Doing What We Can

Supporting Refugees

We have been confronted by economic migrants trying to get into Australia and New Zealand to escape poverty and to find a decent life for themselves.  The position of the Australian government (under Tony Abbott) and the New Zealand government is that both countries are not prepared to accept economic migrants.  They are rejected at the borders.

This, however, is not to say that the socio-economic aspirations of economic migrants are immoral or unethical in and of themselves.  Every human being has a freedom right to seek to increase the welfare and well-being of family and loved ones. 

Both countries run refugee programmes which grant entrance mainly to to those who have suffered at the hands of tyrants and the lawless.  Sometimes in the controversy over restricting economic migration, we loose sight of the more extreme cases of suffering which the existing refugee programmes seek to alleviate.

The Stuff carried an illustrative account of a refugee family in the process of setting in New Zealand.

Family reunited after decades apart

Karina Abadia
Stuff

Johnson Apet and his mother Malang Mabior at Selwyn College Refugee Education for Adults and Families (REAF).

A mother and son who were separated during civil war have been reunited after 24 years.  Johnson Apet was only four when his family fled their village in South Sudan in 1990. Soldiers came from the north and attacked the village in the middle of the night, he said.  “We ran when they started shooting people. From there mum ran away with my brother and sister and I ran with my grandmother.”

His mother Malang Mabior, 49, travelled to Uganda and got a job cooking meals for sick children at a medical clinic to make ends meet. While they were travelling her husband and daughter became ill and died. There was no medicine available or hospital to take them to, she said.  In 1994 she moved to Kenya where she also worked as a chef.

Apet’s journey was quite different. He moved around South Sudanese towns with his grandmother and uncle before spending almost a month walking to Ethiopia.In 1995 they were joined by his grandfather and a year later they moved to the South Sudanese border town of Pachola in South Sudan. In 2001 he returned to Ethiopia to study.

Apet never gave up hope that he’d find his family and spent years searching through the UNHCR registry of refugees. Finally in 2002, he had a break. “I heard my mother was in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya so I went there and asked people. They told me she was living in a place called Group 8.”  A man took him to her house and he knocked on the door. “She came outside and I said ‘are you Malang Mabior?’ She said ‘yeah’. She asked me who I was. I said I’m your son. She cried. I told her ‘don’t cry’ but I also cried.”

It was a shock for Mabior to see her long lost son.  “I thought he’d died. I said ‘thank you God’.” He was also reunited with his brother Solomon that day and met his three youngest siblings for the first time. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Apet had found his mother the day before she and her children were travelling to New Zealand as quota refugees.

It took another 12 years for Mabior to arrange for her son to come to New Zealand through the Family Reunification Programme.  He arrived on September 13. His first impressions of Auckland are that it’s cold but nice and clean. Apet is studying English on Selwyn College’s adult refugee programme (REAF) and living with his family in Mt Wellington.

He had to leave his wife and two children in Kenya so the next step is to bring them to New Zealand. Once he has saved the money he also plans to go to university and study engineering.  Mabior is happy here and is thankful for the support she received from REAF staff in bringing her son to New Zealand.

This story underscores another aspect of accepting and settling refugees.  When they arrive in this country, the work begins.  Thousands of unpaid volunteers work in this sector, befriending, mentoring, encouraging, and assisting  people through the culture shock and successful assimilation.  It is a very important labour of love.  

Australia Rights the Ship

Refugees, the Australian Government and Christian Basics

The Australian government has shown the way when it comes to the vexed question of immigration.  Things have been scandalous, prior to the election of Tony Abbott’s Liberal Coalition to government.  Australia was beset by boatloads of economic migrants, mainly via Indonesia, landing on its shores demanding refugee status, together with all the entitlements attached.  Genuine refugees were squeezed out.

The Commentariat, and the Left in particular, had long employed a faux guilt and pity approach which framed  turning the boats back to be completely reprehensible, cruel, unthinkable–and so forth.  Anyone who even suggested such heresy was pilloried immediately as a moral monster.  You know the drill.  But how times have changed–and quickly.  Miranda Devine takes up the narrative:

AN extraordinary graph ­nestled in a press release issued today by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison encapsulates the humanitarian triumph of the government’s border protection policies. 
 
It shows two lines, one red and one blue, heading in ­opposite directions, from 2007 to 2014. Each trajectory is a mirror image of the other. When red goes up, blue goes down, and vice versa. This is the calculus of human misery.

