‘Declaring success’ !!!!

Having millions of illegals still in the country is “success”??? I guess it is from a Leftist viewpoint

Declaring success in border security and immigration enforcement, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that the federal government has done its work and now it’s time for Congress to pass a broad bill to legalize illegal immigrants. Her speech signals President Obama will make good on his promise to push Congress to pass an immigration bill next year – adding yet another hot-button issue to an already long and contentious list.

Ms. Napolitano said members of Congress and voters who balked at an immigration bill two years ago, fearing a repeat of the 1986 amnesty that only made the problem worse, can be assured this time is different. She said in those two years, the flow of illegal immigrants across the border has dropped dramatically and the government is doing more to catch fugitive aliens inside the U.S. “The security of the southwest border has been transformed from where it was in 2007,” she said in a speech to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “The federal government has dedicated unprecedented resources to the Mexican border in terms of manpower, technology and infrastructure – and it’s made a real difference.”

But Republicans said her declaration of victory on border security was premature. “How can they claim that enforcement is ‘done’ when there are more than 400 open miles of border with Mexico, hundreds of thousands of criminal and fugitive aliens and millions of illegal immigrants taking American jobs?” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

The number of illegal immigrants being caught on the border has fallen – a measure Border Patrol officials say means fewer are trying to cross – and Ms. Napolitano said the government has hundreds of miles of fencing on the border, has boosted the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000 and has begun to deport illegal-alien criminals being kept in U.S. prisons and jails. The number of illegal immigrants apprehended by immigration authorities is down from 1.8 million in 2000 to 556,041 in fiscal 2009, which ended Sept. 30, and demography experts say the number of illegal immigrants remaining in the U.S. has actually begun to fall.

Ms. Napolitano said both a slowing economy and better enforcement account for the changes, which she said creates a window for Congress to act.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee, said Ms. Napolitano “contradicted herself by claiming the downturn in our economy has reduced illegal immigration but then advocated for an amnesty policy that allows millions of illegal aliens to take American jobs.” “This is exactly the wrong time to be giving a pro-amnesty speech since we just received news that the national unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent,” Mr. King said.

Immigrant rights groups say they’ve changed the debate in Congress, and Ms. Napolitano said the attitude among Americans has changed as well.

But when it comes to actual votes in Congress, there hasn’t been a good test for some years, and earlier this year White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the “votes aren’t there right now” to pass a broad legalization bill.

Immigrant rights advocates said they’ll be watching to see how much muscle Mr. Obama puts behind the effort. Some have said Mr. Obama betrayed them by embracing E-Verify, the voluntary employee verification system, and revamping but not ending local police enforcement of immigration laws. On Friday, though, groups said they saw a “real commitment” from Ms. Napolitano and the administration to try to pass a broad bill, which they argue would take care of many of the key problems that have led to stepped-up enforcement.

In 2007, President George W. Bush teamed with Senate Democrats and some Republicans to try to pass a bill that legalized most illegal immigrants, rewrote the rules for legal immigration and provided money for some border security. The bill lost on an unusual majority filibuster that saw 15 Democrats and one independent join 37 Republicans in blocking the measure.

A year earlier, the Senate had passed a bill that had legalized some illegal immigrants, while the House passed an enforcement-only measure. Both bills died because they could not be reconciled with one another.

SOURCE

 

Australia gives illegals plush treatment while assessing them

They get an island holiday with all expenses paid by the Australian taxpayer

DETAINEES on Christmas Island have access to both fast-speed internet services and mobile phones, raising fears they have may have been encouraging the stand-off on the Oceanic Viking. The Department of Immigration confirmed the internet and phone access but declined to answer questions relating to detainees having made contact with either those on the Oceanic Viking, people smugglers or other family members encouraging them to make the illegal boat trip to Australia.

