Legislation that would help evacuate refugees held offshore is urgently needed to erase the dark history of suffering and punishment by the Coalition Government, writes Jane Salmon.
Source: New refugee bill will redress Coalition’s legacy of grief
Category: Refugees
Australia’s solutions over the last nine years leads one to doubt not just the humanity but the sanity of those who implemented the Morrison solutions. The United Kingdom under the apparently intellectually challenged and spoilt man-child Boris Johnson is merrily heading down the path that Australia created.
The same self-serving populist speak and a rather bizarre solution, sending refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda. What would we find if we followed the money trails, both in Australia and the United Kingdom? There are still many questions left unanswered and the mainstream media is complicit by giving race baiting and populist propaganda oxygen.
Yes, another Morrison Promise in action, The bubble that is fast failing to materialise into little more than a vacuous announcement..
Ukrainians who have come to Australia after fleeing their war-torn country have found themselves stuck in limbo without access to Medicare or the right to work due to restrictions on their visitor visas (subclass 600). Advertisement Displaced Ukrainians are waiting for the federal government to grant temporary humanitarian visas (subclass 786), which would allow holders to work, study and access Medicare for three years. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Immigration Minister Alex Hawke announced on 20 March plans to make the visa available, but it still hasn’t come to fruition, meaning displaced Ukrainians have been completely dependant on not-for-profits for food and accommodation since their arrival.
Source: Displaced Ukrainians stuck without access to Medicare, rental assistance | SBS News
Morrison is now desperate to clean his decade of weaponizing Asylum Seekers and Refugees up. It certainly doesn’t fit his denials that he politicizes race, religion, or ethnicity. The rush is on.
Federal Greens immigration spokesperson Nick McKim criticized the timing of the release. “This is belated but welcome news, and their relief will be massive, but this is not the end of their story,” he said in a statement. “That they are being released on the eve of an election is a deeply cynical move and it proves once again that their detention and torture was always a political decision.” Kanis agreed, describing the release as a “last-minute political fix” ahead of the federal election.
While welcoming refugees from Ukraine, Italy continue its “Fortress Europe” prosecution of former Mayor Domenico Lucano
Source: Italian Mayor Who Housed Mideast, African Migrants Faces 13 Years in Prison
In Europe, the volunteers welcoming Ukrainian refugees are often the same people attacked for aiding refugees in the Mediterranean. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s inhumane — we should welcome all migrants fleeing war and terror.
Source: The War in Ukraine Shows That Europe Could Help Refugees if It Really Wanted To
The exodus out of Ukraine since Russia began its invasion has provoked questions about discrimination between the uprooted. Last week, social media was awash with claims that white Ukrainian refugees at the border with Poland were given preferential treatment compared to other groups, including people from many Middle Eastern and African nations who were living or studying in the country. While initially denied, Flippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has since confirmed the allegations.
The United Nations Refugee Agency has already established links between climate change and persecution. It finds that when a state is unwilling to respond to humanitarian needs that are the result of climate change, there is a “risk of human rights violations amounting to persecution.” Deadly environments, including those transformed by climate change whether suddenly or over long periods of time, need to be considered sites of persecution. Their presence should trigger state obligations to provide protection for peoples forcibly displaced by climate change. Central to this effort is establishing relationships among law, humans and the environment. This is one step towards recognizing that people displaced by climate change are, in fact, refugees.
Source: Millions are on the Run from Global Heating – International Law must recognize Climate Refugees
The average monthly cost in 2021 is $358,646 for every refugee and asylum seeker held on the island, equal to $4.3m per person each year, a Guardian Australia analysis of government figures provided to the Senate shows.
Not quite. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has a population slightly more than one-tenth that of the United States – and an economy slightly less than one-tenth the size. Like the United States, Canada carefully screens applicants for admission as refugees and has had great success in integrating them into Canadian society. Canada is now taking in 27,000 refugees a year. To match Canada, the United States would have to accept about 250,000 refugees a year.
DETERRING AND IMPRISONING asylum seekers is gaining popularity in the western world. Punishment by separation of children from parents now has occurred in both Australia and America historically and currently, invoking community backlash. America forthwith will follow Australia’s indefinite detention practices, even as Trump repudiates his policy on separation of children from parents. These practices contravene the Refugee Convention to which both America and Australia were signatories. Dutton emphasised the desire to be rid of this troublesome convention, saying:
“I think there is a need for like-minded countries to look at whether a convention designed decades ago is relevant today.”
Let us examine that which underpins our history of refugee conventions versus “deterrence” against refugees and their smugglers.
via Do unto refugees
Many asylum seekers weren’t even allowed to apply until a few months ago.
Source: What The Government Isn’t Telling You About The ‘Fake Refugee’ Crackdown
Refugee Council of Australia says older refugees, and those from conflict zones with disrupted educations, would potentially fail under new English requirements
The architect of the US-Australia refugee deal says the arrangement was loosely contingent on Australia considering resettling people from Central America, Africa and reuniting separated refugee families.
Displaced people use camera phone footage to highlight life on the run in “Exodus.”
Source: Refugees Take Us Inside Their Fight For Survival In This Harrowing Film | The Huffington Post
What was that about illiterate refugees?
Source: This Syrian Teen Refugee Is Basically Peter Dutton’s Nightmare – BuzzFeed News
While Europe rushes to steel its external borders against an oncoming wave of migration, its internal political union is dissolving under a storm of populist nationalism.
