Boatloads

I heard a disturbing comparison recently; that Australia’s dealing with asylum seekers and refugees coming by boat is comparable to what happened in 1939 to the Jewish refugee boat the St Louis. The boat, carrying 937 refugees was rejected at port after port before returning to Europe. A quarter of those passengers then died in concentration camps.

Time and time again Australia is turning way boatloads of desperate people who are seeking a land to live in free of oppression, free of torture, free of crippling poverty and starvation. A country where there is hope for a safe future. Not only that but Australia's actions are encouraging other countries to turn away those in desperate need.

As Australia we are blessed to have been born in this country.

It is not our right.

It is a blessing.

We do not have the authority to keep that blessing to ourselves and reject those who were not born here.

We don’t have a right to sift through people’s lives, their education, their job prospects, their bank accounts, their health, and pick and choose who gets to come and who doesn’t.

Our world has grown smaller and we can travel anywhere but we shield and distance ourselves from the everyday reality of the majority of our world’s people. We continue to put up walls, fearful of those whose ways are different, who speak languages we cannot understand.

What would happen if we could all see each other as; mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children and grandparents who love our families, who get scared, who make mistakes, who want to protect those we love the most?

How many stories from history, how many books and movies have come out recently, which show what happens when one people, one country shut themselves off from those in need and lord it over those who are desperate?

We say, that’s fiction, that’s in the past, it’s never going to happen again; we’ve learned our lesson. But have we? Have we really? Or do the same lessons keep coming back again and again just in different forms?

It is horrifying to think that Australia could become a country responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

Knowing now the horrors of what happened in those concentration camps, I am sure that those countries that rejected the people on the St Louis wish that they had accepted them.
Are we sure we know the extent of what asylum seekers and refugees desperately trying to get to Australia are escaping from?

We are a country vast and prosperous. We can and should accept those who want to protect their families and give a future to their children.