A Refugee Policy for Today and Tomorrow

FOREWORD

Never in the history of mankind have so many people at the one time been on the move.  It is estimated that at the present, there are at least 100 million people in the process of leaving their usual domicile because of political, racial, social persecution or economic privation.

Australia is situated in a region of the world where this movement of people is perhaps at its greatest and, with a relatively uninhabited continent rich in resources, has, and will increasingly, become subject to pressures to accommodate many of these people.

The (then) Minister for Immigration, Mr. M.J.R. MacKellar, in a speech in November 1979, indicated that many western countries were in danger of decline because of a falling birthrate, and went on to say:  "The value of immigration in the broadest sense is that it augments population and the reservoir of skills and economic demands -- speedily".  Also, "We should certainly not regard refugee immigrants as long term burdens on the Australian community.  We should be conscious of the very real skills, energy, initiative and courage these people are going to contribute in sharing the future tasks of developing Australia".

Immigration, including the acceptance of refugees, is a major issue in Australia which is likely to become acute as the pressures inside Asia build up and overtures are made to Australians to accept more refugees.  Therefore we feel it is timely to publish a paper on the subject.

This paper examines in some detail the major issues relating to refugee immigration and is, like our other material, published to stimulate public awareness and debate on an important subject.

Alec Simpson
August 1990

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SUMMARY

In 1980-81 Australia will allow the entry of 21,500 persons with refugee or equivalent status.  14,000 will come from Indo-China;  and given the scale of the world refugee problem, our intake of Asians needing a new homeland may have to continue at this level till the end of the century.

# 1. BACKGROUND ISSUES.

Refugees and rich nations (p.3).  Rich countries like Australia limit immigration, mainly for economic reasons.  Would-be migrants from poor nations are only treated as refugees if they seem to have a genuine fear of persecution.

The Claims of the Indo-Chinese to admission (p.4).  In view of the economic incentive to migrate the motives of refugees from Indo-China were bound to be questioned.  Although the pressures causing refugees to leave south and north Vietnam have differed over the years, they amount to persecution in terms of the U.N. Convention on Refugees.

Should Hanoi be urged to stop departures? (p.5).  At the Geneva Conference of July 1979, the government of Vietnam was pressured to promise that it would keep seeking to cut back the outflow.  This has been good insofar as the numbers of forced departures and hence of deaths at sea have been reduced.  It has been bad so far as it has led to even harsher penalties on Vietnamese trying to leave without permission.

The immediate challenge (p.5).  The reduced outflow in 1979-80 and the large number of refugees accepted for resettlement during that period mean that from now on more Lao and Kampuchean refugees can be taken from Thailand.  The presence there of displaced Kampucheans who lack refugee status in the legal sense poses some dilemmas.

# 2.THE INDO-CHINESE IN AUSTRALIA

On reaching Australia, the refugees stay for a time in subsidised migrant centres.  They are eligible for 10 weeks' full time instruction in English, and can obtain small loans to help them rent accommodation elsewhere.

1. Employment (p.6).  Their efforts to get work have been remarkably successful.  However, almost all are forced to take jobs of a semi-skilled or unskilled type, despite the variety of occupations that they followed in their countries of origin.  Their reputation with employers is high, but like other non-British migrants they must often accept poor working conditions and quite inadequate provisions for industrial safety.

   Sometimes they take jobs that would not be filled otherwise.  Much of their wages is spent on goods produced and services rendered in Australia, so jobs are created that other Australian residents are willing to take.  Such situations appear at least as common as those where refugees compete for jobs with other applicants.

2. Where the refugees are living (p.7).  About three-quarters of the Indo-Chinese live in Sydney and Melbourne, where work is easiest to get.

Half of those in Sydney probably reside in the adjacent municipalities of Fairfield and Bankstown, close to the three migrant centres where almost all Indo-Chinese stay at first.  Continued inflow into this area could create fear in some residents that the character of their neighbourhood will change too quickly.  In Melbourne, several factors have caused wider dispersion.

3. Public opinion towards the refugees (p.8).  The current and proposed level of intake of Indo-Chinese has only been practicable because on this matter Australia's government has been prepared in recent years to lead opinion, not just follow it.  Polls now show that admission of the refugees has as many supporters as opponents.  The Labor Party, the ACTU and the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils have all pronounced in its favour.

