The Nauru Experience: Zero-Tolerance Immigration and Suicidal Children

Fariborz Karami died of a drug overdose. There was no blood. Fact-check, please.

Australian policy toward the refugees who are or have been on Nauru is pure evil. It is not one bit amazing that leaders in Australia in the early 21st century are capable of behavior similar to the worst displays in the 20th century in the heart of Europe. The people who do this are evil. Anyone who in any way supports this evil is complicit in crimes against humanity, and needs to be held to account.

OK, so it's not Club Med but it's not supposed to be. If this were the case many of us would try and go live there too. Discouraging illegal immigration must start somewhere and I think Australia has it right. If you are found illegally within Australia, you are permanently banned from ever entering again, for any reason. AND you may NEVER be allowed to apply for citizenship, ever. Law breaking is not a good way to bust your way into any country. It proves your untrustworthy actions from the get go. If we did the same here in the US there would be a dramatic downturn in illegals entering. We should be adopting more stringent measures as they are in Australia. You break our rules once, never again.

"Nauru has “appropriate mental health assessment and treatment in place.” Indeed, while it is no paradise, it beats drowning at sea. It is seldom mentioned that there are native residents of Nauru, who call it home without arousing international outrage. Refugees on Nauru have applied for entry into Australia, which has quotas for immigrants. Refugees who are waiting for possible entry into Australia on Nauru may change their minds and leave whenever they want.

The short story is: 1 These people aren't prisoners. 2 They may leave whenever they want.

Of course we allowed Rupert Murdoch in, who has done inestimable harm to our country.

Again NYTimes, a very biased article on immigration. Australia has done a good job caring for people that came for economic reasons. They receive healthcare, food, water, and housing. For some reason, the bankrolled smugglers to bring them to another nation, one of their choice. When one thinks they can move to wherever they like, they are suspect. These are not refugees, they are economic immigrants and western countries are not obliged to care for them. I wonder, do readers believe that homeless people in NYC should be given a home on the coast, if that's what they want? There are miserable people everywhere and while I donate money and am willing to donate time, I am not donating my country. And neither should Australia.

Funny that this story omits two pertinent & telling facts that the Australian & Nauru press recently reported: Pertinent Fact 1: "...71 asylum-seekers in detention on Nauru have rejected an offer to resettle in the US after discovering they would need to work and wouldn't get free (lifelong) welfare. "Reports have come back to people on Nauru it's all a bit financially tight there because (refugees) have to get a job..." Pertinent Fact 2: The Nauru government in late Oct issued a statement condemning "refugee and asylum seeker parents who put their children at risk by intentionally hurting them, ordering them not to eat or drink, or encouraging them to self-harm, in order to influence legal proceedings or create a medical emergency so that they will be taken to Australia (for treatment). "'As we've stated many times,' (the government said), 'this has happened and continues to happen, and those who deny this are misinformed or simply don't want to admit the truth.'" Some medical evacuations of children have been delayed by entire families insisting they go along, or because an individual accompanying a child was being investigated for child abuse, sex crimes, or drug use. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6344109/Seventy-asylum-seekers-Nauru-REJECT-chance-wont-free-welfare.html www.loopnauru.com/nauru-news/nauru-government-condemns-refugee-and-asylum-seeker-parents-who-put-children-risk-80364

Australia has found the perfect justice to meter out to those who attempt to invade their nation and most horrifically (as our Latin American illegals do) use children as hostages and shields in an attempt to extort a ransom of citizenship and all the government benefits it entails from the Australian people. If the authors, NY Times editors and some readers of this piece are actually interested in some kind of relief for these children brought by their parents into this situation they need to consider what we do to citizens of our nations who abuse and risk the lives of their children. These illegal immigrant parents need to be given no opportunity to return to their nations of origin and now opportunity to gain asylum, but rather placed in prison for life on this island and their children sent back to nations of origin by any means possible.

I would like our American and international friends to know that there has been significant resistance to this inhumane policy over many years. Successive governments have used the fear of strangers and played up racist elements to control the many Australians who have had little contact with non-white, non-English speaking arrivals, and who due to our geographic isolation, have never seen the world outside Australia. Shamefully, Trump praised this policy to our former PM! Both major political parties have retained it, only recently has the success of several independents entering the Parliament cracked their resolve. Children and families currently being repatriated from Nauru face an uncertain future, real freedom for them is elusive.

