Immigration Law

Last Friday the Parliamentary Inquiry into Australia’s Detention Network finally released its report. The three most important recommendations – a time limit on detention, transparency around ASIO decisions, and an independent guardian for unaccompanied children – are also the most controversial.

Elmo doesn’t think the three recommendations are that controversial

Unfortunately, this controversy is entirely fabricated and not at all based in reality.

Enshrining these recommendations in Australian law would a) bring us closer to treating refugees the way a humane country should, b) save Australia tens of millions of dollars in detention costs and c) stop us destroying the mental health of thousands of people, 90 per cent of whom will end up as Australian citizens.

Continue reading "Three sensible ways to fix a silly immigration system" »

Sailor’s Lounge caters to the hard-bittenest drinkers in the deep south coastal town of Mobile, Alabama. There’s a woman, maybe 80, who wears her dress unbuttoned to reveal her entire cleavage. Her steady eye contact is unnerving.

Another woman, sitting at the bar, tells the story of how her pretty mother, who worked as a Bunny waitress in a Mississippi club, was found dead under a building from a suspected hot shot. That was decades ago.

And there’s the woman called Mama, who owns the bar. She’s about 70. She came to Mobile five decades ago from Turkey. She worked on a cruise ship where she was also required to double as the ship’s resident belly dancer.

Continue reading "Sweet home Alabama is only sweet for some" »

In ruling the so-called ‘Malaysia Solution’ invalid, the High Court has delivered a spectacular blow to the beleaguered Gillard government in one of its most vulnerable policy areas – asylum seekers.

After an election in which the Opposition almost knocked off a first-term government on a platform that contained a promise to “stop the boats”, the Immigration Minister Chris Bowen was tasked with devising a credible solution to the problem of unlawful arrivals by non-citizens.

The desperate need for new thinking from the government was only underscored by the tragic loss of life when a vessel carrying asylum seekers was wrecked off Christmas Island in December.

Continue reading "Why the Malaysia solution was as useless as old rendang" »

SHY Keenan (corr) doesn’t like to call herself a victim nor does she like the term survivor. Both imply a resolution to an issue.

But from the age of four she was systematically raped, beaten, degraded, filmed then, at the age of 10, sold to a gang of dockworkers in the UK for four more years of abuse.

In 2000 more than 25 years after the abuse, she armed herself with a small camera lent by the BBC and filmed one of her attackers boasting about his actions. Two years later she watched in satisfaction from the back of Liverpool Crown Court as three of her attackers, including a stepfather, were handed jail terms.

Continue reading "Abused as a child, with an angry message to Australia" »