#3. A REFUGEE POLICY

1. Which groups should we admit? (p.8).  Australia's links with Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe make it appropriate that our refugees should usually come from these regions, though refugees from elsewhere should also be admitted in appropriate circumstances.

   In the current situation in Indo-China, we should aim at ensuring that Indo-Chinese can come direct from their homelands as well as from the transit camps.

2. Which applicants should get preference? (p.9).  Preference should be given to relatives of Australian residents.  Large nuclear families should not be discriminated against.

3. Employment and type of employment (p.10).  We should aim at ensuring that as soon as possible the Indo-Chinese achieve an occupational pattern more like those of ethnic groups who have been here longer.  Inadequate knowledge of English is the main obstacle to using skills that were acquired previously and to acquiring new skills, formal and otherwise.

4. Location and relocation (p.12).  The migrant centres are now used close to capacity.  Residence there could be briefer if governmental and voluntary agencies would co-operate to provide work, accommodation (subsidised for a time), language classes and counselling elsewhere.  In Sydney these measures could be used to correct the present tendency to undue concentration.

   Settlement by Indo-Chinese in the Northern Territory seems unlikely.  Forced residence there would be undesirable and impracticable, while if positive incentives to settle in the north are to be offered, they should be available to all Australians.

5. Governmental and voluntary help (p.12).  Few Indo-Chinese in Australia are elderly, hence over the years they may pay more in taxes than they draw in benefits.  However, the Commonwealth may need to help State and local governments in meeting the extra outlays entailed by the refugees' presence.

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A refugee is defined in the United Nations Convention on Refugees as any person who,

"owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country ..." ⁽¹⁾

There are other people outside their country of nationality and fearing to return who lack refugee status, usually because their new country of residence has not sought it on their behalf.  Taking the two groups together, some nine or ten million persons are of concern to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ⁽²⁾ -- nor does this figure include others in their countries of nationality who fear persecution but are effectively unable to leave.

The number of persons who will seek new homes because of persecution seems unlikely to diminish before the end of the century.  The Australian Government, in a statement endorsed in substance by the Opposition, has announced that applicants who would not qualify otherwise may be admitted at discretion as part of our migrant intake if they are refugees, or in refugee-like situations. ⁽³⁾  21,500 will be let in during 1980-81, ⁽⁴⁾ of whom 14,000 will have come from Indo-China. ⁽⁵⁾  Almost all the 38,000 Indo-Chinese who were here at 30 June 1980 have come since the changes of regime that occurred during 1975, and two-thirds have arrived in the last two years.

The political outlook for much of Asia, along with pressures from outside Australia and our own growing sense of international responsibility, are likely to keep our intake of Asian refugees at or above the present level for some time to come.  A refugee policy involves deciding not only whom to admit, but also what measures to take when the refugees have reached Australia.  It will be argued in this paper that we should aim, consciously, at creating a society where difference of race does not correlate too closely with differences of job or income.

1. The paper starts with a brief examination of background issues: -
1. the dilemma over refugee policy facing all rich countries, including Australia;
2. the claims of the Indo-Chinese to admission;
3. whether Hanoi should be pressured to try to prevent departures;  and
4. the immediate refugee challenge.
2. Then it looks at the experience of Indo-Chinese in Australia: -
1. how they are employed;
2. where they live;  and
3. public opinion towards them.
3. Lastly, it makes some suggestions about a future refugee policy: -
1. which groups we should admit;
2. which persons should receive preference from within these groups;
3. how to widen the range of employment open to them;
4. how to influence where they live in Australia;  and
5. what responsibilities fall on governments and voluntary bodies.

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# 1. BACKGROUND ISSUES

(a) REFUGEES AND RICH NATIONS

Rich countries are not alone in acknowledging that in some circumstances they should give asylum to foreigners.  Certain countries of Africa have let in refugees in numbers that are truly impressive, given the smallness of the host population and its acute poverty.  Yet for rich countries the duty to help, though particularly obvious, creates a conflict.

Once free, the serfs of Europe were able to cross national boundaries as well as to move around in their countries of birth.  There was seldom enough migration to threaten any local interest, so few restrictions were imposed on movement, internationally or internally.

Against that background there developed the tradition of nonrefoulement, of not sending back migrants who had fled their countries because of political or religious persecution.  A problem for the twentieth century has been how to preserve this right in an era when international migration is severely controlled, mainly for economic reasons.

