2 posts tagged “rant”
I was talking to my mother the other day and she mentioned the brother of one of her students was in Canberra helping lobby for a set of refugees that were recently caught and are being held on christmas island. The following news stories here , here and here should give a little bit of background. Human smuggling is an awful practice where a few people profit from the misery of others who are desperate to get out of their current situation. Australia has a particularly tough stance with illegal immigrants since it fears being flooded by people from Asia. Given its vast border they don't know how they can protect it without being absurdly strict. Humans make these rules and should therefore also put some thought into the fate of these people once they send them back to their home country. In a country where you have a civil war and a poor record of human rights both on the part of the government and LTTE you should be extra careful when making choices for them. For example if you read the articles you'll notice a name pop up Major General Janaka Perera who is trying to organize their repatriation back to Sri Lanka. Can you really trust a guy who was also responsible for being in command of troops that systematically murdered civilians? I've often found reassurances from people like that to not be worth much. I'm not saying Australia has to let them into the country but they should think twice about sending those men who are from the Tamil minority back to a country that knows they tried to escape and where people can easily disappear. If they do send them back they are responsible for the death of these people and equally guilty of participating in civil war by choosing to take a side. We hide behind numbers and labels when talking about refugees i.e "80+ boat people from Sri Lanka". No, each one of those people has a story to tell and do we spend any time trying to understand it. Sure some of them are going to be fake but a good portion probably do have something to be scared of. I wonder how much time the Australian politicians have put into understanding the human side of the story vs reading simplified reports to cater to their sub-optimal IQs. Problems like this should weigh heavily on their hearts and minds. It does on mine.
After reading these books I posted a rant about my feelings about illegal immigrants and refugees on my MySpace blog which I've reproduced below with some minor corrections. I feel strongly about this subject because I've been given opportunities many people in the world don't have. Is it so wrong for them to want a fraction of what I have?
I spent the last week reading human
cargo. I picked it up at Cody's on Stockton because of a conversation I
had with some friends at a dinner (not so much friends as people who
pity me). What makes it compelling
is how it tells the stories of
refugees from across the world. Their backgrounds are different but
their end goal is the same. A must read if you're interested in how the
other half of the world lives (probably much more than half).
The book has been emotional for me. It makes me angry because too many people in the world are being brutalized and we sit around drinking our soy chais unaware. It makes me sick knowing what humans can do to each other and what's worse when they get to a "safe" country they are treated with mistrust and made to feel less than human.
most of us don't know that feeling of not being able to live where you grew up because someone else for no logical reason beyond power wants to either rob, rape or murder you (or various combinations there of). People don't just up and leave because they feel like a jolly good adventure. generally having your life threatened in some way is a pretty good reason to try to go somewhere else.
There is a great fear in many countries that of a flood of refugees. Australia is especially paranoid and its solution is to lock up refugees in prisons ummm errrr detention centers or to outsource imprisonment eemm detention to
countries
like Naru and Papua New Guinea. The Howard government comes up with all
kinds of excuses as to why the hoards of refugees need to be stopped. He plays with deep seated insecurities in the Australian population of Australia being overrun with other people (read non-white). Australians
should be disgusted with how refugees are treated. to further
dehumanize people who already feel less than human is a crime and Australia has very little moral ground to stand on with its current
policies. The easy way out is for the government to paint a picture
of masses of people flooding the country and changing their way of
life. i guess we can ask the aborigines something about that. australia
can care for far more refugees than it can currently takes in.
Why not try an experiment? Educate and train them to do something that Australia needs. Australia has a labor shortage. Instead of letting the people in detention centers go idle let them try and integrate themselves into
society. You need to give people a chance and most people just want to be happy. If they can prove to be productive members of society then they should
be allowed to stay. If they can't integrate we get into a grey area and
maybe they need to be somewhere else. I think you'll find most refugees
will integrate and be a good thing for the country.
Now let's get back to California. something that i find utterly absurd is how people
want to send all the "illegal" immigrants back to where they came from. I can understand the statement coming from some inbred hick who
probably has never talked to a foreigner but when statements like that come from people in California my face usually gives the "you're even fucking stupider
than i thought you were" look. I argue that a good part of the Californian economy is the underground 2nd economy of people who are
here without a greencard.
Go to any restaurant, hotel, farm (any place where physical labor is required) and you will see people without-status (to use INS parlance). These people work for shit wages, without health insurance and are treated as sub-humans. they do the jobs most Americans don't want to do and they risk their lives doing it and don't complain. Most alarmists will point out they are responsible for crimes etc but if you look at the numbers they aren't any more when compared to people with-status. Give them a fucking break they work their arses off doing stuff you don't want to do, to make a better life for themselves. Are they taking something from you? No. so fucking get over it.
Happiness does not need to be a zero sum game. Perhaps at some stage countries will stop pissing on the universal declaration of human rights. Nah, that would be humane.
I'm sitting in gate A4 at SFO waiting for my flight to Australia. I'm super paranoid about flights so I end up arriving a couple of hours before just in case something happens. That usually leaves me with a bunch of time to ruminate and attempt to spend my time "productively". I have 2 books , 1 PSP (4 games including roco loco and katamari), 1 wireless connection (youtube playing in the background) and me blogging to pass some time.
I have terrible luck with seating on planes. I either end up with someone sick next to me which leaves me trying to breath as little as possible. It probably looks to the other passengers like I'm on the verge of death. I also end up with people who love to keep going to the restroom. I prefer sitting on an aisle seat because of the freedom it offers but suffer for that choice. I've been known to end up with people who take up way too much space and intrude on my particular area. Then there are the people who figured it was a great idea not to shower (for the last 5 days). Is it bad form to spray air freshner in their general direction?
I'm not a greedy person , all I ask is that I get to sit next to someone low impact or a super model. Actually super models sound like they'd be high maintainance I'll settle for Scarlett Johansson :)
Oh what does fate have in store for me tonight...