The department says the use of the 30 computers is “supervised”. However, according to eyewitness accounts given to The Sunday Telegraph, such supervision is minimal if it exists at all. Eyewitnesses say guards on the island told them the computers were filtered for the “usual sites like porn”, but that was all. One person who observed detainees using the two computer rooms on the island said: “It’s clear they were able to have contact with the outside world. Therefore it’s conceivable they might have been in contact with the Oceanic Viking.

“All they have to tell other refugees is that if you get to Christmas Island you’ll spend three months max and then 90 per cent are waved through. You’ll do less than three months in good surrounds.”

The department refuses to say whether it has any record of who detainees have been in contact with but “restricted internet access” has been available since early 2007. “Any monitoring of phone calls or internet use would be under-taken by law enforcement or security agencies in accordance with relevant legislation,” a spokeswoman said, but she did not say whether any such monitoring actually took place.

According to those who have recently been on the island, detainees are also provided with free yoga, fitness and art classes. All health costs are also paid by the Commonwealth – including free dental care. The spokeswoman would not comment on claims one group of detainees destroyed their footwear to get new shoes after one asylum-seeker, who had no shoes, received a new pair on arrival. Fresh food and vegetables are airlifted into the detention centre.

The department refused to confirm this included freshly baked bread costing $10 a loaf – despite there being a bakery on the island. But it did confirm a vegetarian option was made available on the daily menu. Snacks and cigarettes are also available under a “purchase allowance” points scheme.

The spokeswoman said the total cost for running the island in the less than three months between July 1 this year and September 9 was just over $11 million. A breakdown of the cost included: $6.68 million for overall services, $2 million for interpreters, $1.3 million for health costs, $330,000 for aircraft charter and $800,000 in wages. Those who have been to the island recently say locals have noted the department spares no expense airfreighting the detainees’ requirements, while food and supplies for locals come by boat.

The spokeswoman confirmed all health costs were met by the Commonwealth. One recent visitor observed that many ordinary Australians in the bush could not receive access to free dental care.

The spokeswoman said food supplies were ordered from the mainland. She added: “We have a duty of care to ensure the health and well-being of people in immigration detention, including ensuring access to appropriate physical and recreational activities, such as a grassed area for soccer.”

Meanwhile the stand-off on the Oceanic Viking, moored off Indonesia for more than four weeks, showed signs of thawing when 22 of the 78 Sri Lankans on board left the vessel after the Australian Government guaranteed them a special 12-week turnaround of their claim for refugee status.

SOURCE

 

Is It A ‘Civil Right’ For Illegal Aliens To Be Represented in government?

This is the ultimate logic of illegal immigration, the government is fighting hard to make sure illegal aliens are being represented, no seriously…

A federal judge imposed an unusual election system on a suburban village Friday, nearly two years after finding that the existing system was unfair to Hispanics.

The village, Port Chester, is run by a mayor and six trustees. Under the new system, called cumulative voting, residents will be allowed to cast as many as six votes for one trustee candidate.

No Hispanic had ever been elected trustee or mayor in the village 25 miles northeast of New York City, although the population of 28,000 is about half Hispanic. The ruling is likely to mean that the village will have trustee elections next year for the first time since 2006.

Being a super genius I had to wonder: was Port Chester known for having illegal aliens?

Ahem…

“I would like to nominate Port Chester, NY as a sanctuary city here in the State of New York.
To be quite honest I don’t know of any regulations and haven’t looked into it to be fair to the Village of Port Chester. But I do know just from living here for the last three years. The downtown village is full everyday with the day workers whom are all illegal. Even during the day they are all hanging out in front of all the churches. The schools have gone to crap and our only hospital here United Hospital closed up several years ago which serviced (the Harrison, Rye, Rye Brook areas) due to the influx of the illegals.”

Ahem…

Connecticut’s Greenwich Hospital recently treated an illegal Guatemalan with severe drug-resistant TB, after his local hospital in Port Chester, New York, had gone bust from uninsured immigrants

Ahem…

Valerie Nanni, Leicester Street, spoke about quality of life issues and said that she was not against legal immigration but there is a serious problem with illegal immigration.

