“Why we as Australians shouldn’t be so opposed to asylum seekers.”

Australia has committed 143 human rights violations, and has started to ruin our national reputation. Nobody wants to be called a racist. Unfortunately, many people worldwide are calling Australians exactly that. If one looks at Australian history, they will see that our white ancestors weren’t really racially tolerant at all, which left us with a bad reputation as racists. We’ve worked for many years to change how the world sees us as a country, but now we’ve undone all of that hard work by deciding to turn back the boats. However, by doing this, we’ve not only been called racists, but we’ve also broken international human rights laws that we swore not to break with the UN, severed relations with other countries, and pushed many of these innocent asylum seekers to the brink of suicide.

We’ve recently decided to do one of two things with asylum seekers:

The first thing we’re doing is: when a boat is intercepted or reaches an island owned by Australia, it may be sent back to its country of origin. In a desperate bid to increase the likelihood of boats being turned back, the government has in a way “changed the borders” of Australia, by saying these islands are no longer Australian soil, and if you land there, bad luck, you’re going back home.

The second option is if they reach Australia, or sometimes an Australian owned island, is mandatory detention. Australia is one the very few countries to employ mandatory detention. An Australian government website states this chilling fact, leaving the reader wondering just how bad conditions are in these centres:

“Australian law does not set out standards for conditions or treatment of people in immigration detention.”

As if that’s not bad enough, the way we’re treating the asylum seeker...

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... 2007-2011, America allowed 278,850 asylum seekers to enter their country, which has a population of 313.9m, while Australia only allowed 40,320 asylum seekers in, with a population of only 22.68m. Why waste the opportunity to give these people jobs, force them to live in taxpayer-funded detention centres, and then subject them to cruel treatment? Wouldn’t the population growth help increase GDP, make more opportunities for jobs and help boost international relations with our multicultural way of life?

It makes absolutely no sense.

Australia really needs to understand the consequences of what we think is a harmless act, and realise that it isn’t ok to treat human beings like this: if we think doing these cruel deeds is ok, and then we point the finger at countries like North Korea for their terrible prison conditions, doesn’t that make us a nation of hypocrites?