A look at immigrants' fate

Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Australian government's handling of the Tampa refugee ship last August put it in the international spotlight, but few people realize that the strongest opposition to Australia's tough policy on asylum seekers and refugees comes from within the country.

Protest rallies urging the Australian government to soften its stance toward refugees have increased in recent months. In March, thousands of people held a noisy rally in Melbourne, with one banner reading: "Hey Ruddock, don't Tampa with human rights," referring to Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock.

A book that came out prior to the Tampa affair seems to have captured the feeling of many Australians.

"I discovered recently that I am descended from refugees," Peter Mares opens his book. The same is true for most Australians, writes the author, who found that his ancestors were French Protestants who fled to Britain in 1685.

In the immediate past, the German Lutherans who settled in the hills outside Adelaide were looked upon with suspicion, the way people look at today's illegal immigrants, he says.

Mares, a young and enterprising journalist, spent several months touring Australia visiting major migrant detainment centers.

His report is an illuminating look at this complex issue that any government should be thankful for. It is critical, not only of the government but also the press for its tendency to overlook the plight of asylum seekers.

The book is like a step-by-step legal guide for boat people, giving them a better idea about how their papers are processed.

It will teach them, at least those that read English, that processing an illegal arrival takes at least 18 months before his or her paper are considered. And the chance of being granted asylum is one in five.

The book also strips away the baseless alibis of the government. When the government claims it has absorbed too many refugees, Mares reminds it that Australia only ranks somewhere in the middle of 29 developed countries that receive asylum seekers.

One section of the book deals with the East Timorese refugees who fled their homes in the late 1980s. Despite Australia's recognition of the eastern half of Timor island, the refugees still faced difficulties.

Mares delves deftly into the legal, moral and political aspects of Australia's treatment of illegal arrivals, and comes out with a workable solution: increase Australia's annual intake of international refugees and treat them more humanely.

He is convinced that repressive measures will not halt the international process of migration, particularly in a world where the gap between rich and poor countries has never been wider.

Australia locks up illegal arrivals and sends them to processing camps it funds in Papua New Guinea and Nauru in the South Pacific.

It adopted the "Pacific solution" after it refused to allow the Tampa, which had rescued 433 boat people from a sinking Indonesian ferry, to dock in Australia, where 2,000 asylum seekers are already in detention camps.

Prior to the Tampa affair, a mandatory detention policy for boat people was already being enforced.

While virulently attacking his government's policy, Mares remains cool-headed and critical throughout the book. Himself a member of the press, as a presenter for regional current affairs programs for Radio Australia and Radio National, he does not shy away from criticizing the press for their often biased reporting on the issue.

Brilliantly written, reading this book sometimes feels like reading a novel, but true to his journalist's creed Mares manages to avoid the trap of being partisan for either the government or the migrants. What comes out is a fair and balanced view.

Mares captures moving details, such as an asylum seeker who he happened to know in his country of origin as a respected middle- class professional. The man, perhaps out of embarrassment for his present condition, pretends not to know Mares.

Another detail is the portrait of government officials. Refugees tell him that when the number of refugees is small, the officials are warm and sympathetic, but when the number of refugees is beyond their capacity they became harsh and uncaring.

Responding to the popular charge that refugees are lazy and become a burden for the government, Mares says that those who are born in Australia might also turn out to be corrupt, delinquent, criminal or lazy.

The book suggests a more humane solution to the problem, while also serving as a handbook for refugees. It is a window through which the Australian government can look upon the impact of its harsh policy on asylum seekers.

The frequent detention flare-ups and mouth-sewing protests by refugees are testament to the truth of Mares' arguments.

Australia expects to accept 12,000 asylum seekers and refugees yearly. This number goes up and down depending on a variety of factors in countries of origin, like war, poverty or environmental degradation.

In 2000 it received 80,000 asylum seekers, as compared to the United States' 800,000 and Canada's 200,000. New Zealand, with a population of four million, received 55,000 people.

Conflicts around the world are responsible for the creation of a people-smuggling industry worth US$7 billion annually.

Mares proposes that Australia restore its annual intake of asylum seekers to around 20,000, a level not seen since the early 1980s.

This seems a reasonable proposal, especially when looking at what other countries, including developing ones, are doing about the refugee problem. Pakistan hosts more than two million displaced people from Afghanistan, Iran hosts almost the same number from Afghanistan and Iraq, and Thailand has more than 200,000 refugees from Myanmar.

So couldn't Australia be doing more?

Borderline: Australia's Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers Peter Mares University of New South Wales Press Ltd Sydney, 2001 xiii + 226 pp