Ahem…

Port Chester (pop. 28,000) is a good example of what is happening around the country. During the last decade or so, this small township in Westchester County, New York, has witnessed a 73-percent growth of its Hispanic population, making the Hispanic population a majority of the town’s residents. But because no Hispanic has ever been elected to the town’s board of trustees — all of whom run at-large — the Department of Justice sued to force Port Chester to ditch its 138-year-old at-large system of governance and instead, create six, single-member trustee districts. Of course, the DOJ wants half of those districts gerrymandered in a manner to allow a Hispanic to win — or, in the more formal language of the law, Hispanics must be able to “elect a candidate of their choice.”

One does not have to sympathize with the Minutemen to conclude this is not fair, but the injustice to Port Chester is further compounded when one looks at the details of DOJ’s proposed districts, which are based on the voting-age population overall, rather than the voting population of citizens. For example, one of the districts DOJ proposed will have a 77 percent Hispanic voting-age population, but only a 56 percent citizen Hispanic voting-age population. Another district has a slight majority of Hispanics, but only a 28 percent Hispanic citizen population. In other words, the federal government wants some of the new voting districts to have citizen-underpopulated Hispanic districts and citizen-overpopulated non-Hispanic ones.

So, this gerrymandering will result in a non-Hispanic district being drawn with 5,000 persons of voting age, 95 percent of whom are citizens, to be represented by one Port Chester trustee. A Hispanic district, meanwhile, might also have 5,000 persons, but only 50 percent of whom are citizens. This kind of district scheme will result in one town trustee representing 4,750 citizens, while another trustee represents only 2,500 citizens.

Is it fair that in one district 2,500 citizens get one representative, while in a neighboring district, it takes 4,750 people to get one? No, it’s not.

So your government has taken it upon themselves to A.) fill this country with illegal aliens, and having done so they are now making sure that those people who have broken in, stolen jobs, brought previously defeated diseases and crimes back to this country are well represented in this nation where they have no business in the first place.

SOURCE. (See the original for links)

 

Only uneducated “asylum-seeker” scum now welcome in Britain

Highly qualified people like doctors are to be kept out. ALL the “asylum seekers” who reach Britain have gone through other countries first so were already safe from whatever persecution they claim. They are country shoppers, not asylum seekers. So the Labour government’s new policy in fact steps up the national suicide that it is doing its best to bring about. If they had Britain’s interests at heart they would say that Britain has now done its bit for refugees and is no longer a nation of refuge for asylum seekers

PROFESSIONAL workers from Australia and other countries outside the European Union wanting to find a job in Britain will face even tougher restrictions from 2010. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has outlined a series of proposed reforms to Britain’s points-based immigration system, which is based on the one developed in Australia. Under the latest crackdown, Mr Brown wants professionals – including doctors, engineers and hospital consultants, skilled chefs and care workers – to be removed from the list of workers eligible to apply for jobs.

Rules for foreign students applying for visas to study in the UK will also be tightened.

Mr Brown said that while immigrants had brought immeasurable benefits to Britain, changes to the system were needed in order to protect jobs for local workers. The changes come after the government earlier this year dumped 30,000 occupations from its list of jobs eligible skilled migrants could apply for in Britain. “Over the coming months we will remove more occupations and thousands more posts from the list of those eligible for entry under the points-based system,” Mr Brown said in a speech in London. “As (economic) growth returns I want to see rising levels of skills, wages and employment among those resident here rather than employers having to recruiting from abroad.”

Mr Brown said foreign students would also be subject to the latest crackdown. He announced a review of foreign student visas by government agencies to determine whether there was a case for “raising the minimum level of (a study) course for which they can obtain a visa”. Mandatory English language tests for foreign students signing up for courses other than English ones are also to be considered along with new rules for those with part-time jobs.