If a refugee is allowed to migrate from a poor country to a rich one, he usually raises his standard of living, especially if he lands a job and sometimes even if he goes on the dole.  There are likely, therefore, to be other would-be migrants, not in fear of persecution, who seek to move in the same direction.  If they are to be kept out while the refugee is allowed to come, the authorities must believe that he is influenced by other motives as well as economic ones -- or at least that his economic predicament is due to his being in one or more of the persecuted categories that the U.N. Convention mentions.

(b) THE CLAIMS OF THE INDO-CHINESE TO ADMISSION

Questions of motive were bound to be raised once the developed countries became willing to consider taking refugees, in large numbers, from countries that are less developed.  In Australia, the past practice of rigidly restricting non-white immigration, the persistence of some racial prejudice and the sympathy for Hanoi among some former opponents of the Vietnam involvement made it inevitable that there should be some questioning of the refugees' motives for leaving Vietnam.  (Anti-refugee elements assume, it seems, that the situation in Laos was identical -- or simply overlook it.  They can hardly claim it was identical in Kampuchea!)

Major decisions, like the decision to try to leave one's country without authority, are usually made for a number of reasons.  Enough is known about events in Vietnam to allow a plausible estimate of the relative importance of the motives for trying to leave the south or north during particular periods.

Immediately before the change of government in south Vietnam during April 1975, there was a mass evacuation of Vietnamese by the United States forces.  Other Vietnamese escaped in small boats.  In all, 130,000 resettled in the U.S.A. at this time.  Departures continued, but till the end of 1977 the rate was moderate.

During this period motives for leaving certainly included the fear of execution or imprisonment.  Estimates of the number of persons detained by the government vary from 50,000, the official figure, ⁽⁶⁾ to 150,000-200,000, according to the U.S. Department of State: ⁽⁷⁾  in addition, there were "pressures on the lives of middle-class people, especially those who, as Catholics, opposed Communism, or who were in private business or the professions ..." ⁽⁸⁾  It has been pointed out, on the other hand, that the new rulers of the south needed to reverse a situation where 65% of the population were in cities and towns, as against 15% in the early 1960s.  So long as departure for the New Economic Zones was voluntary, it would only have involved persecution in the U.N. sense if some of those who chose to stay in towns suffered exceptional hardships because of their class or political backgrounds.  Even compulsion to work in the zones would only have been "persecution" if it were not applied impartially.

On 21 March 1978 the new government took the extreme step of outlawing all business operations by "bourgeois" elements, whether Vietnamese citizens or not. ⁽⁹⁾  "In Ho Chi Minh City alone, perhaps 30,000 shops and businesses were closed and their contents confiscated." ⁽¹⁰⁾  Since the majority of the south's 1.4 million Chinese were in trade, the measure affected them greatly, as did the introduction of a single currency for the whole country, which effectively dispossessed hoarders.  Also, the accelerated socialisation of agriculture hit the middlemen, who were mainly Chinese.

These measures must be seen in conjunction with a change of policy from trying to stop departures to allowing it in return for fees in the ranges $US 2400-3000 for adults and $US 1200-1500 for children.  Mr. Fraser's suggestion that this measure would produce $A200m.-250m.  a year ⁽¹¹⁾ is moderate compared with the Hong Kong Government's estimate of $A3000m. as the total potential yield. ⁽¹²⁾  Hanoi was clearly seeking to obtain the wealth of the Chinese in the south and to get rid of them.  Certainly after April 1978 they formed a large part of the outflow, which was to rise sharply during that year and again towards the middle of 1979.

In the north, the private sector, though Chinese-dominated, was small.  Many of the 300,000 ethnic Chinese had transferred into socialised industries.  They probably started to cross into China in 1977, though there is little evidence of anti-Chinese measures until late in that year.

In February 1979 war broke out with China.  In March, Chinese schools were closed;  later, Chinese were told to move inland and farm, or else go abroad.  The fee payable was lower than in the south, perhaps because the northern Chinese were less prosperous, perhaps because the authorities, for security reasons, were particularly anxious to see them go.

It may also be true, as Hanoi alleged, that agents of the Chinese government had spread rumours of coming persecution.  Both governments at least agree that the Chinese who left did so in genuine fear. ⁽¹³⁾  By June 1979 nearly 200,000 had gone to China ⁽¹⁴⁾ and a number to Hong Kong.

