Keywords: Visas
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 08 December 2014
22 Comments
It is possible to understand why Senators Xenophon and Muir supported the bad law that reintroduces temporary protection visas. They saw it as a small improvement now for people in desperate circumstances, and that is true. The real culprit is the irrational and punitive policy pursued by the Government.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 29 October 2014
7 Comments
Former Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans once expressed concern about how much personal power was vested in his position when making decisions about particular cases. The current Minister, on the other hand, is trying to increase the number of such powers, and is much more likely to use the ministerial trump card to avoid judicial scrutiny. In a parliamentary system that relies on the checks and balances between the Parliament, Executive and Judiciary, one arm of government should not be able to overrule another.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 01 October 2014
14 Comments
Last week, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison proposed migration law changes that he said would speed up processing of the backlog of refugee claims, and allow asylum seekers to 'get on with their lives'. In fact they do nothing of the sort. The new temporary protection visa (TPV) denies family sponsorship, travel to visit family, and more.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 22 September 2014
5 Comments
Considering my indebtedness to the two Aborigines who met [my family's ship arriving in Hervey Bay from Ireland] 151 years ago, I owe it to all my fellow Australians to agitate these issues of law, morality and politics here in Ireland so that back in Australia, the homeland which, in my religious tradition, was known as the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 12 September 2014
12 Comments
There may not be simple solutions to complex issues such as how to reduce the risk of travel by boat without punishing the refugees. However, the High Court's latest decision reminds us there are people involved and they are not ‘outlaws’.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 25 August 2014
8 Comments
Child abuse is occurring within the Federal Government's immigration detention regime at the same time as the government sponsored Child Abuse Royal Commission is seeking to achieve justice for victims of past abuses in churches and institutions. After visiting Christmas Island, paediatrician Elizabeth Elliott said that 'when it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion' but compassion had 'gone missing'. What is behind our selective compassion?
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 15 August 2014
30 Comments
We Australians confront none of the complexities of sharing a land border with a poor neighbour. Most Americans, I find, consider our policy morally repulsive and just stupid. They cannot believe that we routinely lock up children, that we recently held 157 people on a ship in the Indian Ocean for almost a month, and that we are now going to send up to 1000 asylum seekers to Cambodia.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 11 July 2014
6 Comments
While Immigration Minister Scott Morrison sits with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and hands over customs vessels to the Sri Lankan Government for use in preventing people escaping Sri Lanka, Australia's High Court is deciding whether a group of 158 Sri Lankan asylum seekers can be returned to the Sri Lankan Government. How did we get to the stage where we are supplying the alleged persecutors with the means of stopping people from escaping and seeking our protection?
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AUSTRALIA
Many Australians regard these asylum seekers as economic refugees. But systematic discrimination against Tamils in Sri Lanka has existed since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Tamils are a minority, and are systematically and routinely treated as second-class citizens by the majority Sinhalese community. The extreme Sinhalese nationalist view regards Sri Lanka as an island sacred to Buddhism, in which non-Sinhalese have no place.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 10 July 2014
21 Comments
Like the Dictation Test devised devised to enforce the White Australia Policy, the National Interest Test would allow the Minister to exclude anyone he wanted. People who claim protection can be confident that the Australian Government will not have them or their dogs killed, but they will have no confidence that they will not be placed in dangerous situations or returned to places where they fear for their lives.
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AUSTRALIA
On Monday we learned that two boats of Tamil asylum seekers had been intercepted off Christmas Island. Now there are unconfirmed reports that Australia is handing them over to the Sri Lankan navy without assessing their claims for protection. Amnesty warns Tamils face the risk of sexual violence, torture, murder, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance. Since March this year there have been scores of arrests and several deaths.
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AUSTRALIA
The Government's vilification of people arriving by boat has reached the level where the term 'illegal' features in the Budget documents. Immigration Minister Morrison has insisted on referring to people arriving by boat as 'illegals' for some years, despite the Migration Act using the less pejorative term 'unlawful non-citizen'. This is not just a lawyer's linguistic debate; if it were not important, the Government would not insist on the term.
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