Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Asylum Seeker?

[ozgeorge]

As part of an effort to challenge current attitudes to Asylum Seekers in Australia which are most often misinformed, SBS Australia is launching a reality TV show in which "ordinary Australians" who have negative attitudes to Asylum Seekers are sent to be refugees in foreign countries. The show, entitled "Go Back To Where You Came From" will be launched on International Refugee Day.
Now you too can do an online simulation of what it's like to be an Asylum Seeker!
Play Exit Australia and see if you have what it takes to be an Asylum Seeker!

[Father Peter]

Are you talking about refugees, asylum seekers or immigrants? These are all different cases.

A refugee usually wants to go home.

[ozgeorge]

Are you talking about refugees, asylum seekers or immigrants? These are all different cases.

A refugee is an asylum seeker who has been granted asylum, and I never mentioned immigrants- you did (again).

A refugee usually wants to go home.

Really? So someone who flees torture in Iran wants to go back to Iran....interesting.

I'm waiting for a reply to this btw. 

[Father Peter]

I don't know how many immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees you know, but the ones I know who have fled a desperate situation usually want to go back when things are stabilised.

Do you know about the Tur Abdin area? It was being ethnically cleansed by Turkey and many ethnic Syrians became refugees. When the situation changed they started to go back.

If Palestine becomes a state will the refugees in other countries stay there, or seek to return to Palestine?

When and if Libya settles down will those who have left have a reason not to return?

[ozgeorge]

I don't know how many immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees you know

Quite a few actually. My name is George Georgiadis: http://bit.ly/jJqJea
My departed mother (a Pontian refugee from Turkey) always said "A gentleman's name appears in the newspapers three times- when he's born, when he marries and when he dies". I am a terrible disappointment to her!

[ozgeorge]

I was just reading the the New York Times on my iPhone and came across an article about this Australian reality show:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/world/asia/22iht-australia22.html?cid=23262

[LBK]

A refugee usually wants to go home.

I don't know how many immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees you know, but the ones I know who have fled a desperate situation usually want to go back when things are stabilised.

Complete tosh, to use a good British term.   I know a good number of refugees who have settled where I live, including folks who are, or have become, members of my family (biological and extended), or whom I have come to know very well as friends over the past few decades. None have expressed a desire to return to live permanently in the "old country", irrespective of any positive changes there. At best, they might go back for a short visit, but not to resettle.

[Monk Cyprian]

Immigration is the act of passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence.  See link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigrant

A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave their home and seek refuge elsewhere.  See link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee

An asylum seeker is a person who, from fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, social group, or political opinion, has crossed an international frontier into a country in which he or she hopes to be granted refugee status.  See link:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/asylum+seeker

All three terms are inter-related and "Asylum Seeker" and "Refugee" refer to different points in the entire process.  One comes to a country seeking asylum first, and becomes a refugee once that asylum is granted.  The entire process, encompassing both terms is one of many possible motives for immigration.

Please get the terminology straight.

Or perhaps the lot of you would like to go back to swinging handbags at twenty paces?

[ozgeorge]

Please get the terminology straight.

Who, exactly, are you talking to?
Could you point out where anyone has misinterpreted the definitions?

[Monk Cyprian]

Please get the terminology straight.

Who, exactly, are you talking to?
Could you point out where anyone has misinterpreted the definitions?

Woops.  It's seems I got the impression that this thread was more heated, and longwinded than it was.  In my defence, I had been surfing through various threads on oc.net, and seemingly mentally conflated them.  Weird.  Sorry about that.  I reckon I need to drink my coffee, before reading oc.net in the future.  You have my sincerest apologies.

But, since you asked about who was seemingly confused by the terms:

Are you talking about refugees, asylum seekers or immigrants? These are all different cases.

A refugee usually wants to go home.

Actually, as I've pointed out, refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants are not different "cases", but different terms referring to different things.  Two are different phases of the same thing, and one is an over-arching term that includes these, plus many other categories of motives that are not being discussed here.

And whether a refugee wants to go back to his home country or not, when things are stabilised, free or even advantageous to them, is anecdotal and irrelevant.

[pretending to be a barrister]

Although M'Lord, in defence of my learned colleague Mr Farrington, I readily acknowledge that this could be a (yet another?) case of imprecise language, regarding his choice of the word "cases" when "things" would have been a much better option.  However, I cannot extend an assumption of bad phraseology to cover the remainder of his flawed arguments.  Thank you, M'Lord.

