I left Australia decades ago. Migration was not my idea, but I had it easy, practically speaking, in the Peloponnese: I was not fleeing for my life, I had a family and a house to go to, and there were no threats of death, rape, or imprisonment. Nor were there threats of starvation or poverty. I was the wife of a Greek, and so my rights were acknowledged and my papers in order. I got a job, and my children were always with me.
But still, it was hard, so hard that to this day, putting dreamers and pleasure-seekers aside, I cannot understand the whole process of migration. Still less can I understand official attitudes towards it, for it seems to me that very few people leave their homes and their home countries unless circumstances drive them to it. Circumstances involving desperation, like the Irish potato famine, the Highland Clearances, and the failure of tin in Cornwall that had such an influence on 19th century patterns of migration to Australia.
As I write, the Euro elections have been over for a week, and the results are still being digested and debated. During the campaigns and the counting, it became evident quite early that immigration was the issue, even more of an issue than the state of the economy in the various harried nations of Europe.
And worry about immigration seems to be the main contributing factor to the continuing rise of the right-wing parties across the Continent. Here in Greece, for example, the neo-Nazi and racist Golden Dawn polled a disturbing 9 per cent, and has won seats in the European Parliament for the first time.
And what of Australia? Quite frankly, I'm baffled, so baffled that visiting Antipodeans take me to task. 'Get over it, Gillian. The Australia you grew up in and thought you knew has gone forever.'
So it would seem. But it also seems to me that it was a more tolerant country way back then. My parents had friends who were known as DPs, Displaced Persons, and when I started high school Hungarian children were starting to arrive, so that I was repeating the experience my father had had in the 1930s, when Jewish students were enrolling at his school. And there was no fuss.
But I'm not alone in my bemusement. Last week a friend of mine, herself an immigrant, wrote a stinging letter to ALP Senators. She pointed out that asylum seekers are not breaking any law, and went on to ask what had happened to the decency that the Labor government had shown to refugees such as her parents, who had been fleeing fascism in Europe just prior to the outbreak of World War Two.
My friend was a mere baby then, but there was never any prospect of internment for her family. And Australia was accepting far more refugees than it does now. I'm anxious to know whether she has had any replies.
Comparisons may be odious; nevertheless, they are often instructive. Conservative estimates suggest that Greece, which has a population of just over 11 million, is currently home to 500,000 'illegals'. Australia's 'problem' is minute when put against Greece's, or against that of a country like Pakistan, which is trying, and doubtless failing, to cope with a refugee population of about 2 million. It seems that the poorer countries are bearing, as usual, the greatest burden.
I consulted another friend, also a vintage child immigrant, wondering about the change, about the development of Australia's siege mentality, which is being neatly manipulated and fuelled by politicians of every stripe. At least as far as I can observe. Why the change? I wanted to know. 'Then,' she said, 'immigrants were usually white and of Christian or Jewish extraction. Things are different now.'
She doesn't like things being different, and neither do I. What remains the same is that we are all human, and we all bleed in exactly the same way. So what has happened to The Golden Rule?
Gillian Bouras is an Australian writer who has been based in Greece for 30 years. She has had nine books published. Her most recent is No Time For Dances. Her latest, Seeing and Believing, is appearing in instalments on her website.
Pictured: Poster sighted at a Northcote, Vic. bus stop