Can somebody explain to me Rudd's immigration policy?

May.04, 2009 in personal, rest of australia

I’ve been closely following Rudd’s illegal immigration policy over the last 10 months or so and with each new announcement am at a complete and utter loss as to explain the rationality of his decisions.

Here’s where we’re at so far:

Last year the Rudd government decided it would be a good idea to only detain illegal queue jumpers that posed a threat to the community. Presumably this was enforced as follows:Immigration Dept: Are you a threat the the community?
Asylum Shopper: No sir I good worker, very good with chemicals if you don’t let me in I CUT YOUR FACE..oops I mean hair, sorry don’t take me out of context, mate is what you say?

Everybody told them this was just going to cause a mass influx of people on boats but Rudd insisted all it was going to do was raise our international humanitarian appeal. Yeah because we’re clearly the lowest of the low when it comes to human rights, right China, North Korea, Iran, the US and Pakistan?

Sure enough over the next few months and carrying into 2009 Australia received a record number of boat people. The number of people on the boats seems to be ever-increasing. To date the largest number of asylum shoppers on any one vessel is 72.I guess those Indonesian people smugglers have really put our new humanitarian appeal to work.

To cope with this new influx of asylum shoppers Rudd decides to sack 10% of the Immigration department. Yeah, because we need less staff to deal with more people.It’s not like that sort of thinking got us into a global recession or anything.

To take some of the attention away from the boats full of cherry pickers arriving on our shores what feels like every other day now, Rudd has today announced that he’s taking a hardline approach to visa overstayers.
Instead of the previous mandatory detention and speedy deportation, the Immigration department are now required to politely request that illegal aliens come in for a chat to see how they’re going and offer them an extension on their visas.

If the visa overstayers tell the Immigration department to sod off well hey we’ll just sweep it under the carpet and go on about how great our humanitarian appeal is now or something.

Immigration minister Chris Evans has already come out and defended this latest softcock announcement;

“The department will have to justify a decision to detain – not presume detention.”

I’ve got a justification for you, how about ‘HEY YOU OVERSTAYED YOUR VISA WE CAUGHT YOU, SO LONG THANKS FOR PLAYING!’

Does anyone seriously think that a chat with a visa overstatayer is going to result in anything constructive other then the automatic extension of a visa over and over again?

Mind you, if I had to pick one or the other I’d gladly opt for this latest announcement in favour of the mandatory sending back of asylum shoppers. To their credit at least visa overstayers usually support themselves and don’t just jump onto the Centrelink gravy train.

Illegal immigration in Australia is something that tends to get up most people’s backs and none of this crap was mentioned pre-election. Back then it was all ‘lightning fast broadband for everyone, free laptops to all schoolkids and ‘aren’t you sick of an old guy running the country?’.

Great humanitarian appeal doesn’t help the citizens of Australia, all it does it put further stress on our economy, public transport, housing and welfare system. How about we stop worrying about whether or not visitors are nice and comfy and start putting more effort into our own citizens beyond a once off $900 bribe.

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No Comments on “Can somebody explain to me Rudd's immigration policy?”

Scribbler
May 4th, 2009 at 10:10 am Scribbler(Quote)

Calling refugees queue jumpers is a bit harsh. Often for refugees there is no ‘queue’ to join.

Also, I doubt 99% of these illegal immigrants are even aware of Australian immigration policy changes between labor and liberal governments. They know what they are doing is illegal, thats why they are trying to sneak in, but nothing more than that.

Terrorists too I am sure would choose a more fool proof way of getting here. Student visa perhaps?

ozsoapbox
May 4th, 2009 at 2:40 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)

Oh the cherry pickers themselves might not know the ins and outs of Australian law but they don’t have to. The indonesian recruiters have pHD’s in Australian immigration and package it all up nicely for them.

‘$xxx and we can get you into australia, free bbq boat on arrival’

On the other hand some of the cherry pickers are very clued up:

One man said although he had been declared a refugee he would try to make it to Australia because he had heard he would be more likely to be accepted by the Rudd Government than by its predecessor. “Kevin Rudd – he’s changed everything about refugee,” another told the ABC.

“If I go to Australia now, different, different … maybe accepted. But when John Howard president Australia, he said come back to Indonesia.”

Scribbler
May 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm Scribbler(Quote)

Hmm, doesn’t sound too good. I hear these recruiters are all small time now too and so are harder to find/catch. All of the bigwigs have been wrapped up.

‘Phds in Aust Immigration’ – nice