was the case for the Kosovars, to meet the present Syrian refugee crisis. It was then clear that the government was not going to do much at all. That has now changed. The government has been reluctantly dragged along by state premiers, Continue reading »
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Klaus Neumann. Stepping up to the plate.
Angela Merkel said last week ‘There will be no tolerance towards those who question the dignity of others.’ Prime minister Tony Abbott is in favour of increasing the number of Syrian and Iraqi refugees allowed to resettle permanently in Australia. But when he announced on Sunday that Australia would “step up to the plate,” he Continue reading »
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Culture and Religion, Human Rights, Immigration, refugees, Politics, Religion and Faith, World Affairs
Michael Kelly SJ. The challenge of people movements.
Great as the gesture of Pope Francis is to mobilize parishes in Europe to accommodate the influx of tens of thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East (they call them migrants), the problem is more complex than offering immediate support to needy people. The Pope knows that. He’s said so many times. The Pope Continue reading »
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David Isaacs, Alanna Maycock, The Senate Report on Nauru.
On 31st August 2015, the Senate finally tabled its lengthy report on conditions at what is euphemistically called the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru (http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Regional_processing_Nauru/Regional_processing_Nauru/Final_Report). The RPC is in reality a prison camp where people live indefinitely in tents, their applications are not processed for over a year, and they are kept in ignorance of Continue reading »
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Luke Fraser. True Blue
On Father’s day, anybody around the world lucky enough to have been woken by a happy young son (as I was) would have been hard-put not to have paused and thought of the image of the young Ardyl Kurdi, washed up lifeless on a beach. Millions are again on the roads of Europe, running away, Continue reading »
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Josef Szwarc. Measuring our response to the refugee crisis of Syria and Iraq
“PM RESCUE MISSION” shouts the headline of the morning newspaper. My heart races with expectation that is immediately deflated by the first sentence: “Australian will open its doors to more Syrian refugees fleeing the troubled nation but won’t increase the overall humanitarian intake.” The prospect of an increase was hinted at by a press release Continue reading »
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Two years in – even supporters despair of Abbott’s feeble government.
The Abbott government marks its two-year anniversary of winning office today, September 7. I was tempted to begin by claiming that Tony Abbott has established himself as one of Australia’s more successful prime ministers, but I struggled to find a second sentence. The headlines in the opinion pages of August 29’s Weekend Australian show that Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The death of Aylan Kurdi may not have been in vain.
In the last week our media has been extensively covering the plight of Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing into Europe. Their reception has been mixed but the governments of Germany and Austria, and their people, have been extending help and kindness. I have posted three blogs in recent days on these issues: Mother Merkel and Continue reading »
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Arja Keski-Nummi and Josef Szwarc. Syrian/Iraqi Refugees: Time for a Bi-partisan and Community Response
Harrowing images and reports in our daily media give a human face to the grim words of the UN refugee agency: the number of men, women and children forcibly displaced by persecution, war and human rights violations is the largest on record. Nearly 60 million at the end of 2014 and greater since then. That Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Why are we so cruel? The problem starts at the top.
The news out of Manus and particularly Nauru shows how callous we have become. It is not that we are always as cold-hearted as this. The response to the attacks on Adam Goodes and the murder of an AFL football coach shows our generous and humane side…our better angels. But we don’t seem to care Continue reading »
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Bob Kinnaird. China FTA truth still elusive
Two months after releasing the China FTA text the Coalition government has still not told the Australian people the truth about the labour mobility provisions in ChAFTA. The result is confusion even among usually well-informed commentators. Greg Sheridan Foreign Affairs Editor for The Australian says ‘the clause in the FTA that says there is no Continue reading »
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Sydney’s Holroyd High School and asylum seeker children.
Refugees and their children face many difficulties in settling in Australia. But the evidence shows that after this settling in period, refugees and their children outperform Australian-born people in many areas. We see the results for refugee children in university-entrance exams and in university performance. One remarkable example is the experience of refugee and asylum Continue reading »
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Stephen Harper. The closing of the Canadian mind.
Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has no greater foreign admirer than Tony Abbott who gushed about him when he visited Ottawa a year ago. Like Tony Abbott, Stephen Harper has attacked science and the media. He has weakened citizenship laws and supports polluters. It sounds very familiar. For an article in the International New York Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Saving lives at sea!
To justify its harsh refugee policies, the government has been telling us that their policies are designed to save lives at sea. What hypocrisy! And only last week we saw at the ALP Federal Conference, former Labor ministers justifying their ‘turn-back’ policies as a means to reduce drownings at sea. Please spare us this charade. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Don’t tamper with citizenship.
The Australian Government has presented new legislation that would enable the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to revoke Australian citizenship for dual nationals who might have been involved in terrorism activities. There would be no judicial review. As a result of an apparent disagreement in Cabinet, the government has deferred a decision on how Continue reading »