On Tue, 4 Mar 2014, Robin Humble <rjh+luv@cita.utoronto.ca> wrote:
On Sun, Mar 02, 2014 at 01:49:57PM +1100, David wrote:
Worth reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/magazine/how-to-build-a-perfect-refugee- camp.html
nice article. thanks for the link.
ultimately it's very depressing though 'cos even with a sane and humane refugee policy there's still no real solution except to not have refugees in the first place.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/as.html According to the CIA we have a birth rate of 1.77 children per woman which is significantly less than the ~2.1 that would be needed to maintain the population. If Australia is going to maintain it's current population then we have to have some migration. For every 177 children born in Australia we need about 33 immigrants.
presumably this is what the (now depleted) foreign aid budget was meant to help with - stopping the flow of refugees at its source by making people's lives better in their homelands.
Of course we still have "economic refugees" from the US who can fly here without restriction.
maybe the Libs look at it economically and think it's cheaper to be cruel to aquatic asylum seekers at our borders than be kind to many more people abroad. walled garden instead of world peace.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/35m-spent-on-manus- island-detention-centres-kitchen-defended-20140302-33u0x.html It's absolutely not cheaper. The declared cost is about $900 per day per detainee, it could be a lot higher. I find it difficult to imagine any more expensive way of dealing with the issue, obviously the aim is not saving money.
or indeed our government could step up locally and help to fund solutions for some of the global problems of our time - climate, inequality, food, energy - which are usually responsible for insecurity and warzones in the first place. currently it appears they prefer to ignore such things and leave them for other countries and future generations to deal with.
They are pandering to industries such as the mining industry who want to make money while destroying the environment. They also like invading other countries which makes such things worse. The first time I recall cowardly politicians talking about immigration was regarding the Vietnamese "boat people" who were escaping their country which was ruined by (among others) the Australian army. It seems that the solution to much of the problems with immigration at all times since the Vietnam war was to just stop invading other countries. But recall that Vietnamese refugees were never treated so badly. Australia has become a much more cowardly country in the last few decades. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/