[/pretending to be a barrister]

[wayseer]

As part of an effort to challenge current attitudes to Asylum Seekers in Australia which are most often misinformed, SBS Australia is launching a reality TV show in which "ordinary Australians" who have negative attitudes to Asylum Seekers are sent to be refugees in foreign countries. The show, entitled "Go Back To Where You Came From" will be launched on International Refugee Day.
Now you too can do an online simulation of what it's like to be an Asylum Seeker!
Play Exit Australia and see if you have what it takes to be an Asylum Seeker!

The paradox is that apart from Aborigines, Australians are all refugees of one sort or another.  

Now, many of us from Europe want to stop others fleeing all sorts of nasties and the mantra has become - go back to where you're come from - as a sort of an Australian Nationalist movement and just as dangerous.

At a time when Turkey accepts some 10 k plus refugees fleeing Syria we want to sent the few we have to the hell hole that is Malaysia.

[Phoenix73]

As part of an effort to challenge current attitudes to Asylum Seekers in Australia which are most often misinformed, SBS Australia is launching a reality TV show in which "ordinary Australians" who have negative attitudes to Asylum Seekers are sent to be refugees in foreign countries. The show, entitled "Go Back To Where You Came From" will be launched on International Refugee Day.
Now you too can do an online simulation of what it's like to be an Asylum Seeker!
Play Exit Australia and see if you have what it takes to be an Asylum Seeker!

Debates aside, as reality tv shows go, this will be interesting.  The phrase 'go back to where you from' will strike a cord with many.

[ialmisry]

On refugees, yes, many do go back.  I know many Iranians who long to go back, but know that as long as the present regime is in place, they cannot.  The Cuban community in the US talk of nothing else but going back (of course, assuming that they will go back to running the place, once Castro is gone).

More in the realm of reality.  After the formation of Yugoslavia, about a third of imigrants from regions formerly under the Hapsburgs and Ottomans  went back.  The Papandreous fled to the US, and returned when the regimes changed in Greece. The present President of Estonia, Toomas Ilves, was born in Sweden of Estonian refugees who settled in the US, and there's a number of former US residents/citizens who have returned to served as ministers, premiers and presidents, alongside those who just returned, after the fall of the iron curtain.

[ialmisry]

As part of an effort to challenge current attitudes to Asylum Seekers in Australia which are most often misinformed, SBS Australia is launching a reality TV show in which "ordinary Australians" who have negative attitudes to Asylum Seekers are sent to be refugees in foreign countries. The show, entitled "Go Back To Where You Came From" will be launched on International Refugee Day.
Now you too can do an online simulation of what it's like to be an Asylum Seeker!
Play Exit Australia and see if you have what it takes to be an Asylum Seeker!

The paradox is that apart from Aborigines, Australians are all refugees of one sort or another.  

Now, many of us from Europe want to stop others fleeing all sorts of nasties and the mantra has become - go back to where you're come from - as a sort of an Australian Nationalist movement and just as dangerous.

At a time when Turkey accepts some 10 k plus refugees fleeing Syria we want to sent the few we have to the hell hole that is Malaysia.

What is so bad about Malaysia?

[ozgeorge]

As part of an effort to challenge current attitudes to Asylum Seekers in Australia which are most often misinformed, SBS Australia is launching a reality TV show in which "ordinary Australians" who have negative attitudes to Asylum Seekers are sent to be refugees in foreign countries. The show, entitled "Go Back To Where You Came From" will be launched on International Refugee Day.
Now you too can do an online simulation of what it's like to be an Asylum Seeker!
Play Exit Australia and see if you have what it takes to be an Asylum Seeker!

The paradox is that apart from Aborigines, Australians are all refugees of one sort or another.  

Now, many of us from Europe want to stop others fleeing all sorts of nasties and the mantra has become - go back to where you're come from - as a sort of an Australian Nationalist movement and just as dangerous.

At a time when Turkey accepts some 10 k plus refugees fleeing Syria we want to sent the few we have to the hell hole that is Malaysia.

What is so bad about Malaysia?

Malaysia is not a signatory country to the 1951 Refugee Convention and Malaysian law does not officially recognise refugee status, even though they are registered as refugees by UNHCR. Traumatized refugees are often treated as "illegal immigrants" in Malaysia who are not afforded Protection Visas. They are forbidden to work and are intelligible for welfare.

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