Can Australia put to end racist attacks by canceling immigration visas?

Filed in archive General on February 11, 2010

© Linh_rOm

They could not stop racists attack so finally they came up with a 'novel' solution to deal with it - cutback on visa applications. Till now you must have guessed I am talking about Australia which has been witnessing racist attacks on Indians for very long time now. Under its revamped immigration policy, Australia is canceling 20,000 visa applications of foreign nationals which include sizeable number of Indians. The Australian coffer will be stripped of $14 million as a result putting further burden on Australian taxpayers.

The new Australian immigration policy will be favoring skilled workers and unskilled workers will get thumbs down. Cancellation will be applicable to every offshore general skilled migration claims registered before September 2007. This step is being taken by the Australian government towards an immigration policy which was being 'abused' and is being termed as the source of all attacks.

The story goes like this…

Low skilled immigrants opted for Australia due to better prospects under the guise of student visa so that they could be eligible for permanent residence or PR in the country. In pursuit of their dreams these gullible people with the help of immigration touts and education agents fudged qualification requirements and opted for vocational stream courses which came under the list of 'migrant occupations in demand'. These courses offered them one of the cheapest and easily available opportunities to seek permanent settlement in the country. Having paid their fortune to move to Australia these students took up menial jobs to pay for their investments and while returning late at night from work they ended up taking crime infested public transport system which made them susceptible to attacks and were termed as 'racist'. This is the end of the story, a story which may be hard to digest for most of us.

Now let's see what this story led to…

Such racist attacks which have been continuing since a long time were placing strains on the relations between the countries and even required diplomatic intervention from India. The image of Australia was getting tarnished as a peaceful country and as a result it has started taking steps to curb immigration which it feels will improve the situation.

I would agree that immigrants might have abused the policies to enter the country, I would even agree with the fact that they would be working doubly hard to repay loans taken back home and as a result may be risking their lives by traveling late at night but I wont agree to the fact that immigrants were solely responsible for being attacked and were provoking the Australians to strike back.

This raises a few questions in my mind

Does this mean that every unskilled immigrant is of a dubious character that ends up provoking Australians to attack and kill them?
Does this mean that the attacks which are happening are not racist but attacks carried out by criminals?
Does this mean that if a country cannot control crime in its country it starts curbing its immigration policy?

Which world are we living in?

With such mindset I feel that Australia would not only tarnish its image worldwide but even lose out on the millions of dollars it earns as revenue from these immigrants.