Mr Brown said he was concerned about foreign students on lower-qualification courses working part-time in jobs that “would be better filled by young, British workers”.

The planned changes to student visas were attacked by the Immigration Advisory Service’s head Keith Best. He said many British universities and colleges relied on half their income from fees paid by foreign students and could be “in very serious trouble” if that income stream was cut off. He told the BBC that Britain already faced stiff competition from universities in countries such as Australia, which were actively recruiting foreign students.

The changes announced by the prime minister come amid growing debate in Britain over its immigration levels while the country remains mired in recession. In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper before he gave his speech, Mr Brown said he understood people’s concerns about the impact of a rising population on employment, wages and housing costs. “I know people worry about whether immigration undermines their wages and the job prospects of their children and they also worry about whether they will get a decent home for their families,” he said. “They want to be assured that the system is tough and fair. “They want to be assured that newcomers to the country will accept their responsibilities … obey all the laws, speaking English is important, making a contribution.”

SOURCE

 

Houston sheriffs round up thousands of illegals

While Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix gets all the media attention for his crackdown on illegal immigrants, eight deputies in an unremarkable office at the Harris County Jail are posting similar numbers for deportation — and doing so without controversy. Working two per shift, the deputies refer roughly 1,000 suspected illegal immigrants to federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities every month, helping to make the Southern District of Texas by far the busiest in the nation for illegal-immigration prosecutions.

Since joining a federal program in August 2008 that trains local law authorities to enforce immigration law, the sheriff’s office has turned up high-level gang members, a suspect wanted for murder in Mexico, and illegal immigrants from countries around the world, Lt. Michael Lindsay said.

Harris County frequently refers more cases in a given month than any other local police agency in the program, he said. But what makes the Harris County program stand apart is a routine that insulates it from the accusations of profiling that have drawn prominent criticism to programs like that run by Sheriff Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona. Unlike in Maricopa County, Harris County authorities do not run street sweeps in search of illegal immigrants. But they do question everybody booked into the jail about their immigration status.

The Southern District of Texas is by far the busiest in the nation for illegal-immigration prosecutions referring roughly 1,000 suspected illegal immigrants to federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities every month. “We ask everybody, right off the bat, ‘Are you legally in the country?’ ” said Lt. Lindsay, who oversees the team that conducts the questioning. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from. It doesn’t matter your religion. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin. We make everybody go through it.”

Fingerprints from all inmates accused of felonies or serious misdemeanors are forwarded automatically to ICE’s data center, which can identify matches to prints from immigrants who have had prior dealings with law enforcement. Jail officers specially trained to determine immigration status can question and check the fingerprints of anyone suspected of a lesser crime. Those who are still suspected of illegal immigration are referred to ICE agents working on site who can ask the county to turn over inmates to the agency upon their release from jail.

More HERE

 

Australian Labor Party MP wants to stop New Zealand migration to Australia

There is virtually NO objection in Australia to “Pakeha” (white) immigrants from New Zealand but Australioa also gets a large number of Maori — who have high rates of criminality, child abuse and welfare dependency. All unspoken below, of course

New Zealand migration to Australia would be slashed under a federal Labor MP’s plan to curb our population growth. Outspoken Melbourne MP Kelvin Thomson believes the open-door policy for Kiwis made it impossible for Australia to control its numbers and maintain quality of life. “The trans-Tasman travel arrangement with New Zealand would need to be renegotiated to do away with the open door,” he said yesterday.

Australia’s migrant intake is at record levels, with almost a quarter of the influx due to New Zealanders who have an automatic right to live here, the Herald Sun reports.

Mr Thomson said there should be a cap on Kiwi arrivals that was linked to the number of permanent departures from Australia each year. “This would give Australia control over our net migration number, which we presently don’t have,” he said.

