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Originally Posted by spindles
I think Meri has a good point. Are we in a position to just open our borders to any comers? We certainly have the space...
Personally, I'd like to raise the numbers we allow in, but that shouldn't mean people can 'jump the queue'. What right do we have to allow anyone to come in, in place of someone who has gone through the process to do it legally?
Also, if we did make the camps a better place, would it really act as a disincentive for people coming illegally?
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The disincentive should be that if you come here illegally you'll be sent back home.
If people are desperate enough to drop everything and go through the extraordinary lengths to get here, I'm pretty sure that the scum selling them passage are going to forget to mention what will happen to them if they get caught.
Abusing the human rights of refugees, the same human rights we apparently stand for as a nation, is completely unnecessary. Look at this way, so say you have to spend time in one of these centers, and then we grant them citizenship, no we have someone who already feels alienated and pissed off. If that happens to enough people it's only going to serve to created a whole myriad of social problems down the line. The media as it is already does it's best to divide our country based on race. Look at the Cronulla riots, the media played such a big part in starting that it wasn't funny, and all because they took a problem that had been going on on those beaches for years and sensationalised it.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that we should be careful who we let in. But also, we need to look at how immigration is managed once migrants move to this country. Look at all the racial tension Sydney seems to have, and has seemed to have for the last 25 years. Yet, Melbourne, which has large populations of Indian, Greek, Italian, Asian, and Lebanese migrants doesn't seem to have any where near the kind of social unease that exists in Sydney.
I honestly don't know where the policy differs, but I've spend a lot of time in both cities and there's a very noticeable difference.