There is a reference to the many asylum seekers who have “called Nauru home.” While Many Have been “housed” in Nauru for long periods, it seems unlikely that any consider the tents, containers and place in which they have been forcibly detained to be their “home.”

The last thing we need is to take in these people. Most of them seem to have three or more children, parents with no skills so the family immediately becomes a ward of the state...US taxpayers. Say no to unskilled labor immigration. If you can't earn your living, you don't belong.

So let's examinine the situation. 1. Living in a South Pacific paradise. Check. 2. Free food and housing. Check. 3. Safe from alleged life-threatening terrors in their former homes. Check. 4. Not being prosecuted for illegal entry. Check. 5. Celebrated darlings of the Australian Left. Check 6. Downside: Out the thousands of dollars the allegedly penniless people paid to get to Australia. Check. This is driving the alleged refugees' children to suicide? I think not; their lives seem like a child's dream come true.

The article deliberately ignores the fact that offshore detention works - the migrant pressure went from tens of thousands to zero. Once the incentive disappears, (illegal) migration stops. In the absence of Nauru there is eVerify.

Why wouldn't they be resettled in Australia, a closer country? Where also is the UN on policies for resettlement? All the wealthier nations should contribute more to funds for resettlement, and the leaders of warring countries who slaughter and displace their people should be threatened with loss of sovereignty and all their foreign and domestic monies. If your people have to flee to survive, you clearly don't deserve your role as leader.

Offshore detention policy works. Low moral in those detention centres is kinda the point. If migrants in those camps were happy and content as they eagerly awaited their speedy resettlement in wealthy countries, there would be untold thousands of new ones coming every day. There is no other way to stem the migration avalanche but to convince the migrants themselves that it is simply not worth and will not pay to go the illegal rout. As it stands, no one is trying to come to Australia by sea anymore and nobody is dying while trying either. People smugglers are out of work too. Is it worth it to stop suffering and death of many thousands by making an example out of the few? Absolutely!

I wish either an alien entity or single Large calamity threaten all humanity. This is the only way for People see past ones race creed or national Origin. As a species we are cruel and unjust

So the children of these refugees all happen to have a mysterious psychological condition, never seen before except in refugees waiting to be deported from Sweden. A condition which somehow immediately reoccurred in a country on the other side of the world, conveniently escaping the millions of other refugees in camps Africa and the Middle East, who don’t have the option of a ‘medical emergsncy’ escape to the country they paid a people smuggler to take them to. WOW. What are the odds!

Global warming will exacerbate the problem of human migration as severe droughts become common. Starvation will be wide spread and along with it political turmoil. This will also increase the xenophobia and racial hate propagated by politicians and believed by peoples of a nation. Australia will not be a good place to migrate to in the future, since they will be very severely affected by climate change. Western nations would be better served if in the long run they helped bring stability to disturbed regions. Rather than propping up despots for the economic benefits they might help grow local economies in sustainable ways. It's not necessary that they insist on democracies, but they should discourage blatant dictatorships that destabilize their own countries for personal economic gain or religious or ethnic retribution. Of course that would suppose that the western countries are capable of discerning those aspects of a country honestly without their own predatory instincts kicking in. I am not sure that most are capable of that. I know suicide may seem like a very severe thing, but in the future it might be about the only self determined act that will be available to most of the people on the planet.

Everyone assumes that refugees are idiots. I know though that they are intelligent people. They see that if their kids are suicidal they get preferential treatment. Suddenly every kid is suicidal. I mean, being trapped on a tropical island with free food and no need to work sounds like a pretty great thing to me. I get that these people want to get off the island and start making some money, but quite frankly I think the depiction of this place as some sort of hellhole is incomplete at best. I mean, these kids are safe. Their parents are safe. No one is going to come and murder them. They go to school. They get health care. They can pray to whatever God they want. To me it sounds pretty good. It takes awhile to properly vet someone, and you cant just let everybody into a country because of a bleeding heart. It has to be a logical and rational decision, which liberals the world over would rather just not think about.

And how many people would have died at sea if Australia hadn't shut down the boat traffic? I mean, if Australia let in everybody then this article would just be about how horrible it is that Australia doesnt go and pay for plane tickets for these people so they wouldnt die in boats. I think Australia did the right thing. Hundreds of people would have died in boats if they hadn't shut down traffic. There are always millions and millions of people that would do anything to get to a western nation. Using their sob stories to prevent people from using rational thought to form opinions is a form of media manipulation that doesnt work on me anymore.

