Asylum Seeker In today’s society we are safe; we can go outside and not have any worries about our safety. In Australia we have the freedom of speech; we have the right to elect our Prime Ministers. And we are very fortunate that we live in Australia and yet we all seem to take it for granted, is that because we are naive or just stupid? We Australians are a multicultural, we have different types of races in different suburbs in different cities, and yet we act like we all share the same views and values.

Let me tell you a story, it is from a book I once read. A family from Afghanistan ran a secret school for Children both male and female, which is illegal in Afghanistan for females to have the right of an education. They we found out and the parents of this family were sentenced to execution, they ran, tried to buy passage with what little money they had, and not all of them made it. Boy overboard was based on a true story; if they had help from a strong, great nation like ours then maybe they would have all survived.

There whole family were seeking asylum, and yet they had to go through all that hard ache, we a Great nation need to step up our effects in helping those that need it most, Asylum Seekers. Asylum Seekers have such a bad name in today’s society, strange that. In the early 18 hundreds didn’t English people travel vast oceans on boats to seek refuge in Australia? Hmmm. Strange that 200 years later people from across the globe, are doing the same thing BUT we are locking them up in refugee camps.

Isn’t there something wrong about that? The Aboriginals, natives of Australian never locked up the English Settlers or even the convicts, they might have had their ups and downs but they never imprisoned over 2000 people, wait isn’t that the population size of Casterton? In an island 2600km away from Australia, no wonder the media says we are ungrateful for what we have. Does Australia have really too many problems of our own to have to worry about other countries?

The Government seems to think not, seeing they are willing to send our Soldiers to wars that do not concern us, but when the wars turn ugly and people are in fear of their life, they run, escape from their countries and then Australia turns there back on them, locks them away, and throws away the key. In many cases it takes up to 5 years to find out if you will gain access into Australia, 5 years, 1820 days, isn’t that just a little bit too long?

Imprisonment for 5 years because you seek refuge, because you are in fear for your life, I am sure if you were in there shoes you wouldn’t agree with how long it takes to let you into the country or send you packing somewhere else were they may let you into their country. 5 years in imprisonment just to be told “sorry mate, piss off” mmmm I guess at least the War may be over. We Australians had a great name after both World Wars, now that name is being tarnished by Governments we elected because they are too scared, too afraid to do the right thing.

But hey they want to be re-elected so of course they will do whatever they can to ensure they get re-elected. Australia was founded by people travelling vast oceans, and now we seem to not care about the fact we did the same thing. We need to stand up and take responsibility for what wars we are involved with and help those refugees, we are in high demand for highly skilled workers, so why not send the refugees through university and educate them on how we Australians act, how we want the world to see us, the image we represent.

We have got to do something, anything is better than doing nothing. We need to lead by example and the world will follow. Asylum Seekers, Refugees whatever the word the media is tossing around these days, need our help, needs Australia’s help. We need to do more; we need to show the world we do care. Or are we Australians to concerned with a pimple on our face? Or maybe making sure our hair is perfect.