Persuasive Speech On Asylum Seeker

Picture this; you’re a seventeen year old boy in Afghanistan. You belong to a minority ethnic group that is constantly persecuted by the Taliban. Your brothers went missing and your father was taken to prison by the Taliban and was tortured so badly that he died in prison. You have nightmares every night, you’re scared and worried if the same is going to happen to you. You hide for many years in Pakistan. And now you want to escape for safety and welfare, so your family sells everything they have to make enough money for a boat trip to Australia. You go on a risky and dangerous journey through Malaysia, Thailand, China and finally you arrive at a dock. You board on a packed fishing boat with 100 other people for countless days and you spend the nights dreaming about living in Australia. However, when you arrive, you’re locked up in a dark jail with hundreds of people, waiting for the government’s decision on whether to let you stay in the country or to make you leave.

Good morning Miss Loxton and class.

The story I have just told you happened to an Afghani refugee named Chaman. You may be thinking ‘Oh no that is such an awful story! He must have the most unfortunate life!’, however, this is just one usual story out of hundreds and thousands of asylum seekers fleeing to Australia. Today I am here to educate you all on the truth about asylum seekers and why we must end the mandatory detention system and allow asylum seekers to come and live in Australia. Australia has resettled nearly 900000 refugees since the end of the 2nd World War, making one of the world’s most successful multicultural societies. However, with today’s government’s policy, those that are suffering in dangerous and hostile environments, those that are deprived of basic human rights and those that are seeking safety and peace, are banned from coming into the country and being sent back home or imprisoned in

jail.
We must allow these desperate, pitiful and hopeless individuals to let them start a new life. Don’t we as Australians pride ourselves on looking after the needy, disadvantaged and the vulnerable? By allowing asylum seekers into the country, we are inviting them to experience freedom; freedom from the horrors that have dictated their entire lives. These people seek a new life, and the Australian government needs to allow asylum seekers to enter the country, to give them this opportunity. If we just let our politicians and media to continue this unethical and inhumane plan of stopping the asylum seekers, these needy individuals as well as their next generations, will have to go on with their unfortunate and pitiful lives. Imagine you are in the shoes of one of the asylum seekers. They travelled by boat with their family to get to Australia because they are facing a threat to their lives; would you do the same thing? If you had any common sense the answer would probably be a yes because you want a better life for your family and yourself. How would you feel if people from Australia did not let you into their country and turned their backs on you? How would you feel if you were treated like a prisoner and called a ‘criminal’, a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘queue jumper’?
Also, the system of mandatory detention must stop. After escaping from violent, dangerous environments majority of the asylum seekers often arrive with very serious mental scars. They come to Australia expecting freedom from war and terror, but instead, they are locked in a facility bounded by barbed wires, just like prisoners. The poor facilities of the detention centres can cause even more detrimental impact on the mental health of the asylum seekers. In 2012-13 there were more than 800 reported incidents of self-harm across Australia’s detention network. In 2011 there were more than 10 reported deaths in detention centres across Australia with seven of them being suicides. According to a report released in 2006, it revealed that out of 100 children surveyed, more than 80 children suffered major depressive disorder and had developmental and emotional difficulties. These facts clearly prove that the mandatory detention centres have significant harmful impact on the asylum seekers. Therefore Australia must stop the policy of mandatory detention to ensure the mental wellbeing of asylum seekers and allow them to live in our country.
Every week when you turn on the news you see politicians crying about the “refugee epidemic,” and how we must “stop the boats!” Politicians often refer to asylum seekers as “illegal immigrants” Do you think they are here illegally? They aren’t. We are a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, meaning it is legal to seek asylum in Australia, even if you arrive by boat without a visa. Some say that we should not be accepting asylum seekers with the degree of leniency that we do because we are unaware of whom these people really are and may misjudge their character when in actuality they may be terrorists. It is quite bogus to see that some Australians are willing to generalise all of the asylum seekers as terrorists because there have been absolutely no cases of reported terrors caused by the asylum seekers so far. By locking asylum seekers in detention we let the community view them as prisoners who need to be locked up because they have committed a crime. By ending the practice of mandatory detention the stigmatisation of refugees in the community would be reduced as images of refugees in a ‘jail’ would not be seen most nights on the news.