25. Asylum Seeker Policy

Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about asylum seeker policy. This week SACOSS launches a state election policy around the treatment of asylum seekers in our communities. A number of SACOSS members provide services to asylum seekers who are living in South Australia waiting for determination of their cases, but I can’t tell you how the SACOSS policy was developed or why state government intervention is important in relation to what is primarily a Federal issue, because that is an operational matter and I can’t comment on operational matters.

However, I can talk about other countries, and so I want to grumble about the treatment of those on a particular ship full of asylum seekers. Over 900 asylum seekers, members of a religious minority fled a brutal dictatorship that was very clearly persecuting them. The boat sailed to Cuba but was denied entry there. In sight of the United States they pleaded for entry, only to be sent a response from the State Department that said that passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible." There are conflicting reports about whether military vessels were sent to turn the boats away – perhaps another operational matter we may never know with certainty.

The ship sailed north, but Canada also rejected the asylum seekers, and the boat went back to the region it came from. Some of the asylum seekers were settled in friendly countries from there, but 254 were murdered by the dictatorship.

The story is well-known: the year was 1939, the ship was the MS St Louis and the passengers were Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. But from the shameful treatment of those desperate people and many thousands like them, the Refugee Convention was created – and signed up to by Australia 60 years ago tomorrow (22 January 1954).

But I want to grumble because despite the Convention, the story of the St Louis has way too much resonance in contemporary Australian debate. And because the Australian Human Rights Commission reports a “significant gap” between Australia’s human rights obligations and our current treatment of asylum seekers. And because Commission’s Chair is right that “the denial of work rights to asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas … may force individuals and families into poverty and lead to breaches of multiple human rights.”

Welcome to the lucky country.

I am Greg, and I am grumbling.


This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 21 January 2014