Something’s been sending chills up my spine lately.
That is, Australian policy on asylum seekers has been scaring me ever since I can remember hearing about it. These particular chills are tied up with the language attached to the policies.
From 2001 to 2007, we had “the Pacific solution,” which involved sending asylum seekers to detention camps on Pacific island nations rather than “processing” them on the Australian mainland. Now we’re talking about “the Malaysian solution”, which the government is trying to find a way to still implement after it was struck down in the High Court. And we’re talking about a “Nauru solution” again.
Is the continual use of the word “solution” to talk about vulnerable people scaring anyone else? Because that usage has historically been attached to ethnic cleansing. And that it could become so attached to Australian policy inspires nothing but horror.
Anyone who isn’t seeing a racial tint to what’s happening here is kidding themselves. It’s fear of the non-white other that is driving these policies about “boat people”. The Australian government certainly isn’t making sure that white Britons who overstay their visas – you know, the largest population who come here without legal permission – get back on their planes.
People aren’t problems that need to be solved. They don’t need to disappear into a convenient equation. They are human beings.
I totally agree with you. Yes, “solution” used in this context – to deny the humanity of the people involved – is frightening. If the Australian government were to use that language towards those white Britons, there’d be an uproar.
It’s like in the US, no-one calls white Europeans (especially from west / north Europe) who overstay their visas “illegals”. Somehow that term is applied only to immigrants of color. But we’re not racist, oh no.
You’re totally right. And with that, solving the ‘problem’ is just ensuring that people who need to flee war and persecution cannot do so, so they stay in that country and are either tortured or killed, or they rot in some other country on the way, or as has happened under both Labor and Liberals watch, the boats drown at sea because helping those boats would mean they’d have to look after them.
So going to protest outside the ALP national conference in Sydney in December!
In Canada, historically the perceived need to assimilate/eradicate Indigenous populations was referred to as “solving the Indian problem”. Chock full o’ dehumanization and victim-blaming! Creates a problem and then situates in in the wrong effin’ place.
The use of ‘Solution’ problemtises asylum seekers into a simple equation as you say. It is disgusting and it also fills me with horror. People aren’t problems to be solved, the situations they are in the circumstances that bring them to us, those can be addressed… but people get to be equally valued. (Or they would if we lived in a world that could remember that for 0.5 seconds at a time).
I can also see what you’re saying about the parallel to ‘ethnic cleansing’ and that is also deeply disturbing – particularly given the ‘other ‘solutions’ being employed to other ‘difficult problems’. *flails*
I feel less ‘Australian’ every day and more horrified and alienated every day.
It is so profoundly disturbing that someone would think that was an okay name for anything. The Final Solution :/ Those who do not learn from history…
“processed” is just as bad….
It seems to me like that thing people do when they make people think they’re being attacked so that they’ll do anything they’re told by a person of authority. “solution” implies problem, problem is half a step away from threat and threat is exactly what you need to make people do what you want them to do.
As an ex-DIAC officer, I can assure you that DIAC does make unlawful non-citizens (wherever they be from) return home, including those from the UK and the US. The big problem is that many “locations” (finding those who are unlawfully in Australia) are made after people dob other people in. Those from the UK and the US are nowhere near as often dobbed in as someone with brown skin (and those dob ins come from the general community).
The Compliance section (those who are responsible for locating and potentially detaining those who are unlawfully in Australia) target everyone who is unlawful, and are often far more frustrated at those from the UK and the US who believe that they have the right to stay in Australia because of who they are versus those who may not have explored other avenues to remain.
Many times, when I was assessing asylum cases, would I have applications made by those who had been detained and who did not know that they could seek asylum in Australia. DIAC provides lawyers and fast tracks those applications through.
DIAC is far more interested in where you are from than the colour of your skin (Country of origin is important for sourcing travel documents, and looking at asylum claims where relevant). Like all organisations, there are some racist individuals, but overall the Department isn’t any more racist than general society, and in fact I’d suggest that it could be slightly less racist.
The Government on the other hand is an entirely different story.
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