In a challenge to his leader, PM Kevin Rudd, Mr Thomson last night spelled out the details of his plan to deal with the population explosion. “Population is now a runaway train,” he said in a speech to a community group in North Melbourne. Mr Thomson called for annual net immigration to be slashed from more than 200,000 now to just 70,000. This would stabilise the population at 26 million by 2050, instead of the 35 million predicted by the Government.

Under the Thomson plan:

* SKILLED migrant numbers would be cut from 114,000 to 25,000 a year and refugees would rise by 6000 to 20,000.

* THE baby bonus would be abolished and family payments cut to lower the fertility rate.

Mr Thomson, who heads the Parliament’s joint standing committee on treaties, said his measures would stop Australia wrecking the environment and force governments to focus on education and training. “They would address the declining quality of life in our cities, the traffic congestion and the disappearing back yards and open spaces,” he said.

Monash University population expert Dr Bob Birrell said Mr Thomson’s proposals were refreshing and realistic. “Population policy is not made in heaven, it’s determined by government policy and, currently, Labor policy is to run record high migration,” he said.

Despite concern about urban congestion and water shortages, Mr Rudd recently said he was a “big Australia” man. “I make no apology for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing. I think it’s good … for our national security long term, it’s good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation,” he said.

SOURCE

 

Over 1,200 janitors fired in MN immigration audit

Just minor harassment for the illegals concerned. They probably returned to their jobs as direct hires

Roughly 1,250 Twin Cities janitors with suspect employment documents were fired from their jobs in October as their company carried out an audit prompted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration attorney said Monday. The janitors worked for ABM Industries Inc., a New-York based company that provides janitorial services nationwide.

John Keller, executive director of the nonprofit Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, said the firings happened in phases over the month of October. He said he first learned of the audit in early June, when his office received a call from the workers’ union. ABM had sent employees letters that said ICE was requiring workers to show additional documents proving they had legal status to work in the U.S., Keller said. “Federal law prescribes specific procedures by which employers conduct employment verification activities. Our policy is full compliance with the law,” Tony Mitchell, ABM Industries Vice President of Corporate Communications, said in a statement.

A copy of ABM’s letter to employees was posted Monday on the Web site of Minnesota Public Radio News, which first reported the firings. The letter said, “ICE has informed ABM that the documentation you previously provided to confirm your employment authorization in the United States does not satisfy the I-9 Form employment eligibility verification requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” The letter directed employees to bring in additional documents. The deadline was extended multiple times to give workers more time to provide the proper paperwork — with the final deadline in October.

“We don’t really know what initiated the investigation,” Keller said. “It sounds like it began under the previous administration in 2007.” The Obama administration has conducted similar audits on businesses. Immigration officials sent notices to more than 600 businesses in July of plans to audit their I-9 forms, which document employment eligibility. The businesses weren’t identified.

In the Twin Cities audit, Keller said, the vast majority of the 1,250 fired workers turned out to be undocumented. Keller said to his knowledge, no one was arrested or deported. Tim Counts, an ICE spokesman in Minnesota, said the agency doesn’t discuss ongoing enforcement activity. Keller said he hadn’t seen an audit of this scope before. “It’s usually a very limited review of a much, much smaller number of people,” he said.

SOURCE

 

Britain’s chief hypocrite admits ‘mistakes’ on immigration after BNP TV furore

He promised “British jobs for British workers” but it hasn’t happened

Gordon Brown will concede today that Labour has made mistakes on immigration as he defends the benefits of workers coming from overseas. The Prime Minister is expected to echo remarks by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, who said last week that some parts of Britain are disproportionately affected by an influx of foreigners.

Mr Brown will insist that Labour now has the right strategy for managing immigrants seeking work, even at a time of rising unemployment. He will acknowledge that mistakes have been made in the past. The speech will be seen as a response to the furore over the appearance on the BBC’s Question Time of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader. His fellow panellists were criticised for failing to defend the principle of migration.