By this date, also, there were about 200,000 refugees in the transit camps of Thailand, mainly from Laos and Kampuchea.  At the end of 1977 the longsuffering Thai government returned 42,000 Kampucheans to their homeland, sometimes to their deaths.  It threatened to repatriate another 40,000, ⁽¹⁵⁾  as well as more than 100,000 Lao. ⁽¹⁶⁾  It also began sending back most of the refugees who arrived by boat from Vietnam.

In any case, fear of Thai pirates was causing more boat refugees to head for Malaysia, ⁽¹⁷⁾ where till late 1978 they could usually land without much trouble.  By June of the following year Malaysia was sending boats back to sea and intensifying its coastal blockade to prevent the occupants landing.  Its Deputy Prime Minister threatened that all the country's 76,000 refugees from Indo-China would be treated similarly "as fast as boats could be built to carry them." ⁽¹⁸⁾  The governments of Thailand and Malaysia both blamed their actions on the West's failure to take more refugees on a permanent or even a temporary basis. ⁽¹⁹⁾

Malaysia explained the outflow as a deliberate attempt by Hanoi to destabilise the region. ⁽²⁰⁾  So did the Prime Minister of Singapore, which would not admit refugees, even temporarily, unless other countries had promised to take them;  he saw a parallel in the strategic use of refugee influxes during the fighting in Vietnam and Cambodia. ⁽²¹⁾  Indonesia's interpretation was less Ptolemaic:  her Vice-President thought there was "probably an element of intended destabilisation", ⁽²²⁾ but her Foreign Minister challenged the view that the Vietnamese government encouraged the departures.  Both Indonesians shared a concern that "other countries may follow suit with similar policies directed at minorities or political dissidents." ⁽²³⁾  In framing a refugee policy for Australia, it would be well to keep in mind Indonesia's fear of China and her consequent fear of Chinese being forced on to her from the mainland.

(c) SHOULD HANOI BE URGED TO STOP DEPARTURES?

As far back as December 1978 the British Labour Government said that Hanoi should try to reduce or control the outflow of refugees. ⁽²⁴⁾  Six months later Mrs Thatcher's Government actually let Hanoi know that a large ship had arrived off the Vietnamese coast to take refugees away. ⁽²⁵⁾  Following a request from China and in line with earlier efforts by the United States and a subsequent move by the Philippines, Mr. Peacock called for "an international approach to the Soviet Union to pressure Vietnam to stop the flow of refugees." ⁽²⁶⁾

Bearing in mind that Hanoi has at least one motive for stopping unauthorised departures, viz. to prevent the loss of boats, it is not surprising that at the Geneva Conference late in July 1979, it should have authorised the U.N. Secretary-General to say that "for a reasonable period of time it will make every effort to stop illegal departures." ⁽²⁷⁾  A reduction has in fact occurred, despite some increase in April and May 1980 ⁽²⁸⁾ when weather conditions for small boats became less dangerous.

Should we welcome this outcome?  Yes, so far as the number of forced departures has been reduced.  Relief agency officials believe that the later arrivals include a much higher proportion of ethnic Vietnamese, all genuine escapers. ⁽²⁹⁾  Yes, also, to the extent that fewer departures, either forced or voluntary, mean fewer rapes, drownings and murders at sea.  As Michael Richardson has argued, the "experienced Western official" who put the death rate for Vietnamese leaving in small boats at 10-15% is more likely to be right than those who put the proportion at half; ⁽³⁰⁾  even so, it is shockingly high.

Yet the answer to the question whether the fall in departures is welcome must surely be NO so far as Hanoi has been led to impose even harsher penalties on Vietnamese who try to leave without permission.  There have been public warnings that people caught at sea attempting to escape will be shot at sight. ⁽³¹⁾  The leader of a delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives said he had heard of 4,000 prosecutions "in recent weeks" and added that there had been some executions. ⁽³²⁾  Two incidents in which dozens of refugees appear to have drowned led Norway's Government not to renew certain aid projects. ⁽³³⁾  Closer surveillance of coastal waters and the patrolling of populated shoreline areas increase the proportion of departures that take place on small vessels, which as well as being less seaworthy are also less likely to be spotted by potential rescuers. ⁽³⁴⁾

Faced with a difficult choice, the Western democracies, being anxious to limit their own refugee intake, are tempted to plump too heavily for forcible restriction of emigration -- by others.  They believe that ships should pick up survivors.  They do not return refugees to Communist countries.  But they are prepared to put pressure on the government of Vietnam to check departures, irrespective of the methods that will, they know, be used.

