legal or illegal?

There was a story in the news recently that claimed almost 50,000 people are living in Australia illegally.  More than 10,000 in New South Wales and about 3500 in Victoria.

The figures were released by the Department of Immigration which claimed most of the offenders had entered the country on visitors’ visas and overstayed their legal rights by more than a year.

And, according to the Department  the typical culprit was “a man aged 31 to 50”  or “a woman over 60”.

I read that and thought: if they know so much about the illegals why can’t they track them down and throw them out.

Ironically, the issue intrigued me more because I have just come back from the United States where I was ensconced for some weeks in Hollywood writing a movie.

California has a chronic but enigmatic problem with illegals. A writing colleague told me that there are now an estimated 30 million “illegals” (as they call them) in the USA. Thirty million! Most are Mexicans – who are nicknamed “wetbacks” because they swam the Rio Grande to get there. But increasingly there are illegals from places like Honduras and Guatemala who have slipped through the porous Mexican border en route to the American Dream.

Increasingly, in recent years, the illegals have spread from California to Ohio and Idaho – right throughout the Midwest.

I used the word “enigmatic” deliberately. The friend I stayed with has a ponderosa in the Malibu Hills.  Going for a daily walk I saw several people of Mexican extraction cutting lawns and trimming trees. My friend admitted they were illegals. Paid cash, off the books, at a low hourly rate.

I drove past the vast mansions in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Same thing. Swarms of cheap illegal labour doing outdoor chores that Americans wouldn’t do.

It is a second labour economy. Albeit illegal. Everybody knows it goes on. The only time it really makes the headlines is when a candidate for Attorney General – or other high office – gets grilled by a Senate review committee and admits that he (or she)  had employed an illegal nanny.

Government officials from California to Washington know their economies thrive on this cheap labour force. And they turn a blind eye.

In the Los Angeles Times Professor Lydia Chavez wrote: “It’s high time we dealt with the reality of immigration. Millions of undocumented immigrants already here will stay (by any means necessary). More will come (by any means possible) and most of those newcomers will also stay. The US economy’s demand for cheap labour ensures a steady supply of immigrants,”

 And, of course, the US has always been a migrant country. Read what is  proclaimed on the Statue of Liberty: “send me your troubled masses” etc.

In the past few weeks John McCain (a Republican and possible presidential candidate) and Teddy Kennedy, a Democrat, have put forward an idea that illegals could get “temporary work visas” for six years and then could be eligible for permanent residency in the United States.

To me this is wrong. And it brings me back to Australia and the “Tampa debate” which won John Howard an important election. I have written before that I found the Howard, Ruddock, Reith “children overboard” canard cynical and offensive.

But Howard was right when he said something like “we decide who comes to live in Australia”. Queue jumpers should not be rewarded. Here or in the USA.

On radio, during the Tampa debate I talked to a man who had spent four years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He was desperate to live in this country. But he waited his turn. And suffered deprivation during that wait. And he finally got to Australia.

We had would-be residents waiting in refugee camps throughout Asia for years. And they finally, legally, made it.

Australia does have a refugee commitment through the United Nations and I believe we honour it. We also take about 100,000 migrants a year which I believe is probably too few. But queue-jumpers cannot be humoured or take precedent.

(And that will probably upset a Bentleigh radio listener who is now boycotting my programme  because “your heart has hardened. Your manner, your anger, your shouting. And  I feel sad about that”).

Australia does have an immigration policy. It can seem mean. It is a long way from the “ten-pound Poms” we used to embrace. One hundred thousand migrants a year is small for a country of twenty million.

Especially when I read in a Hong Kong newspaper that if you had $250,000 you could buy yourself instant entry. Forget about the boat people. I called them the “yacht people”. The joke against the naive Australian  Government was that affluent migrants from Asia  would indeed bring in their quarter of a million dollars to invest in a business. But as soon as they were here they would send it all back for somebody else to bring in again.

This has been a migrant-fuelled country for half a century. Nino Culotto and “They’re a Weird Mob” touched a multi-cultural nerve for a reason. The Snowy River Scheme would not have happened without migrants. I’m a migrant and could not dream of living anywhere else.

Migrants changed our food patterns. Opened our palates. Brought us

“spag bol” for starters”. Got a lot of us interested in wine for the first time. Got us tasting Greek dishes like saganaki and rice wrapped in vine leaves.

But. The point remains. You come here legally. And legally you are welcomed and your culture is embraced and shared.

Howard, I believe, was brutal but right on the Tampa issue.  And I suspect most Australians agree. If I got on a plane from Melbourne  to New York without the right legal paperwork my feet wouldn’t touch the ground at JFK airport before they spun me around and sent me back. And that’s a country’s right.

January 8, 2006

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2006