Hi Carl, On Mon, December 16, 2013 7:44 am, Carl Turney wrote:
But logic dictates that a person who has traversed 5, 10, or 20 different countries and (when they arrive in Australia) suddenly declares "NOW I want to apply for asylum" does NOT have sanctuary as their PRIMARY motivation.
The UN Refugee Convention states that a person must seek asylum in the first safe country that they reach. By definition, countries which are not signatories are considered not safe, as they grant absolutely no legal protections to refugees. Here is what the signatory map looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Refugeeconvention.PNG As you can see there's a gaping hole between the Middle-East, the Indian subcontinent, SE Asia, to Australia. As refugee advocate groups will say, if Indonesia was a signatory then the number of "unauthorised arrivals" would be close to zero (assuming Indonesia doesn't go on a rampage against it's own citizens - again). However, how would does one convince Indonesia to become a signatory? Why should they think it's their problem? -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GCertPM, MBA mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt