Government distances self from migrant-terrorism link

By Simon Lauder for AM

 

 

Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner has criticised a Federal Government backbencher for linking the threat of terrorism with immigration.

Labor MP Kelvin Thomson says Australia should severely cut its intake of migrants so the threat of terrorists coming in can be reduced.

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In a speech to year 12 students at a foreign affairs forum in Melbourne, the Member for Wills called for more rigorous background checks on prospective migrants.

“The arrests this week in Melbourne will put renewed focus on our counter [terrorism] security measures. And it’s right that they should do so,” he said.

Mr Thomson says reducing Australia’s immigration intake by about half would improve security because it would give authorities more time to assess applications.

The suggestion comes just as the Race Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes, is trying to prevent a public backlash against the Somali community.

“There have certainly been comments on talkback radio criticising the whole communities, when only a very small minority of people may be responsible for the allegations and the charges that have been made,” he said.

Mr Innes says it is wrong to link this week’s terrorism charges with a debate about immigration.

“I think it’s unfortunate that those suggestions have been made in this particular week,” he said.

“In several of the instances of people that have been charged, they came here as young children, and reducing migration intakes or vetting, better vetting of migrants just wouldn’t have addressed these issues.”

Mr Innes says making the link increased the risk of a backlash.

“It risks the sort of backlash where people in the broader Australian community start to tag communities as a whole as responsible for extremism and radical positions, whereas that is far from the reality,” he said.

The Opposition’s immigration spokeswoman, Sharman Stone, says Mr Thomson is right to highlight problems with security checks.

“Kelvin’s got his finger on the button when he says that there is a real problem right now about how we are assessing applications,” she said.

“It’s not, I think, due to the numbers of people coming in, it’s due to the reduction of resources.”

The Government’s Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, Laurie Ferguson, says it is not more time that is needed for security checks as Mr Thomson contends, it is more resources.

Mr Ferguson says ASIO is under-resourced and that’s causing unnecessary delays.

“I often, almost weekly, write to ASIO about trying to finalise security checking of people in my electorate and their families. And there’s been a significant additional time that people are separated because of this requirement,” he said.

“And I do say that on occasion it seems to me that some cases are blatantly not a security worry, and yet they’ve still got to be waiting all this time.”

Despite Mr Ferguson’s admission that ASIO is not fully equipped for the task, the Federal Government is defending its security migration process.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has released a written statement which says Australia’s migration screening is world class, and Mr Thompson’s views are not those of the Federal Government.

Tags: community-and-society, immigration, race-relations, government-and-politics, federal-government, unrest-conflict-and-war, terrorism, australia

Migrants ‘may pose terrorist threat’

By Emily Bourke for PM

Posted 4 hours 27 minutes ago
Updated 1 hour 45 minutes ago

Federal Labor MP Kelvin Thomson has criticised Australia’s existing immigration laws, calling for the slashing of migrant numbers and more rigorous background checks on prospective residents.

Speaking to a group of Year 12 students in Melbourne on Friday, the Member for Wills said spiralling numbers of migrants were compromising Australia’s security.

“Given time, it would be possible to get to the bottom of the background of applicants from Somalia and elsewhere and work out whether they have any association with fundamentalist groups and make a rational assessment of whether they pose a risk,” he said.

“Reducing our rates of immigration intake to the rates prevailing back in the 1990s would provide authorities with much more time in which to assess applications, and thereby improve Australia’s security.”

He pointed to this week’s arrests of terror suspects and the conduct of the men at court.

“My own view about this is that there needs to be more vetting of both prospective migrants and temporary residents, including students, to minimise the risk that people who do not respect Australia’s laws and legal system will enter this country,” Mr Thomson said.

“And someone who refuses to stand up when asked by a judge and says ‘I stand only before God’ does not respect Australia’s laws or legal system.”

Aid budget boost

 

But Mr Thomson also said improving Australia’s foreign aid commitment would help reduce terrorism, drug trafficking and unauthorised boat arrivals.

He has called for Australia’s aid budget to be boosted in keeping with a UN target that rich countries devote 0.7 per cent of national income to overseas aid.

“The overseas threats that Australians are legitimately worried about – terrorism, drugs, boat people – are fuelled by grinding poverty,” he said.

“If we can help lift people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East out of grinding poverty, we are not only doing the right thing by our fellow human beings, we are also tackling the root cause of many of our serious problems here in Australia.”

After his 30-minute speech, one student asked whether there had been any cases of a terrorist attack involving refugees, but the Labor backbencher was not backing away.

“I’ve strongly supported humanitarian treatment of people who arrived by boat,” he said.

“But if you look down the track and say what are the real threats to Australia, I think that is a far more serious issue than the prospect of us being attacked by another country,” he said.

Puzzled, concerned

 

The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia is puzzled and concerned by the remarks from Mr Thomson.

The federation’s director, Peter Van Vliet, says the timing of his speech, in the current circumstances, seems to be provocative.

“My understanding, talking to the Government, is a migrant gets the same security and health check regardless of whether Australia accepts five or 500,000 migrants a year,” he said.

“The level of security check is exactly the same.”

Mr Van Vliet has also dismissed the link between migrant numbers and potential security threats.

“Often the majority of suspects in terrorism cases, they’re often born in Australia and often they’re from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, as we’ve seen with some of the high-profile cases over the last few years,” he said.

“So it’s … the nexus is not quite as strong as I think has been pushed.”

He says migrant numbers have flat-lined over the past year and he is warning against a dramatic cut in the intake.

“If you had a huge reduction of numbers of the type Kelvin Thomson talks about, you would have really serious economic implications for Australia,” he said.

“He raises concerns about the international student numbers; international students represent our third largest export industry.

“I think at a time when Australia’s just struggling to get through the global financial crisis, the worst thing we could be doing is cutting back international student numbers.

“Sure, there are some dodgy private vocational educational providers the Government has to deal with, and needs to deal with more firmly, but I think it’s economic lunacy to suggest cutting back our international student numbers.”

Tags: community-and-society, immigration, government-and-politics, terrorism, refugees, australia, vic

From the Jerusalem Post

While fertility levels continue to decline worldwide, the global population is still expected to reach 9.1 billion in 2050, increasing by about 33 million people annually at that time, according to the UN’s “World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision.”

A number of factors are believed to be responsible for the decrease, including better access to family planning, urbanization, and empowerment of women.

Education and access to family planning can go a long way toward reducing population growth, even in conservative Muslim states, a UN official told reporters at a population conference last week.

“Even in cultures that are Muslim, advances of a very big quantity can be made if the government has enough commitment to provide the services and the social infrastructure that validates those changes,” said Hania Zlotnik, director of the population division at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, according to The New York Times.

A March report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argued that the “empowerment of women” was the main factor for the slowing population growth rate in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Middle Eastern women have made great progress at gaining more equal access to education,” wrote Patrick Clawson, the institute’s deputy director for research.

However, Clawson said, “that has not yet translated into more access to employment outside the home.”

While the slowing birth rate means a relatively light burden for the economy in terms of caring for children and the elderly, the Middle East can only benefit from this if it can create enough jobs for the young who were born during the previous years, when there was rapid population growth, Clawson argued.

“If jobs are not created in sufficient numbers to absorb those joining the labor market, the resulting rise in unemployment could have a considerable political impact,” he said. “Iran has seen a wave of unemployed youth turning to antisocial behavior, especially drug addiction and prostitution. Political extremists from Algeria to Palestine and Iraq have been able to recruit readily among young people who face a bleak future.”

From 1950 to 2000, the Middle East experienced “explosive population growth,” he wrote. The region’s population grew from 92 million to 349 million, a 3.8-fold increase, or 2.7 percent a year.