There are suggestions that the party could come third in today’s by-election in Glasgow North East. Mr Brown’s remarks come days after the Tories accused the Government of trying to deceive voters over a plan to relax immigration rules.

Last month the Office for National Statistics suggested that the UK population would rise from 61 million today to 71 million in 2033. The Prime Minister is expected to promise better skills training for Britons at further education colleges in order to make them better able to beat competition from migrants.

He will highlight sectors, such as as the care industry, where he will acknowledge that more can be done to ensure jobs do not go to people from overseas. However, the approach risks reviving memories of the “British jobs for British workers” slogan in his speech to the 2007 Labour Party conference, which some colleagues suggested was inflammatory. European law prevents vacancies being reserved for Britons. Downing Street defended the speech later by insisting that he was referring to greater skills training rather than a dramatic new policy initiative.

The Prime Minister will point out that employers can recruit a migrant to a job that is not on the official list of shortage occupations only if they first go through the “resident labour market test”, showing that no qualified settled worker can fill the post.

From next year all jobs must be advertised to UK workers in job centres for four weeks rather than the current two before people from outside the EU can be hired.

Mr Johnson set out four key principles for debate last week, including that all immigrants should learn English. Distancing himself from his predecessors, he said ministers had ignored for “far too long” problems in the immigration system that led to huge backlogs of asylum seekers and foreign national prisoners.

Immigration will be the main cause of population growth over the next quarter of a century. Net migration is expected to add 180,000 to the population every year. When immigrants’ children are added, it is expected that immigration will account for 68 per cent of population growth in the United Kingdom.

SOURCE

 

Australia’s Leftist government capitulates to illegals

They obviously want to set a precedent to say that anyone can come to Australia if they really want to

FORMER immigration minister Philip Ruddock has warned the Rudd government’s offer of a special deal to get the Oceanic Viking 78 off the boat will create a “diabolical” precedent that will encourage more boats and more standoffs. And Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce has accused the government of “capitulation” in its offer to fast-track refugees’ claims simply to get the asylum-seekers off the boat before Parliament returns next week.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans confirmed the offer of a special deal for the protesters today, saying he was “hopeful” of a breakthrough and conceding it was not humane for them to stay on the boat indefinitely. The deal could deliver the Oceanic Viking asylum-seekers resettlement in Australia faster than if they had been taken to processing on Christmas Island, which aims to process claims within three months.

Mr Ruddock told The Australian Online that the government’s concessions and offer to fast-track processing and resettlement of the group after they refused to get off in Indonesia will feed perceptions that if you put the government “under duress you will get the outcome you are looking for”. “It’s a diabolical situation of the government’s own making. It’s going to feed expectations that if you put the government under duress you will get the outcome you were looking for,” Mr Ruddock told The Australian Online. “It becomes a clear incentive and it is a clear indication that if you put the government under duress you will get what you want.

“You can’t look at this issue in isolation. Of course people want to get them off the boat, I understand that. But we have always been faced with push factors in the past. What we have now is a series of pull factors that the government refuses to acknowledge exists. “What the Indonesians have been saying is code for, `what are you doing to encourage people to get on these boats?”’

Confirmation of the special deal for the asylum-seekers, who had warned they would rather die than get off the boat in Indonesia, comes just days after the Prime Minister would not negotiate with protesters threatening self harm. “When it comes to Australia’s border protection policy, let me be absolutely clear that that policy of ours, in the Australian national interest, will not be changed in response to any protests, any threats, any threats of harm, any threats of self harm,” Mr Rudd said on Monday.

Mr Ruddock said using force or calling in the Australian Army was clearly a difficult option when you were under the jurisdiction of foreign government. Mr Ruddock said while it would not be appropriate to turn the boat back to Sri Lanka without offering the refugees a safe harbour, he had an open mind to such a tactic if asylum-seekers refused to disembark in a safe port, as the Oceanic Viking 78 had refused to do so. “But if you have given people the opportunity to disembark somewhere they are safe and they have chosen not to that’s a different set of circumstances,” he said.

