Immigration Mistakes Return to Haunt Us
31st October 2006
WHATEVER its rights or wrongs, unlawful migration to Australia over the past three decades has not had a deleterious outcome. Most unauthorised entrants who have attained visas have settled relatively well. This includes the Indochinese and Chinese intakes in the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and the Afghans and Iraqis. When immigration has led to poor social outcomes, this has resulted from the decisions of government - of both political persuasions.
The Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser became prime minister in late 1975, around the time of the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war between left-leaning Muslims and right-leaning Maronite Christians. Initially Fraser and his immigration and ethnic affairs minister, Michael MacKellar, were approached by Maronite Australians to allow some Lebanese Christians, who had close relatives in Australia, to settle here.
Fraser agreed. However, it was not long before the process got out of hand. As it turned out, very few Christians wanted to, or were able to, come to Australia at the time. Department officials sent to Lebanon to administer the program began granting visas mainly to Muslims - often on the flimsiest evidence they had close relatives or, indeed, any relative in Australia.
The program soon became known as "the Lebanese concession". The concession involved was that the Lebanese concerned would be admitted to Australia under the refugee intake, despite the fact that strictly speaking, they were not refugees. They were not fleeing persecution but rather, the impact of a civil war.
In her book Muslims in Australia, the Perth academic Nahid Kabir writes that the Lebanese were sometimes referred to as "quasi-refugees".
For a long time, Christian Lebanese have been successful migrants. Their descendants include the NSW Governor, Dr Marie Bashir, and the Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks. The unintended consequence of the Fraser government's decision was to allow, for the first time, numerous Lebanese Muslims to enter Australia. They were from rural areas, had little education and minimal English language skills.
As Kabir documents, the numbers grew. There were about 3500 Lebanese Muslims in Australia in 1971. Just two decades later, the number had increased to more than 25,000. The number grew quickly, due primarily to Australia's then family reunion policy. Most Muslim Lebanese migrants settled in south-western Sydney. The Shia gathered around the Arncliffe mosque and the Sunnis at the Lakemba mosque.
At the time some Maronite leaders warned the Fraser government, at the highest levels, that the decision to allow large numbers of poorly educated Lebanese Muslims into Australia would have unexpected and unwanted policy outcomes. They were dismissed with the "you-would-say-that-wouldn't-you?" refrain, meaning the Lebanese Christians opposed the Muslims simply on account of religion.
This was inaccurate and unfair. The Turks were the first large group of Muslims to settle here, arriving in the late 1960s when a Coalition government was headed by John Gorton and William McMahon. Despite the usual initial difficulties, the Turks settled well and soon found employment. The problem with Lebanese Muslims was that they were ill equipped to enter the workforce. Also, a number were fundamentalist Islamists. In time, some Shias became supporters of Hezbollah while some Sunnis became admirers of Osama bin Laden. The fundamentalists gave other Muslims a bad name, many of whom have had no connection with Lebanon or the Middle East or, indeed, Islamism.
When I recently spoke to Fraser about this, he said he had no memory of the Lebanese concession but added it was the sort of policy he might have supported. There is no mention of the Lebanese concession in biographies of Fraser. Some Coalition ministers and backbenchers at the time have a clearer recall than Fraser.
In 1982, during the final years of the Fraser government, the Egyptian-born Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly entered Australia on a tourist visa. He overstayed his visa and soon became prominent at the Lakemba mosque. In 1988 he told a Sydney University meeting that "the Jews try to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding".
Al Hilaly's language has not changed much in 20 years. In the past week The Australian has quoted the sheik making outrageous claims about women and supporting jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Australian troops are supporting the UN-sanctioned and Muslim-led governments in Baghdad and Kabul.
In The Adelaide Review in January 2003, Chris Hurford, the immigration minister from 1984 to 1987, said the decision to give al Hilaly permanent residence was done for political reasons: to appease some Australian Muslims. His view has not been challenged by al Hilaly's main Labor Party supporters at the time, including Paul Keating and Leo McLeay.
As Denis MacShane (the former British union official and Blair Government minister) said in London's Daily Telegraph last week, the 10,000 Muslims in his constituency "can only benefit from removing the dead hand of ideological Islamism - allowing their faith to be respected and their children to flourish".
The unfortunate fact is that in Australia and Britain, the best intentions of conservative and social democrat governments alike have resulted in bad policy.
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