Hanoi must have been genuinely bewildered when, during the Geneva Conference, the U.S. Seventh Fleet and reconnaissance aircraft started searching for refugee boats in the South China sea.  Vietnam's Foreign Ministry said the American move was "apparently aimed at encouraging and inciting the illegal departure of Vietnamese". ⁽³⁵⁾  Western officials and South East Asian governments also believe that it had this effect.  Yet the U.S. Navy could claim in October that more than 800 lives had been saved. ⁽³⁶⁾  Any such action should be unobtrusive, like the patrolling of an area "about 100 miles" from Vietnam by a West German mercy ship which is trying to ensure that refugees will not have to run the pirate gauntlet further south. ⁽³⁷⁾

Since similar dilemmas are likely to face the West, including Australia, in future, it is worth emphasising that the "solution" found at Geneva parallels that of the British authorities in Hong Kong to the problem of illegal entry from China.  Partly because the British do not impose brutal penalties, the inflow as reflected in annual figures for arrests rose from 800 (1976), 1800 (1977) and 8550 (1978) to 89,000 (1979). ⁽³⁸⁾  Following earlier requests, Britain induced the Chinese Premier, when he was its guest, to promise to stop Chinese from crossing. ⁽³⁹⁾  It must therefore take the main responsibility for the harsher penalties, including long gaol sentences, which have been in force since 8 January 1980 in the neighbouring Guangdong province. ⁽⁴⁰⁾  It even bears a little responsibility for the actions of Chinese soldiers who have been seen ⁽⁴¹⁾ setting trained dogs on would-be migrants who had been captured and handcuffed.

(d) THE IMMEDIATE CHALLENGE

The countries represented at the Geneva Conference offered to take 280,000 more refugees by 30 June 1980. ⁽⁴²⁾  By 31 May 1980 this solid gesture, and the fall in the outflow from Vietnam, had cut the numbers held in transit camps and registered with the UNHCR to 137,938 in Thailand, 39,757 in Hong Kong, 23,184 in Malaysia and 11,465 in Indonesia. ⁽⁴³⁾  To these, however, must be added 400,000-600,000 Kampucheans now in camps straddling the Thai border.  They lack refugee status since the UNHCR can only confer it if the country of first asylum asks it to, and Thailand has made no such request.

Here as so often, the motives of those who have left their country of nationality differ greatly, and may be complex.  The more recent arrivals include supporters of the Khmer Rouge, and a survey of several hundred refugees by the Bangkok Post is said to have shown only 18% as wanting to settle in a third country. ⁽⁴⁴⁾  But there are also escapees from fighting and starvation who are as non-political as anyone can be.  There would be precedents for the United Nations asking its High Commissioner to treat them as refugees.

Australia's present policy is to accept Kampucheans from Thailand, whether or not they are refugees in the legal sense, if they have relatives in Australia.  It gives next priority to refugees registered with UNHCR, and as some have in camps for years, this is not unreasonable.

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# 2 THE INDO-CHINESE IN AUSTRALIA

At present almost all refugees from Indo-China go on arrival to what used to be called hostels and are now called migrant centres.  These are operated by Commonwealth Accommodation and Catering Services Ltd., a statutory corporation which is partly subsidised. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

The refugees stay on average for about 22 weeks. ⁽⁴⁶⁾  Housing officers help them find accommodation elsewhere.  Small loans which can never exceed $600, however large the family, are offered by voluntary organisations drawing on a rotating fund provided by the Commonwealth.  The idea is to assist with the initial outlays required to rent a home, e.g. bond money.  (As a Minister has pointed out, this saves taxpayers' money, since it shortens the time for which they occupy subsidised accommodation.) ⁽⁴⁷⁾

All refugees above school age are eligible for ten weeks' full time instruction in English.  During this period they receive an Education Allowance calculated on the same basis as unemployment benefits and thus taking into account the number of their dependants.  Those not studying full time are eligible for unemployment benefits, subject to the usual tests.

For many years the Commonwealth Employment Service has run an office at each migrant centre.  Refugees are guided mainly to work in the locality, a practice which has influenced the job locale not only of refugees who are helped directly but also of the larger number who get jobs through acquaintances. ⁽⁴⁸⁾  The latter's English is generally better than that of newcomers and the employer knows that as need arises they can act as intermediaries.  Often the Indo-Chinese seek work in groups, benefiting legitimately from the impression made by the best English-speaker among them.