Red represents the refugee places bestowed by Labor on “irregular maritime arrivals” — asylum seekers who arrived by boat. From nothing in 2007 to a peak of 5000 at the height of the madness in 2012-13.  The blue line represents the number of “special humanitarian” visas awarded to genuine refugees waiting offshore in desperate circumstances. The people waiting in a queue we kept being told didn’t exist.  Now that the Abbott government has all but stopped the boats, the queue is moving again. And so the blue line of offshore refugee visas will hit a record high of 5000 this year.

These are the most persecuted people on the planet, Iraq’s Christians and Yazidis who have been driven out of their homes, children catatonic with fear, after escaping the unspeakable barbarism of ­Islamic State psychopaths.  If you want to know what a refugee looks like, see the long lines of distraught humanity picking their way on foot in near 50C heat across the rocky slopes of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. Yazidis, like Christians, are a religious minority under mortal threat from IS terrorists who have captured large swathes of Syria and Iraq in the past two months. . . .

Thanks to Morrison’s success in wresting back control of our borders from people smugglers, Australia is in a position now to give at least some of those refugees a lifeline.  He has announced that 4400 refugees from Iraq and Syria, including Christians and Yazidis will be resettled in Australia this financial year. Morrison describes this as the “humanitarian dividend” of strong border protection policies, permanent resettlement in Australia for those “who would have otherwise had their places taken by illegal boat arrivals under the previous government”.

This financial year 11,000 of the 13,750 places in the annual humanitarian intake will be given to desperate people overseas, including 6000 places for refugees identified by the UN, and 5000 for refugees who have close family living in ­Australia. This is testament to Australian generosity and compassion, which have been so maligned by ­alleged refugee advocates.

Because the government has shut down the faux refugee inflow, it is now able to concentrate upon re-settling genuine refugees.

Of course this in no way is meant to condemn the initiative or ambition of the economic refugees.  Most come from impoverished circumstances.  They are seeking a better life for themselves and their children.  In their straightened circumstances they are easy prey to the human-smugglers who sell them the “dream” of a better life in Australia if they pay passage on a rickety boat. The immorality here lies with the people-smugglers who misrepresent the truth and exploit the poor with false promises and deceitful blandishments. 

Sadly there are people in far worse circumstances than these economic migrants.  As Devine points out, Australia is now concentrating upon the genuine refugees.  What has made this possible? A firm, but consistent line by the Australian authorities, turning back boats of pseudo-refugees, the economic migrants.  The message soon spreads, leaving the people-smugglers exposed and out to dry.  This is a lesson the US might find useful.

All of this presents a welcome challenge to Christ’s servants.  Refugee migrants are often the hardest to assimilate into a culture because of the dislocation, coupled with the shock and horror of their circumstances.  Consider for example the difficulties of helping Yazidis integrate who have long centuries of religion, culture, and practice built around, and linked to, a specific geographical location in Iraq, from which they have now been wrenched.  To them, Australia will be a very alien land.  On top of this, will be the horror of what they have recently witnessed and experienced.

Integration will not be easy.  To be successful, above all, will require human-to-human contact, not human-to-bureaucrat officialdom contact.  Smiles, genuine friendliness, helpfulness, and servanthood in all the “little things” of life.  Cherishing people.  Taking care of them.  Once more, we know the drill.  These are the things which Christ’s servants can excel at doing and being.

Neighbourliness is a fundamental Christian ethic, for are we not commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves?  Even Samaritans.

Orwellian Prophecies

No Surprises There

All political ideologies, of whatever stripe, seek to control language and vocabulary.  George Orwell portrayed this so powerfully in 1984 and Animal Farm.  He coined the term “newspeak”.  If you can legislate or require certain descriptors or nouns or verbs you can influence the way people think about issues.  You can shape the mind and opinion.

The use of the word “gay” as a noun substituting or replacing “homosexual” or “lesbian” is a classic example of modern newspeak.  Regrettably it has sullied a wonderful English adjective, and we are all the poorer for it.  Sometimes newspeak is so politicised and so connected to a government’s policies an incoming administration will change some of the language of official communication and government administration to reflect its view of reality.

In Australia, the incoming Liberal Coalition is changing some nouns and adjectives used to denote folk arriving on Australian shores by boats (mainly), declaring themselves refugees and seeking asylum.
   The recently defeated Labour government had instructed that illegal arrivals on Australian shores be called “clients” of the administration.  The new government has instructed that they be called “illegals”, “detainees”, or “transferees”.  So, newspeak in this instance has been rolled back to oldspeak.

Regardless of the merits or otherwise of such a change those opposing the reversion are arguing that it dehumanises the boat people.

The chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Kon Karapanagiotidis said the language change was ‘‘profound’’ because it shaped the public debate over asylum seekers who arrived by boat.  ‘‘He’s [the minister] deliberately trying to dehumanise asylum seekers by making them less than human,’’ Mr Karapanagiotidis said.  ‘‘They’re ‘detainees’, not people, and that suggests criminality. And calling people ‘transferees’ suggests they have no rights; they’re a package, a parcel, in transit.’’  (Sydney Morning Herald)

This is silly.  What is best is to use language which is accurate, not misuse it to forge a particular cause for the sake of propaganda.  Calling people “detainees” or “transferees” does not dehumanise people, making them animals.  One can imagine animals rights activists insisting that all farm animals be called “detainees” and those on the way to the abattoirs, “transferees”in an attempt to do the precise opposite–that is, to humanise animals.  Does calling airline passengers changing from one airline or terminal to another “transferees” dehumanise them?  It’s a nonsense.

When we call a prisoner a “criminal” or an “incarcerate” he or she is not being dehumanised.  They are in prison because they are human and have convicted of committing crime.  Animals do not commit crimes.  They are not morally responsible. 

We are all for treating illegal immigrants or economic migrants with the utmost of human dignity.  But that demands and requires, amongst other things,  that we hold them morally accountable for all their actions.

We don’t pretend to know how to deal properly and successfully with the “economic refugee” problem.  But we are very sure of one thing: newspeak is not part of the solution.  It just muddies the waters.  But that is always the intent of newspeak; so, no surprises there. 

Tragi-comedic

Dyspepsia Rather Than Belly-Laughs

If one were seeking to characterise Kevin Rudd, Australia’s boomerang prime minister, one could go no further than the Texan jibe “Big hat, no cattle”.  One Rudd’s failings which reportedly drove his staff and his former colleagues to drink during his first manifestation as Australian Prime Minister was his penchant for making spur of the moment decisions.  Not just minor decisions, mind you, but big, chunky policy pronouncements, with little or no consultation or agreement. 

It took Rudd all of a week in his role reprisal as Aussie PM to deliver another classic example of hubristic Ruddian chaos.
  As before there is every indication that he left his colleagues gob-smacked and floundering.  But when Nero proclaims, all creation must rush to comply and deliver.  That’s the Rudd perspective and the Rudd way.  We have in mind, of course, the sudden dramatic announcement that all boat people turning up on Australian shores would henceforth be deflected to Papua New Guinea (PNG) where they would enter holding camps.  Australia, in return, would pay heaps of moolah to PNG to make their boat problem (a Rudd Mark I creation, incidentally) go away. 

The Sydney Morning Herald headline said it all: Rudd plan in tatters as camps labelled “gulags”.  Staff at the existing detention centres have gone public describing some of the cruelties and inhumanities already existing–which, of course, the Rudd solution, will likely make far worse. 

Whistleblowers who worked for the Salvation Army at the Nauru camp said on Wednesday they could no longer remain silent.  On Wednesday 32 current and former Salvation Army staff issued a joint letter claiming the weekend riot at the Nauru camp, ”although shocking, was … inevitable” because of the conditions detainees face. Spokesman Mark Isaacs said the group spoke out despite facing lawsuits and court action. . . .

The staff on Nauru said the conditions on Nauru, and the indefinite nature of the detention, had caused people to break down. ”The mental health impact of detention in this harsh physical and policy environment cannot be overstated … we have witnessed a man scrabbling in the dirt, suffering a psychotic breakdown for several days without treatment, read another man’s suicide note apologising to his family, and seen countless others who suffered similar mental breakdowns,” they wrote.

The group’s letter followed explosive allegations aired on SBS TV’s Dateline program on Tuesday night from another whistleblower, former security guard Rod St George, that Department of Immigration staff failed to act on allegations of a series of rapes and assaults at the Manus detention centre.

The Prime Minister has just taken a brand new, big white stetson out of his closet.  No-one, least of all Rudd, has thought through the details of the new policy.  All details become “mere” when a visionary walks amongst us.  If it weren’t so tragic, it would be belly-laughable. 

Letter From Australia (About Economic Refugees)

Gullibility Without End

There are two kinds of refugees in the world: those fleeing from tyrants and murderers and those looking for a better socio-economic life.  The latter are called “economic refugees”.  Whilst their aspirations and ambitions are understandable they give the former kind of refugee a bad name.

Economic refugees all too often attempt to game the system by masquerading as genuine refugees.  Australia, for the last five years, has deliberately refused to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic refugees.  As a consequence it is now regarded as a soft-destination for economic refugees.  The boats keep coming.  Paul Sheeha, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald exposes the defalcation of the Australian government on this matter. Any government which loses control of its borders has ceded sovereignty. Worse, it has meant the government is complicit in self-deceit and in lying to the people. Paul Sheehan believes it is a key reason the Gillard Government is despised by the electorate.