REFUGEE ACTION COMMITTEE
Canberra, Australia

Facts and myths about refugees

Myths&FactsMarch2011.pdf March 2011
July 2010: A new Myths and Facts sheet for the August 2010 election. Myths_and_Facts2010.pdf

October 2009 A Just Australia's Myths and Facts about Asylum Seekers
http://tinyurl.com/5grhba

The rest of this page was last updated in 2004. Remember how things were… or are they still the same?

Although this government insists on portraying asylum seekers as "illegal", this is untrue. Under Australian and International Law, and Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a person fleeing persecution is entitled to come here and ask for asylum. People who arrive in Australia without visas or valid documents are not necessarily trying to deceive us. Many asylum seekers are forced to leave their countries secretly and in haste to avoid imprisonment or worse for themselves and their families. Read on to get the truth about asylum seekers:

Refugee Action Committee fact sheet (PDF 436kb) — The Case for Freeing the Refugees.

Myths propagated by politicians

Links to further reading

Myths and Misconceptions [PDF] from Jack Smit
HREOC's "Face the Facts" page on refugees and asylum seekers.

Are Asylum Seekers Illegal? - Debunking the myths - from the Hotham Mission asylum seeker project's website

Are boat people queue jumpers? Are they real refugees or not? Debunking Myths about Asylum Seekers [PDF 81kb] and Debunking More Myths about Asylum Seekers [PDF] - from the Edmund Rice Centre

The Refugee Council of Australia's FAQs and Stats include Who are refugees? and Myths and refugees.

Amnesty International Australia's fact sheets - alternatives to detention, children at risk, Australia's obligations, how refugees arrive in Australia, and more.

Refugee Claimants - Myths and Facts - from Scattered People

Myths and facts about refugees [PDF] updated Feb 2002, from the Australian Education Union

Know the Facts - from Rural Australians for Refugees

The generous country? Asylum seeking in Australia: myths, facts and statistics - Peter Mares, author of Borderline: Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers talks about the Government's use of refugee statistics to give the impression that "the vast majority of Afghan asylum applicants, and by implication, all so called 'boat people' are seeking to abuse the system ... [and] that our system is overly generous".

Hitler or Hussein, no queue - Renata Caldor tells how her family escaped from Europe and came to Australia as refugees, and points out that today their behaviour would earn them the title of queue jumpers and illegals: "I know of no one who escaped who waited in an orderly queue. Totalitarian states don't work that way. Escape from totalitarian regimes is not an orderly process . . . I wonder how the escape from Hungary of my husband's family would be interpreted today." (Australian, July 16, 2002)

The big lies of border protection - Malcolm Fraser, writing in The Age, March 27 2002

Unfinished Journeys: Refugees and migration in Asia and the Pacific; facts and figures, key issues, case studies, opinion, news and more, from ABC Radio Australia.

The Unwanted Stranger? Refugees in Australia (April 2002) - background paper by Kerry Murphy for the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council. "The current system places greatest importance on border control and preventing abuses. This focus fails to recognize the complexities of human experience and does not protect rights nor respect people's dignity. These challenges are particularly relevant for Australians in the twenty-first century."

Reporting Australia's Asylum Seeker "Crisis" (July 2002) - Peter Mares on how government propaganda and censorship, and media reporting, have shaped public perceptions. "The demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers for political gain may have reached its apotheosis during Australia's 2001 federal election campaign but the practice was already firmly entrenched. The media is not free of blame in this regard."

Doublespeak - refugee advocate and lawyer Julian Burnside shows how both the Government and the Opposition use language to conceal uncomfortable truths about the way we treat refugees.

Debunking the Myths about Asylum Seekers written by Kerry Murphy for Uniya - Jesuit Social Justice Centre. "What data is available indicates that most are driven by `push' factors (driving them out), rather than `pull factors' (attracting them to developed countries)" - looks at the global situation and the various reasons why people are on the move. Written in Feb 1997, this article states prophetically: "While Australia has a good international record in resettling refugees, it has a record for panic responses to arrivals by boat."

Links to Fact sheets from the Brisbane Actionweb for Refugee Collaboration include some mentioned here, and more.

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Page modified 22 July 2010.

REFUGEE ACTION COMMITTEE Canberra, Australia

Facts and myths about refugees

Links to further reading

REFUGEE ACTION COMMITTEE
Canberra, Australia