One of the most direct ways that exclusion on the basis of citizenship occurs is by denial of access to territory. Denial of freedom of movement. What this can mean to the potential immigrant is denial of the right to work, the right to safety and to education. Thousands of irregular migrants have lost their lives seeking to cross international borders.
Villawood Detention Centre continues to be a place of death with the third death of a detained man in three months. David Saunders, a 29 year old British national held for “visa breaches” was found dead at 3.20 am in the morning on 8 September. Mr Saunders was held in the high security wing and...
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The basic idea at the heart of human rights is that all human beings are equal: equal in rights – equal in human dignity. This idea is universally accepted and believed. At the same time another idea – the idea that we are separately citizens of different countries is also a feature of the modern...
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What is a “protest”? In the context of democracy we think of them as citizen action – citizens speaking to their government – expressing their dissatisfaction with a policy or state of affairs. What then are we to make of the actions of a few non-citizens protesting on the roof of the Villawood detention...
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Crossing Over is a 2009 American independent film drama exploring the lives of illegal immigrants attempting to “cross the border” literally and metaphorically to achieve legal status in the United States. The film deals with the border, document fraud, the asylum and green card process, work-site enforcement, naturalization, the office of counter-terrorism and the clash of...
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In a policy announcement echoing the discredited ‘Pacific solution’ of the previous Liberal Government, the new Australian government has decided to seek to detain asylum seekers in a ‘regional processing centre’ in East Timor. The new Australian policy reflects a general hardening of policies towards asylum seekers in the lead up to national elections. ...
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Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right to leave any country. Increasingly countries are cooperating to violate this human rights by preventing aslyum seekers and others from leaving a country to seek refuge in another country. Some examples are: Egypt: which prevents Africans from leaving Egypt...
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In recent days Germans and those affected by the Cold War are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is an anniversary worth celebrating. A chasm between the politics of the west and the communist world dissolved and people that had been kept apart for 40 years were...
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Some countries obsess about ‘who we are’. The obsession becomes more intense, the more people with different coloured skins, different accents, diffent cultures become part of day to day life. In an age of migration “we” can become very confusing. Who can “we” be, if quite obviously “us” includes “them”. This question is not...
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Either we all stand up or none of us do. Recently I read comments on the BBC page on Open Borders. One Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies expresses this view. Borders are essential to nationhood. They are the line between “us” and “them”. Without ‘them’ there can be no ‘us’, precluding the...
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