Dreams of a “White Australia” are not dead.
Despite the country’s rescinding of official policies under that name in 1973, refugee boats — chiefly from Asia — have been turned back in nearly every case, and asylum-seekers have been jailed in off-shore camps as decreed under current “mandatory immigration detention” laws. Inhumane conditions in migrant jails have led to endemic despair; in some cases, to self-harm and suicide. The United Nations has denounced Australia’s immigration policies, citing the injustice of a blind and mentally ill Tamil man’s incarceration for close to a decade after arriving ashore in 2010. Current Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for a hard-line stance on whom he termed “illegal maritime arrivals” during his stint as Minister for Immigration. In that post, he helped to legislate “Operation Sovereign Borders,” which espouses a “zero tolerance” approach to refugees arriving by sea and enforces mandatory detention. A paranoid fear of “invasion” from the Asian North lives on from the days before Australia’s federation. And right-wing politicians such as Morrison know how to stoke it.

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