"Send them back" is the general Australian jingoism from politicians, radio talk backs, loud-mouthed taxi drivers and other weak-kneed opinion makers.
It seems that everyone in Australia would be happy to accept a few more miserable refugess, if only these people would wait their turn. There is an irrational fear that a trickle of refugees could mean an insidious weakening of our comfortable life.
The loudest argument now is about where this small dangerous herd should be penned. Anywhere, but not in our own backyard.
The main excuse for this meanness of spirit is that those damned foreigners didn't wait long enough for official permission to seek refuge on our 'golden soil'.
Individuals and families who need urgent shelter should knock politely at the doors of the nation, then wait till the security guards check the colour of their souls.
Dark swarthy strangers, including children, might be dangerous.
One day, we promise them, sometime in the future, their claim for help will be checked and rubber stamped by a dedicated public servant, working strictly to government rules.
If genuine refugees try to sneak under the radar by arriving on a leaky boat, they will sent to wait in holding pens in another country where they have little or no welcome.
We try to deter more arrivals by forcing those who have already crossed our girting seas to wait with infinite patience in a stalag camp , wait in a detention centre, wait in a prison, wait as beggars. While they wait, Australia offers second degree protection from their traumas, limited rights, feeble benefits, remote from friends, from support and comfort.
There is no queue for refugees. It is in only the kafka-esque minds of bigots and bueraucrats refugees must wait patiently in a queue to be processed.
Our national understanding of immigration queues seems to have been formed by visions of a cattle pen on an outback staion, or the late-night queue outside a trendy nightclub, where fashionably dressed desirables are scrutinised and either admitted one at a time or rejected and sent home with their tails between their legs.
National psyche
Very few people can, or do, now sing the words in the second verse of our national anthem " For those who've come across the seas, We've boundless plains to share"
The other verses of the original poem, that we never sing, say all that is needed to know about Australia policy on refugees and asylum seekers
"Shou'd foreign foe e'er sight our coast,
Or dare a foot to land,
We'll rouse to arms like sires of yore
To guard our native strand."
The Labor party finally voted to delete White Australia from its platform at its 1965 conference. There was a similar struggle inside the Liberal Menzies government.
"The cabinet felt that the proposal put forward could not do other, if approved, than give the impression of significant relaxation and reduction of Australia’s immigration policy. The cabinet made it clear that it was not prepared to approve or permit such a result." (Cabinet Decision, 15 Sept 1964, NAA 6980T1/ S250469)
So, while the official platforms of all major political parties in Australia vigorously reject discrimination of new arrivals based on race, the practice, in the latest parliamentary debate, is in fact a way of appeasing those who want to discriminate.
In December of 1901, the federated colonies, through the Immigration Restriction Act, brought the White Australia Policy into being. That Act used the infamous dictation test so that any potential immigrant to Australia had to sit for a dictation test in any European Language. This made non European immigration to Australia almost impossible and it was not until 1959 that this form of discrimination was officially repealed.
Now it is back as a 'queue' for refugees to wait their turn.
The old 'White Australia' policy is still alive in many minds who support the "Wait Australia' policy
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