"How do we differentiate between illegal immigrants and refugees?"
Thats the crux, The UN is sorely pressed to process these people through authorized refugee camps, and these camps give credence to the people that come from there (valid attendence at one of these camps validates you as a bona fide refugee), however, I agree how do we identify them if they've tossed all their ID overboard on journey here ?
Long Term detention is not an option, a balance must be found between maintaining the family unit, education of the immigrants (remember most of them come from absolute despotic regiemes, so losing the id was not negotiable - their perception of us must at least be better than that ?)
The thing is, irrespective of whether we actually know who they are, we should minimise the detention as a matter of policy, and therein lies another problem, most of the countries these people come from have broken infrastructure, it would require superhuman diplomatic efforts to assess and identify each one, therefore we're back to education, tossing id = bad
There is much hoo-haa in the tabloids (chan 7 9 & 10 - I'm sure most aviation people would agree these media outlets are not so much news as sensationilist) regarding this issue, when in fact , refugee numbers in the last few years are a fraction of what they were in the 70's and 80's, as soon as it becomes a political potatoe, we all lose, the refugees lose because they become impotent and vulnerable pawns, and we lose our world esteem.
Honest answer, is I don't know, but we are signatories, and that makes it incumbent for us to do something.
Its not just a piece of paper.
[edit: and in truth, if they are illegal economic migrants then detention is hugely damaging to them, but these are unlikely to have "lost" their id]
Last edited by 7gcbc; 28th Mar 2005 at 07:55.