Like America, Australia imports cheap labor, the engine of its strong economy. Like America, Australia is the nearest refuge for victims of state neglect and violence. Like America, the moral calculus and economic math is really, simple. Like America, a lot of dumb people in Australia are afraid of moral calculus and economic math. Make the working class white men in rich countries numerate, literate, and decent! (Does that fit on a hat?)

Australia has lurched to the far right in recent times. Racial vilification is commonplace in Australia's political system and media. The cruelty metered out to refugee children reflects the attitudes of the majority of Australians who elected the government. Child abusers always seek out soft targets and refugee children are the most vulnerable and voiceless people on earth. Even doctors cannot work with the Australian government. This shows that Australia's government lacks even basic humanity.

The Tamils in this article could certainly return to Sri Lanka. Tamils are a sizeable minority in the country. They are not oppressed as long as they are not attacking the elected government. In fact, prior to independence in Sri Lanka the Tamils were the dominant group since they had been brought over and favored by the British. We have many wealthy Tamils in the US since they have been a large proportion of the huge number of Sri Lankan doctors who have come to the US. Quite a few have found a home on Wall Street in hedge funds and major banks. In fact, medical training in Sri Lanka is focused on the US market where most of their graduates go. It is hard to understand just what sort of solution to the poverty in Sri Lanka the Times is proposing. Certainly a far more aggressive tax policy in the US combined with a massive cut in the defense budget would free up funds to spread among the poverty stricken in the world. I suppose one could just move all of the people in Sri Lanka to Australia since the vast majority do not enjoy the standard of living that exists in Australia....

1 billion peeps in 1800, 7.5 billion today, on the way to 12? 15? billion by 2100. We're frogs in the pot, and things are heating up. Forward - into the dystopian void!

There are likely 1-3 BILLION people who are desperate to emigrate to a country other than their local country. They are sick, uneducated, oppressed by govt,, and nearly hopeless. They represent a portion of the Earth's overpopulation, There is not much room left at the inn, at the lifeboat. Helping a few (tens of millions) leaves a few BILLION faceless, desperate people to die back as their societies and civil order collapses. What can be done!!! Many of these people need to stay in their own country. They are not refugues, they are economic sufferers. They need to fight to change their society. We need to help them in their local communities. It is no solution to bring a few million broken people onto a sinking lifeboat and turn our backs on the BILLIONS who are faced with diving into the cold water of certain death and social collapse.

Many Australians are shamed by the vile cruelty inflicted on these desperate refugees, driven by the desire for the votes of a bigoted minority. Out of sight, out of mind, and beyond local legal remedies. The claim is made that this is because treating them humanely (as we should do as signatories to the Refugees convention) would lead to drownings at sea as they turned to people smugglers. The truth is that the Liberal (actually conservative) government processed less than 50 claims for refugee status a year from the 10,000 plus caught in limbo in Indonesia, unable to work or access education and healthcare, while chanting the mantra of "join the orderly queue". The left wing Labor party was wedged into following the same course by the faux outrage. I shudder to think what future generations will think of this policy. Shameful and inhumane will be just the beginning.

Nauru is a prison island, with no rights, no hope, and no end in sight. Shame on Australia, and on America for not protesting.

Get those kids surfboards and out on the water.

No one has a right to asylum in the country of their choice. At least in America the burden of proof is on the asylum seeker not on the government. If these people are fleeing war at least they are safe on Nauru. Disliking Nauru does not give them the right to enter Australia after paying smugglers to transport them illegally. Nor does the US have to take them no matter what agreement a previous administration made, if they can not pass the strict vetting process.

I am appalled by the government’s and the opposition’s response to our fellow human beings on Nauru - they have been held hostage for years - their blood stains our nation - a nation which once had an international human rights record of which we could be proud.

This is a very one sided story. In the interests of balance, there is also a counter argument. The government accepts 13500 genuine refugees from camps around the world every year. Each one of these people who arrived by flying to Indonesia and paying smugglers to get to Australia takes the place of a poor refugee in a camp somewhere living as a displaced person. Some have been in camps for more than 15 years. The medical care available to the people on Nauru is the envy of many people in regional Australia and certainly way more than our own remote indigenous people receive. As for removing children from Nauru, personally I think children belong with their parents and I would never condone forced removal of children to Australia. Australia accepts more than 190,000 immigrants every year as well as the refugees, in an orderly process. Australia is a hugely successful country of migrants which is accepted precisely because it is well managed and controlled.