So am I missing something?

[sami]

This really doesn't seem like a terribly bad plan:

The Prime Minister today announced a new agreement being reached with Malaysia, whereby 800 asylum seekers arriving at Australia by boat will be transferred directly to Malaysia and be processed there. In return, Australia will accept 4,000 additional (increasing our humanitarian immigration quota) refugees that have already been processed in Malaysia.

The idea behind this is to try and attack the "business model" of people smugglers, because they're parasites preying on the desperate, and they get people killed (or just kill them themselves).

Unless I'm missing something important, this is actually positive progress.

Am I?

Comments

[adelheid]

Well, for starters, it's in contravention of the Refugee Convention. Which, okay, the government has never had any intention of following.

Also, it's abrogating Australia's responsibilities, and "off-shore processing" in Malaysia is no better than "off-shore processing" on Christmas or Manus Islands: it just continues the same behavior and lets the government blame Malaysia instead of its own incompetance. Which as a result could be seen as blame-shifting onto a non-white society 'cause that makes it "easier".

[sami]

Under this agreement Australia still takes its existing refugees, though. Plus more. I'm kind of in favour of a process that sees us taking in more refugees.

And as something of a pragmatist, if off-shore processing actually gets people processed, I'm kind of in favour of that too, since on its existing record processing asylum-seekers is apparently something the Australian government is incapable of doing. If people are going to spend six months getting processed off-shore, or six years not getting processed in an Australian detention centre, I'm okay with us processing off-shore until we can manage to get someone to stick boots up the appropriate arses domestically.

Obviously these things are all far from perfect, but since perfection isn't going to be achieved any time soon, I'll still support "good", or even "less bad".

I'm not sure where it's in contravention of the Convention. Unless the refugees are refugees from Malaysia, it contravenes no statute of the Convention that I'm aware of, especially since the refugees being processed in Malaysia are being processed under the UNHCR there.

Where a refugee is processed is less important than that they get processed, and thereafter resettled, or housed until repatriated. (Voluntary repatriation when conditions are again safe is, after all, the UNHCR's "preferred" outcome for refugees, and is, according to the UNHCR, the most common as well.)

I'd also point out that this isn't exactly a fair case for including the "non-white society" aspect as any kind of motive. If the government is looking to try and build a regional solution to the problem of refugees, then with the arguable exception of New Zealand, who are awfully far away from pretty much anywhere, then every other society is going to be a "non-white society", because we're the only predominantly white country in the Asia-Pacific region.

[adelheid]

As fred_mouse points out, Malaysia is not a signatory to the Convention.

Also: Amnesty International has serious concerns relating to Malaysia's treatment of refugees.

Thirdly, this 'solution' continues to rely on the concept of a queue. There IS no queue.

[sami]

See reply to Mouse below.

I'm both a moral and a financial supporter of Amnesty International, but that particular piece is not their finest work. Firstly, it implies that Australia's treatement of detainees is somehow just peachy, which is false; the fetish porn description of caning is sufficiently over-the-top to trigger an aversion state in an otherwise-sympathetic reader, which is is counter-productive; most annoyingly, it continues to fall into the aggravating fallacy of the perfect solution.

This isn't perfect - far from it. But to say "yes, Australia should take 4,000 more refugees, but not by sending 800 to Malaysia" is stupid. That isn't one of the current options. But the 4,000 for 800 is, which puts 3,200 more people into actual resettlement in Australia, while also, potentially, cutting into the profiteering and predation of the people-smugglers.

There's a reason the UNHCR has lauded this as an improvement.

And finally: Of course there is a queue. There is a long list of applications to be processed, a limit to the rate at which processing can take place, and no sane way to order the processing other than in order of arrival.

Upon returning to Australia from overseas, I am, as an Australian citizen, granted automatic entry to this fine country. I do not have to queue for admission. I still have to bloody well queue for my passport stamp. There is always a queue.

[fred_mouse]

If I have understood it correctly, Malaysia is not a signatory to the relevant UNHCR agreement, and thus the rights that the refugees would have under UN law in Australia, they won't get in Malaysia.

(hopefully this makes sense. I have the vague this evening).

[sami]

True, Malaysia is not a signatory, but this doesn't automatically mean they're going to be shot on sight. And the UNHCR has said that this arrangement *is* going to be an improvement on the existing situation. (Additionally, it's been suggested that this will contribute to increasing pressure for Malaysia to *become* a signatory.)