The Third World Sucks, Version: Australian Asylum

[Surlethe]

Apparently, Indonesian asylum-seekers would rather spend time in Australian prison than live in the third world. Australia recently implemented a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for illegal asylum-seekers. The result: an increase in illegal immigration.

Lawyer and former diplomat Anthony Sheldon says jailed crew members can make $20 a day in Australian jails, in his submission to the Gillard government’s expert panel on asylum-seekers.

The submission coincides with the 89th asylum boat’s arrival at the weekend, a large vessel carrying 144 passengers arrested northeast of Christmas Island.

This brings to 6107 the total of asylum-seekers detained this year, including more than 164 crew, mostly Indonesian.

In a five-page submission, Mr Sheldon, a fluent Indonesian speaker and former diplomatic attache, testifies to having worked in Indonesia “on issues of people-smuggling and illegal fishing”.

The threat of imprisonment in Australia serves as no deterrent for Indonesian boat crew, he says.

“The preference of a number of older fishermen is to remain in detention in Australia,” Mr Sheldon says in the submission.

“Depending on their jobs in prison, they can earn up to $20 per day, making them wealthy beyond comparison upon their return to their villages after their sentence is served.

“They also receive free dental and medical services during their imprisonment.

“Combined with the relative safety of their work in prison compared to the dangerous work at sea, Australian imprisonment is very desirable.”

Endemic corruption in Indonesia and to a lesser extent in Malaysia helps the unhindered large-scale movements through the archipelago of asylum-seekers bound for Australia, most of whom are travelling on fake passports, Mr Sheldon says.
Interviews with Indonesians about attitudes to people-smuggling revealed useful cultural insights, including one analogy likening asylum-seekers to a “plague of rats” moving though a house.

“If you don’t stop the rats, they will move on and are not your problem,” one respondent told Mr Sheldon.
Under Australia’s mandatory sentencing laws for people-smuggling, first-time offenders receive a minimum five-year term.

“It is frustrating that the designed deterrent (mandatory sentencing) is actually serving to increase the number of SIEVs (suspected illegal entry vessels) coming to Australian shores.

“I have confirmed this situation by interviewing Indonesian prisoners in Australia, and many of the fishermen in Indonesia, who corroborate this belief.”

Corruption is a big problem in stamping out people-smuggling, Mr Sheldon says.

” This has been illustrated by numerous accounts of witnesses I have interviewed relating stories of people-smuggling organisers bribing their way out of custody.”

A public awareness campaign about a prisoner exchange treaty with Indonesia, highlighting the fact that boat crews could face the risk of serving the balance of their prison terms in Indonesian jails would have a desired deterrent effect, he said.
Together with Brisbane barrister Mark Plunkett, Mr Sheldon successfully presented the first legal cases challenging the issue of Indonesian minors being held in detention in Australia.

[weemadando]

Well, this isn't going to do anything to slow down the march for the turn them back, overseas detention or other racist shithead ideas.

[Stark]

The laugh is how significant the racist boat people alarmism is in AU compared to their actual numbers. I mean, the government spends some ludicrous amount detaining people for years, but that isn't really the illegal immigrant's fault.

[weemadando]

Don't you know how much money they cost our economy when they take our jobs and become productive, tax paying members of society, rather than being kept for months and years in remote prison camps run by exorbitantly expensive private contractors?

[Surlethe]

Don't you know how much money they cost our economy when they take our jobs and become productive, tax paying members of society, rather than being kept for months and years in remote prison camps run by exorbitantly expensive private contractors?

And you know what? The third world sucks so many hairy donkey balls, those remote prison camps run by private contractors are still better living conditions. That's what I find crazy amazing (stripped of positive connotations). It's like the Chinese rural-to-urban migration: 300 million people, saying with their decisions that those shitty, dangerous, awful factory jobs are still better than scraping a subsistence farm out of the Chinese countryside.

[Terralthra]

Can you please use bold or italic to emphasize within quoted text? The orange you picked is damn near unreadable on a white background (minimalist theme).

[Alkaloid]

Australia recently implemented a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for illegal asylum-seekers. The result: an increase in illegal immigration.

Just to clear it up, because there seems to be some confusion, the mandatory sentencing in for people smugglers, not asylum seekers. The people smugglers go to trial and then to actual factual prison, while the asylum seekers get mandatory detention in the desert/island detention centres until ASIO and the Immigration Department decide what to do with them, which is normally grant them asylum.

It's interesting that the people smugglers would want to stay in prison, because all you hear from psychologists about the in theory much fluffier and shorter stays in detention centres is 'holy crap get these places fixed they are a hotbed of mental illness and depression.'

Hooray, humane and effective, totally not partisan and intractable asylum seeker policies!