Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Helgoland]

What does 'plane people' refer to? Highly skilled immigrants from first-world nations?

[crazysheep]

What does 'plane people' refer to? Highly skilled immigrants from first-world nations?

Sounds like it :3

[Helgoland]

I hear drug prices in AUS are ridiculously high, though... But you could always lick a kangoroo or something.

[Max White]

What does 'plane people' refer to? Highly skilled immigrants from first-world nations?

"Plane people" is a term sometimes used for refugees who arrive here by plane, as opposed to boat. The assumption in the public mind is that people who arrive by plane are more legitimate than people who arrive by boat. Funnily enough, the vast majority of people who arrive by plane do so with invalid visas, such as student visas when they have no intention of studying, and this is illegal, so in general most plane people are less legitimate than the boat people, but the public will be damned if they ever try to get educated on the matter.

[Reudh]

I hear drug prices in AUS are ridiculously high, though... But you could always lick a kangoroo or something.

That they are, but we still have the highest rate of meth use in the anglophone world, and nearly the highest in the world, @ 2.5% vs the US's 0.8% or something like that.

[Max White]

Senate hearing told that homosexual asylum seekers fear legal action against them in Manus. Also revealed is that eight days in and still no autopsy on the man killed. And finally a Labor senator accuses Campbell of a cover up. Fun day in the senate then.

One day we are going to find out that asylum seekers are being harvested for organs, and nobody will be surprised. Ok in all reality everybody will be surprised, except me.

[sneakey pete]

The second is that people died on the trip over by boat, but nobody dies by plane, so we need to stop people coming by boat for their own safety. This totally ignores the fact that many of these people are fleeing genocide, and while yes, some people die by boat and it is a tragedy, many more will die if they can't seek asylum. When one person dies in detention the right gets all up in arms that "Well it is only one person! What about the people that drowned coming over!" but when entire nations are in war we can ignore that...


Essentially misinformation has turned a debate about humanitarian policy into bipartisan moral bankruptcy.

Except for the fact that the vast majority* of boats originate from Indonesia, a stopover point. Ie the people are not in any immediate danger of genocide, though they are fleeing from it in their Country of Origin.

*boats from Sri-Lanka a few years ago... totally different story.

[Max White]

Except for the fact that Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN Refugee convention and it is illegal to enter Indonesia as an asylum seeker. If they stopped there they would be prosecuted and imprisoned as illegal immigrants. As such anybody coming through Indonesia seeking refuge in Australia is covered by article 31 of the UN Refugee convention.

[Max White]

In an amazing twist of Australian journalism, the SBS has become relevant.
SBS interview with ex-Manus island employee turned whistle blower Liz Thompson.

"It's not designed as a processing facility, it's designed as an experiment in the active creation of horror to deter people from trying in the first place."

“That’s what Manus Island is, it’s the active creation of horror in order to secure deterrence. And that’s why I say again, Reza Barati's death is not some kind of crisis for the department, it’s an opportunity to extend that logic, one step further – to say ‘This happens, but deterrence continues, Operation Sovereign Borders continues.”


I swear to god if this doesn't make the top headline for every national paper, including The Australian, and there are no mass, nation wide protest, no known force within this universe will maintain my rage.

[Chaoswizkid]

Wait, isn't the plan for what will happen to the refugees just to treat them like shit and make Australia a completely undesirable place so they leave and stop showing up?

So... yes?

[Sheb]

claims she was instructed to tell detainees their only option was resettlement in Papua New Guinea.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, denied that Manus Island detainees had been told they would not be resettled in PNG.

Okay, so the government reaction was just "We need to deny SOMETHING!" or what?

[Max White]

I think you underestimate just how hard people will try to bury their head in the sand in order to justify their racist views. As long as something is denied, people will feel they are allowed to agree with the government. It is a form of ice cream politics designed for uninformed voters who don't think very hard.

[Sheb]

I shouldn't be surprised, Belgium's treatment of asylum seeker is fucking horrible too. Did I told you about that time we dropped a 5-years old on her own at Kinshasa airport? Or that time we deported an Afghan because he didn't have pictures to prove the Taliban threatened him? Or that time we decided Afghanistan was safe now and a deportee got shot within a week? Or that applying a cushion to the face is a standard way to make a deportee quiet on the flight "home" (Of course at least one died)? Or those guys we deported that have been living here since they were 3, that don't even speak the language of their "home" country? Or that time an MP was on a flight to Kinshasa, opposed to the treatment of a deportee on the plane (She had come to help her dying 92-years old father, but that apparently wasn't enough. 12 policemen apparently couldn't keep her quiet, so they arrested the MP, 5 other passenger, hit them in the face on the way to the airport, and then  the police's trade union had the gall to complain about how undemocratic it is for an MP to interfer with their jobs?

And of course we also do the indefinite detentions (although on home territory), breaking apart families and generally trying to have a policy that inflict maximum misery to pander to the electorate's racist instinct.

Sorry if I ranted a bit, but I get that way when I think about how this country I love and whose rights record am usually proud of can stoop so fucking low and be so fucking cruel for no reason. Actually got tears running down my face now.

And you know the worst? Maggie de Block, probably the ugliest politician on Earth and our secretary of state for migration actually was polled as Belgium's most popular politician for her "good work".

[Max White]

I just don't even know Sheb. I don't know how people can act like this. I don't why any of this is so acceptable.
You know I have had this argument with over a hundred people, and that isn't an overstatement. I have gone over the rhetoric so many times I could reduce it to a flow chart. The majority of times the way the discussion ends is basically "I don't care, they still deserve it." That is where they draw the line and refuse to argue any more, where they know they have no leg to stand on but can't accept it. I think deep down a lot of people are just really hateful, and they know it, but are desperately trying to fool themselves by not thinking about it too much.

I have this hypothesis that maybe if the few who care just don't let this ever settle, if every fucking day we remind people what assholes they are being, then maybe some will get tired of looking at themselves like that and just stop. We don't need to call them assholes, they know they are deep down, we just need to not let them forget it... Or maybe I'm wrong, but worth a shot.

[Chaoswizkid]

Us vs. Them mentality inhibits empathy. You remove the Us vs. Them, you remove one of the major inhibitions to people being aware of the emotional condition of others.
The problem is there's a fuckload of ways to establish Us vs. Them. They're a different race, they have a different culture, they practice a different religion, they're from a different country, they speak a different language, they're from another province/state, they're from a different neighborhood, they have different political/philosophical/should-I-go-to-the-grocery-store-today beliefs, they tie their shoes differently.
You just have to keep saying "Yeah, maybe so, but they are still human beings." It's really too bad that "Yeah, but what if it was you?" doesn't really work anymore.