The Welcome Mat

 Australia is a proudly multicultural society which has welcomed and accommodated refugees in need for more than seventy years. It started with the “Ten Pound Poms”, a wave of immigrants escaping Europe after the Second World War. So valuable to Australia are these people, the Australian Government under Prime Minister Chifley established the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme, where adult fares were subsidised to £10 and children, including future Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, travelled for free. Such was the welcome and the promise offered by Australia.

As Prime Minister Abbott announced this week that Australia would accept twelve thousand refugees from Syria on humanitarian grounds, a new round of conversations was sparked in communities around Australia. It’s all very nice to be generous on behalf of our nation, particularly when the problem is on the other side of the planet, but are we willing to accept newcomers into our communities…or are we ruled by the NIMBY* response.

These local conversations are playing out on social media, and in local newspapers and in offices, around dinner tables and over the back fence, where those who welcome refugees are at odds with those who believe that Syrian refugees are someone else’s problem. The Syrian refugee crisis has been building for some years, but it's only been in the last few weeks, since hundreds of thousands of refugees have flooded into Europe that the problem has been widely recognised. Prior to this, the bulk of Syrian refugees were housed in massive camps in neighbouring Middle Eastern countries.

Source: Amnesty International

On Facebook there was a call from one man in the Manning Valley of NSW, where I grew up, asking if his area should accept around 400 refugees. The current population of the Manning area is around 49,000, so 400 refugees would increase the population of the area by less than 1%. This is a similar proportional increase to that proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has committed her country to take 800,000 refugees. Germany’s population is around 82 million.

Of course, there are those who reject the possibility of accepting Syrian refugees into their community. The major objection has been that the priority should be on assisting the homeless who live on the fringes of our communities. It’s a fair argument, yet Australia has the resources to aid both groups. The difference is that homeless people in Australia tend to be the victims of poverty. Syrian refugees are not escaping poverty; they are escaping a brutal civil war between ISIS and the Assad regime, both well-resourced and not above using chemical weapons.

Australia has an overwhelming capacity to deal both with the disadvantaged at home and those who arrive seeking protection from overseas. The two problems have no correlation. There is no reason to expect that if the numbers of asylum seekers were to reduce so would the number of homeless and disadvantaged in Australia. Yet even if resources were stretched, a humane refugee policy is more cost effective than mandatory detention and offshore processing. So the best way to conserve resources to deal with Australia’s disadvantaged groups is to adopt a more humane approach to asylum seekers.

Others have commented on countless Facebook pages that with Australia’s rising unemployment, we can’t afford to bring in more people, particularly those who might be unskilled and not speak English. They would add to our national welfare burden while contributing nothing to our society. The facts are that an increase in population increases demand – for food, for housing and household goods, schooling, medical care, support services, transport. As these services are provided by local businesses and government agencies, jobs are created and the local economy benefits.

Source: http://www.asrc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/MythBusterJuly2013FINAL.pdf

Entire cities and towns in Syria have been destroyed; entire populations have been left homeless. That includes the doctors, teachers, engineers, gardeners, managers, farmers and artists. It is folly to assume that refugees would simply increase the number of unemployed in the community.

And while on the subject of unemployment, let’s hose down some common misinformation right now. Emails have been circulated and posted on social media for over a decade, telling inflammatory stories about refugees in Australia receiving so much more in government allowances than our aged pensioners or unemployed people. The email is rubbish. It originated in Canada in 2004, and even then, it was based on a misunderstanding of the Canadian payments system. It is entirely irrelevant in Australia and should be disregarded.

The fact is that refugees in Australia are entitled to the same social security payments as any other Australian citizen or permanent resident – no more and oftentimes less. Asylum Seekers and refugees in detention receive no benefits at all. The major difference within the community is that new Australians are usually subject to a two year waiting period, but in the case of refugees under humanitarian settlement plans, the waiting period may be reduced, if all other criteria is met. Refugees are assessed by Centrelink in the same way as any other Australian citizens. There are no extra allowances or subsidies provided by the government to refugees. 

Once asylum seekers are grantedrefugee status, they are entitled to the same rights and incur the same responsibilities as other Australians. No more, no less. While there have been a number of concerns raised within parts of the Australian community that more assistance is provided to refugee entrants than to other Australians such as pensioners or the homeless, as the Department of Immigration clearly states on its website, “there is no truth to these claims.”

-          Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

Of course, many of the negative sentiments around Syrian refugees relate to religion and culture. Syria was created less than one hundred years ago and its population, which was around 18 million in mid 2014, includes many religiously and ethnically diverse groups – an optimistic melting pot of Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Turks and others, with an uncomfortable combination of religions, including Sunni Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans and Yazidis. The majority of Syrians belong to one of the Muslim subgroups, with around 10% of the population identifying as Christian and 3% as Druze. Unsurprisingly, various groups have been at war on what is now Syrian ground for at least 3,000 years. Of the 18 million people living in Syria in July 2014, it is estimated by the UNHCR that close to 7 million are now classified as ‘displaced persons’.

Refugees from Syria in a Jordanian refugee camp

Some community leaders, including politicians Senator Cory Bernardi, federal Liberal MP George Christensen, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher, and the Australian Christian Lobby have suggested that Australia should prioritise Christian refugees for resettlement over Muslims. This is simply unacceptable when statistically, at least four in five Syrian refugees are Muslim, and all are being persecuted.

Unfortunately there is widespread ignorance regarding the impact of the Islamic population in Australia, and terms like Sharia Law and Halal are used with little understanding of what they mean. While Australians believe that Muslims make up 18% of the population, the reality is around 2% - a number far less threatening, far less able to make a dent in the essence of Australian society than the 18% that so many believe. 

With around 7 million ‘displaced persons’ as a result of the civil war in Syria, Australia has a global responsibility to contribute to resettlement. Since the Second World War, we have always accepted refugees and they have made positive and lasting contributions to Australian society. We are privileged to live in a wealthy country that can afford to offer assistance, and to do anything less than welcome Syrian refugees into our communities would reek of greed, xenophobia and selfishness. More importantly, rejecting the opportunity to help Syrian refugees would fundamentally change the nature of the country we have become.

* Not In My Back Yard