Senator Joyce said Mr Rudd had surrendered the sovereignty of Australia’s immigration policy. “It is in summary capitulation. He has lost the fight and they are on their way to Australia. Bonza, beauty, but pathetic,” he told The Australian Online.. “The tactic is simple. Mr Rudd wants them off the boat before parliament sits next week. Our immigration policy has become determined by Parliamentary sittings. “You can’t have people use an element of duress to determine your policy.”

SOURCE

Update:

THE 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking have been offered resettlement in Australia in as little as a month, as well as homes, jobs and social security payments once in the country, in an unsuccessful effort to end the boatpeople standoff.

But the Sri Lankan Tamils rejected the offer because it would have required them to wait in an Indonesian detention centre, The Australian reports.

The written offer, made by Australian Government negotiators to the Sri Lankans on Sunday and Monday, included “lessons in the Australian way of life”, help in tracking down family members and “assistance in . . . accommodation, medical help and advice, income benefits, English lessons and help with seeking employment”.

 

Ban Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka urges

OFFICIALS in Sri Lanka are urging Australia to ban the militant group the Tamil Tigers and strike a clear distinction between genuine refugees and economic opportunists. As Foreign Minister Stephen Smith flew to Singapore following talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, aimed at stopping the flow of boats, officials in Colombo told The Australian Sri Lankan people fleeing their country did not need protection.

Yesterday, Mr Smith announced Australia would provide $11 million in funding to Sri Lanka. Most of the money, $6m, will fund de-mining and rehabilitation in the nation’s north after decades of violent conflict, while the rest will go towards housing, food and resettlement services. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at increasing joint anti-people-smuggling efforts and intelligence-sharing.

The talks follow a surge this year in the number of asylum-seeker boats leaving Sri Lanka for Australia. Senior Australian envoy Brian McCarthy and people-smuggling ambassador Peter Woolcott will stay on in Colombo for a series of meetings aimed at hammering out the details of the agreements.

Yesterday, Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry secretary Romesh Jayasinghe said there was a need for a clear distinction between genuine refugees and those not in need of protection. “The fact is that the (1951 Refugee Convention) provides for refuge in instances when there is a well-founded fear,” Mr Jayasinghe said. “I would submit to you that there is no such situation in Sri Lanka.”

Mr Jayasinghe said the legal status of the separatist Tamil Tigers, or LTTE – whose defeat in May by the Sri Lankan government triggered the massive internal displacement Labor says is behind the surge in boats – was also a significant issue for Colombo. “The LTTE in the form it was known is no more,” Mr Jayasinghe said. “But there are sinister elements that are endeavouring to try to re-stoke the cinders of secessionism. It is necessary to be vigilant and prevent such attempts. “That’s the position that was presented quite clearly by our side to our Australian guests.”

At a press conference on Monday, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama explicitly linked the Tamil Tigers with people-smuggling: “Sri Lanka’s stand has always remained, that people-smuggling has been part of terrorist activities – it has previously been associated with LTTE activities.”

The Tamil Tigers are a banned terrorist organisation in the US and Europe but have never been proscribed in Australia.

Yesterday, the 78 Sri Lankans on board the Customs ship Oceanic Viking managed to communicate by hand signals that they remained unwilling to come ashore to a detention centre at Tanjung Pinang, on Indonesia’s Bintan island. As another delegation of Australian officials boarded the vessel in a bid to break the deadlock, some of the Sri Lankans made crossed forearm gestures to demonstrate there was still no deal. The major sticking point remains the issue of where the asylum-seekers would be held if they agreed to go ashore, with many having already spent several years in Indonesian detention centres.

Australian claims that the Indonesian side is considering a request to house the Sri Lankans in community facilities has been met with bewilderment by senior officials, on and off the record.

SOURCE