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WHAT sort of “children” are these really, who this week put seven other boat people in hospital?
Sunday’s all-in brawl between 40 boat people at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation should finally alert us to what seems yet another immigration rort.
These brawlers are reportedly all “unaccompanied minors” from Afghanistan - that is, they are allegedly aged under 18, and came on boats without their parents.
They are among more than 200 such unaccompanied Afghan “boys” in detention, or about one in six of all Afghans now detained, which seems an astonishingly high proportion.
In all, 645 “unaccompanied minors” have come by boat since the Labor Government softened the rules in 2008.
Fancy so many parents sending children off alone on leaky boats.
But already alarm bells should be ringing - even more so given that teachers working with these “boys” say they actually seem to be young adults.
One, who has asked for anonymity, says of the more than 30 students they’ve seen, only two seemed to be children, and neither was Afghan.
“All the rest look to be anything from their late teens to their mid twenties. All claim to be 15,” the teacher says.
And almost every one is Afghan, or says so, since some Afghan boat people seem to come from Pakistan instead.
Why men would call themselves children is not surprising when you see what privileges come with being deemed to be under 18.
First, as boys they qualify for better accommodation and a fast track out of detention, with the Federal Government committed to a “no children between barbed wire” policy.
For example, nearly 100 of these “boys” were transferred to the Melbourne centre at the weekend from the overcrowded detention centre on Christmas Island.
In Darwin and Brisbane such boys are given not only classes but excursions, and are kept mainly in motels.
But there is a far more pressing reason why it may suit an Afghan man to pretend to be a boy.
It’s this clause in the Immigration Department’s application pack for a Class XA protection visa, explaining that unaccompanied “children” who win refugee status have more right than single men to send for their families to join them: “If you have been separated from members of your immediate family and are successful in your visa application and you are granted a permanent subclass 866 Protection visa, you may be able to propose them for humanitarian entry to Australia ...
“With regard to a Humanitarian entry proposal an immediate family includes your partner, dependent children and your parents (if you are under 18 years of age).” (My emphasis.)
Not only that, well-meaning lawyers will give free help. Here the law firm Minters innocently explains the deal in an email asking for volunteers for the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service ( and note what I’ve highlighted):
“RAILS has a significant case load resulting from the release of large numbers of single men who have been found to be genuine refugees and released from Christmas Island. Many of them are being resettled in Brisbane.
“Among those single men are quite a few unaccompanied minors, (mostly) boys ranging in age from 15 to (almost) 18. RAILS is assisting these children who have been granted protection visas to be reunited with their parents and siblings who remain overseas.
“Completion and lodgement of an application by their parents is crucial because once the boys turn 18 it becomes far more difficult, if not almost impossible, for them to successfully propose their parents for an Australian visa.”
Hello? Haven’t these lawyers smelled a rat? Only one of two conclusions seems possible, and I favour the latter.
The first is that the Government and activist lawyers are luring families into risking their children’s lives by sending them by boat, alone, to Australia.
The alternative is that they - and we - are being played for fools.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_they_seem_old_for_their_age_or_were_dumb_for_our_own/
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And STILL they come....more Boat people (Read 57365 times)