Source: 10 of the World’s Poorest Countries Host Half the Global Refugee Population | The Nation
There is a New Student folder in my pigeonhole. I flip it open and scan the enrolment form. From her listed date of arrival, Kafa* has been in Australia for less than two months. She has come from Ethiopia, speaks Oromo and lives with her aunt. She is 15. Years of schooling: two. Country of schooling: Ethiopia. Date last attended school: 2009. Interruption to schooling: approximately six years. Orphan child visa: 117 – “for a child whose parents are dead, permanently incapacitated or of unknown whereabouts”.
Source: New students | The Monthly
Rescuers are feeling powerless in the face of mounting challenges.
World’s wealthiest nations accused by Amnesty of leaving poorer countries bearing the brunt of global refugee crisis.
Source: Ten countries host half of world’s refugees: report – News from Al Jazeera
My grandfather’s family came to Australia to survive, make a life, get work and make significant contributions to society. The refugees on Manus and Nauru want to do the same
Leading humanitarian groups say government’s dilatory response to Syrian crisis ‘incomprehensible’
“It never envisaged that we would leave people there for long, long periods of time without giving them a sense that we were working towards providing them with a decent resettlement outcome,” said Paris Aristotle.
Source: Don’t use refugees as ‘human shield against people smuggling’, warns Paris Aristotle
The Government will not explain why it is engaging a second resettlement agency for the sole Nauru refugee who resettled in Cambodia.
US, China, Japan, Germany, France and UK accommodate just 2.1 million refugees, according to Oxfam report
Source: Six wealthiest countries host less than 9% of world’s refugees | World news | The Guardian
The number of refugees in the world has reached the highest level ever recorded, according to figures published by the United Nations (UN). After an increase of five million last year, the number of people displaced by conflict – refugees, asylum seekers or those displaced internally – was at an estimated 65.3 million by the end of 2015. It is the equivalent of one in every 113 people on the planet, according to the UN Refugee Agency, and if considered a nation would make up the 21st largest in the world.
We are a nation of boat people on Aboriginal land. We are a country built on immigration by migrants, refugees and First Peoples and most of us are damn proud of this, even if Immigration Minister Peter Dutton isn’t. I know I’m proud of where I come from.
Source: Time to embrace the potential refugees offer Australia
Has something gone adrift within the moral compass of our ‘news’ reporting? In the past week, 64 Afghans have been killed in the largest bomb to have exploded in Kabul in 15 years. At least 340 were wounded. The Taliban set off their explosives at the very wall of the ‘elite’ security force – watch out for that word ‘elite’ – which was supposed to protect the capital. Whole families were annihilated. No autopsies for them. Local television showed an entire family – a mother and father and three children blown to pieces in a millisecond – while the city’s
The young African refugee known only as S99 says she was in the midst of an epileptic seizure when she was set upon and raped.
Exclusive: Man’s last-minute plea to immigration minister Peter Dutton to consider Afghanistan’s worsening security situation has been rejected
In Afghanistan, more and more Hazara are preparing to flee the Taliban, just as Australia has started returning Hazara asylum seekers for the first time since 2001
Source: Resurgent Taliban targets Afghan Hazara as Australia sends them back | Australia news | The Guardian
Kamal al-Ayash | (Niqash.org) | – – Getting from Turkey to Europe was a cakewalk compared to escaping the [so-called] …
Source: Remember: Refugees are fleeing ISIL; they aren’t ISIL
Tasneem Chopra told Q&A that of the 70,000 refugees who’ve arrived in Australia by boat since 1976, none have been found to be linked to terrorism. We examine the best evidence out there.
Source: FactCheck Q&A: have any refugees who came to Australia gone on to be terrorists?
The Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes hit a market in Yemen’s Haja province on Tuesday, killing 41 civilians and injuring 75 others, according to a senior provincial health official.
Source: 41 civilians killed, 75 injured in coalition airstrikes on Yemeni market — RT News
People seeking asylum who are living in our communities are 45 times less likely to commit crimes than the local population.
Source: Busting some myths about asylum seekers and refugees
By IMEMC | – – Palestinians are joining the Middle East exodus to Europe in greater numbers because of the …
The Booker prize-winning author visits refugee camps in the Bekaa valley of Lebanon as a guest of World Vision, accompanied by the artist Ben Quilty
One of the first refugees to be resettled in Papua New Guinea has pleaded to be return to Manus Island, saying it is better than living with fear, loneliness and poverty in the city of Lae.
Malcolm Turnbull’s assertion that showing any compassion will result in adverse consequences for the nation is unsupported by the evidence, writes Jay Holstrom, dispelling some myths.
Source: Theoretical Malcolm and the ‘consequences’ of refugees: #LetThemStay
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Aided by a massive Russian bombing campaign and Hizbullah and Iranian …
Source: Syria: The Mother of all Battles for Aleppo is Joined | Informed Comment
Deng Thiak Adut’s story shows how compassion, acceptance and integration can save innocent lives and benefit a recipient country.
EXCLUSIVEChild refugees on Nauru have appeared in another heartbreaking video from the detention camp, claiming they are being held as “hostages” by the Australian government and allegin
The Federal Government is facing increasing pressure over its plans to send 72 children to Nauru as part of its controversial asylum seeker policy. There are currently 79 children in detention and
Source: 950 Academics Beg Malcolm Turnbull Not To Send Kids To Detention
Far from being an international pariah for the way it treats refugees, Australia’s policies are becoming envied and copied
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