Something you don’t want to do? Get a marginalised migrant

Happy Sunday Funday!
What would we do without marginalised migrants to do our dirty work?
(From KnoxNews.com)

The immigrant journey: a funny music video

Finding something funny about migration/refugees/racism is not easy, let alone doing it once a week.
But it is Sunday Funday once more, and so the Possie has searched and searched, and found this music video of the immigration journey of two Mexican migrants in the US.
You may guess from my tone that it is not the [...]

Do you know someone experiencing visa difficulties right now?

I am at the International Conference on Migration, Citizenship and Intercultural Relations in Melbourne at the moment.
Just heard a great lecture from Stephen Castles – much to think about! Castles predicts that by 2050 the birth rate will have decreased in the Global South to the level of that now in the Global North.
Castles asked [...]

Can you help? I am all at sea about Tamils

Will someone please help me with this?
What is going on with Tamils on boats?
Dr Kohona claims that they are just economic migrants, and could go just 22 miles across the water to Tamil Nadu in India instead, but would not make enough money there. Tamils could volunteer as sitting ducks for the Sri Lankan navy: [...]

Help change the debate – fund Amnesty’s asylum seeker ad

I have talked a lot about changing the debate about asylum seekers, and now-
I’ve funded Amnesty International’s newspaper ad for a compassionate approach to refugees. Please join me: https://support.amnesty.org.au/index_content.php
Australians pride ourselves on being reasonable, compassionate and fair. But politicians are diminishing these values in political point-scoring over “boat people”.
We have the systems, skills and rigour [...]

How many would come if we just opened the borders?

Worried about asylum seekers flooding Australia?
What would happen if we just opened our borders to everyone?
Gallup polled people in 135 countries between 2007 and 2009, and found that about 16% of the world’s adults (roughly 700 million) would like to move to another country permanently if they could. 700 Million Worldwide Desire to Migrate Permanently
Nearly [...]

Watch this, and be afraid of where the asylum seeker debate could take us

In the United States the immigration bête noire is illegal immigrants (read ‘Mexicans’), while in Australia ours is boatpeople.
9500 Liberty is a new documentary, based on the groundbreaking YouTube channel, 9500liberty, just released in the US. I hope it will make it to Australia. Here’s the synopsis:
“Prince William County, Virginia became ground zero in America’s explosive [...]

PhD tales from the Heathrow detention facility

It’s Sunday Funday!
I regularly have a look at Jorge Cham’s ‘Piled Higher and Deeper’ website, where Jorge cartoons about life and PhD candidates.
It’s funny, or, as Jorge says,
“Results show that persistent exposure to phdcomics dot com (PDC) is mildly correlated to jocular deportment, which suggests improvements in temporal-delay behaviour of bounded activity.”
And this week Jorge cartooned [...]

Racism is not inevitable: even public opinion on boatpeople is ’soft’

Joseph Chamie, research director at the Center for Migration Studies and former director of the United Nations Population Division, in an article for Online Opinion, brings attention to broader migration issues than just numbers of asylum seekers.  Mind the gap: public and government views on migration diverge
Chamie argues that governments overlook  public opinion in favour [...]

Backpackers: yet another category of exploited migrants

Are backpackers marginalised migrants?
I stretching things too far?
In 2007-08 the number of working holiday-makers young people increased by nearly 14.5% from 2006–07 to 2007–08 (DIAC). The report for 2008-09 will be released at the end of this month. Despite the global economic crisis, it is expected that the number of young people entering Australia on [...]