Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Sending the wrong signal

Last week John Howard's idol, boss, mentor and love object George W Bush proposed amnesty for a vast number of illegal immigrants working in the United States.

Note the phrase "Illegal immigrants." There is no pretence that any of those affected by the extraordinary presidential offer are genuine refugees, or even seekers of political asylum; at very best they are what is sneeringly known in Australia as "economic refugees" - people trying to escape from grinding poverty or even starvation in the hope of finding a better and more secure future for themselves and their families.

They are the sort of illegals that Howard, Phillip Ruddock and Amanda Vanstone contemptuously describe as queue jumpers, potential criminals, carriers of exotic diseases - possibly even terrorists. They are simply not wanted in Australia; to admit even one of them would be to send the wrong signal to the teeming millions who gaze enviously at our free and prosperous commonwealth, ready to pounce at the first sign of that weakness others call compassion.

No one is certain just how many of the illegals there are in the United States, but a conservative estimate suggests around eleven million. In a population of about 270 million, their formal admission represents an increase of four percent - and it could be as high as six percent when the final count comes in.

And Bush is not just talking of some weaselly compromise such as the temporary protection visas awarded in Australia to 100 percent, gold plated, UN certified refugees; he foresees that the current illegals would quickly qualify for full American citizenship.

Now it is easy to be cynical about all this, especially in an election year. Bush's political opponents already are; they see it as a shameless grab for the Latino vote (most of the illegals have of course crossed the border from Mexico), a sop for the southern farmers who rely heavily on the illegals to provide cheap, non-union labour, and (of course) of sending the wrong signals by rewarding bad behaviour. They also assert that the gesture is not only cynical but empty, in that congress is most unlikely to approve the idea.

But the fact remains that Bush, a President of a country with real border protection problems and a crush of unlawful arrivals that makes Australia's appear barely visible is prepared to cut through the bigoted rhetoric of the right with a proposal that is both merciful and practical, and which also follows the logic of globalism, applying it to people as well as to trade and money.

As far as I know none of our fearless press gallery pundits have yet asked Howard or any of his ministers what they think of the idea. But there would certainly be some support in the most unexpected of quarters: conservative rural Australia.

Many Afghans and Iraqis accorded refugee status now live and work in the fruit-growing districts of Victoria, where they have endeared themselves to their employers as hard and willing workers and the communities in general as upright and law abiding citizens. For many, their initial three-year visas are about to expire, and the push is on from the locals and their parliamentary representatives for the government to stop playing political games and grant them permanent residency.

At this stage we do not know what Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone thinks of this particular wrong signal, as she is too busy trying to bluster and bully her way out of trouble with Nauru and its pit of human misery in which 284 asylum seekers are still stranded in limbo (Vanstone's predecessor Ruddock once gloatingly told a reporter "If you think Woomera is hell, wait till you've seen Nauru," and went on to make bloody sure no Australian journalist ever got the chance.)

Those still incarcerated on the island are mainly Afghans found not to be refugees under the strict criteria, but who are scared to return and whose precarious government doesn't want them anyway; Vanstone's view is that they can either get on a plane to Kabul or stay on Nauru till hell freezes over, and that it isn't really Australia's problem anyway, but nonetheless she'll go through the motions of a status review and a health check by loyal government employees (not, of course, by anyone independent of her office).

Those 284 boat people represent just 0.0014 percent of Australia's population of 20 million. Is it too much to hope that, even at this late stage, the merest smidgeon of commonsense (if not lily-livered, do-gooder, caffe latte compassion) might penetrate the minister's thick hide and that she consider the American solution?

Probably, but we live in hope. It's just about all we have left.

The most extraordinary news of the week is that Washington intends to treat Saddam Hussein as a legitimate prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. So we have the situation that a soldier captured on the battlefield in what the United States at least considers was a legally declared war in Afghanistan is not a POW, and is to be imprisoned indefinitely in a black hole with no rights under any known law; but a civilian politician trapped months after his opposing Commander in Chief declared the war in Iraq over and won is indeed a POW, with all the rights and privileges that entails under international law.

Is any further proof needed that the Yanks are making it up as they go along, and that the only law they respect is the law of the gun?