Race and Immigration Down Under (Australia): Election-Year Politics

The N.Y. Times reports that Australia’s Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews on Wednesday said refugees from Africa — including many from Sudan’s conflict-torn Darfur region — were not integrating in Australia.  Andrews, whose government faces re-election before December, said Sudanese gangs were causing criminal problems and Canberra would now accept refugees only from conflict areas nearer home, such as Iraq and Myanmar, until at least July 2008.

Australian Human Rights Commissioner Graham Innes said there was no evidence Sudanese were causing more problems than other refugees.

This is not the first time that Austrlaian election-year politics has triggered tough-on-immigrants policies.  Prime Minister John Howard, 11 years in power, secured a come-from-behind victory in 2001 after ordering the military to block boats carrying asylum seekers and send them for refugee processing in nearby Pacific nations Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The hard-line policy became known as the Pacific Solution and critics accused Howard of using race-based politics to win the election.

KJ