(a) EMPLOYMENT

The central fact about the job prospects of the Indo-Chinese is that few of those coming to Australia have skills that are immediately marketable here.  This is despite the fact that on the self-assessment of a sample who arrived during the first half of 1978, 8.9% used to be professional, 7.8% held administrative or clerical jobs, 17.4% were involved in retailing, 17.1% were farmers or fishermen and only 3.3% classed themselves as process workers or unskilled. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

There are no overall figures for Indo-Chinese employment in Australia, but Jolley and his colleagues found that 1365 Indo-Chinese identified in 27 Melbourne firms "were in the main employed in unskilled process line and assembly jobs;  however in surveyed clothing firms females were being trained as machinists ..." ⁽⁵⁰⁾  An inquiry on behalf of the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission from some 100 Vietnamese, 50 Lao and 50 Kampucheans showed that of those at work 84% were in semi-skilled or unskilled employment. ⁽⁵¹⁾  (The sample was not random and may have slightly overstated the unskilled component insofar as Vietnamese were represented less than proportionately to their number in N.S.W.).

In the United States a random sample of Indo-Chinese (approached, however, by telephone and therefore suspect as a sample) included 67.6% with a former white collar background.  Of these only 60.6% were still in semi-skilled or unskilled employment two years after settlement, ⁽⁵²⁾ which contrasts with the Australian position.  However, more recent arrivals in the United States have less education and poorer job skills.

A later survey by Australia's Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs covered a sample of Indo-Chinese who arrived during the calendar year 1978.  Early in 1979 less than 6% of the breadwinners were unemployed -- a lower percentage than among all Australian breadwinners at that date, and appreciably lower than in most other migrant groups. ⁽⁵³⁾  This result would be due partly to the Indo-Chinese including a relatively high proportion of young adults, as distinct from adolescents and the middle-aged, both of which groups find it difficult to obtain new jobs at present.  For the rest, it must have been due chiefly to the refugees' willingness to accept jobs that are hard to fill, like shiftwork on the Melbourne trams, and to hold on to jobs with a traditionally high turnover, like work on the assembly lines of motor vehicle plants.

Their reputation with employers is excellent:  "they work exceptionally hard and learn as fast as they can." ⁽⁵⁴⁾  "They cannot work in the hollows below the assembly line because they are not tall enough -- and they do not have the size to work where heavy objects have to be manhandled." ⁽⁵⁵⁾  "In some plants, the machinery has been built for large-framed Europeans and simply cannot be handled by the average, slightly-built Vietnamese." ⁽⁵⁶⁾  But if they can obtain and retain jobs where such machinery is used, they are likely to do so, despite the possible harm to their health in the long run.

Having arrived only recently in Australia, the Indo-Chinese are more willing than established Australians to shift to suburbs where both husband and wife, if working outside the home, are near their places of employment.  Married Indo-Chinese women might therefore be expected to seek jobs for which other women, who would have to travel long distances, do not compete.

The labour market on which the refugees impinge has been much affected by the extensive non-British element in immigration since the forties.  It is rare for non-British migrants to be paid less than their award entitlements. ⁽⁵⁷⁾  But even in Australia, where the proportion of trade unionists is unusually high by world standards and where the protection of awards extends to non-members of unions, the terms of awards are greatly influenced by supply and demand.  Many of the migrants took semi-skilled and unskilled employment, and it is likely that because of immigration, the incomes of less skilled Australians are lower, relative to other incomes, than they would have been otherwise.  Whether one thinks that the less skilled are also worse off depends on one's opinion as to whether immigration has substantially raised per capita income overall.

What matters more in the present connection is the effect of immigration on physical conditions in the less skilled jobs so often performed by non-British workers.  These conditions are not regulated adequately by union, State or Commonwealth authorities.  Particularly serious has been the neglect of industrial safety.  "Occupational health is a problem whose size in the manufacturing sector of Australian industry has yet to be exposed. ⁽⁵⁸⁾  Workers whose mother tongue is not English are in special danger due to the failure to provide proper safety warnings either in languages other than English or through non-verbal signs.

That distasteful and dangerous work in Australia should be largely undertaken by non-British migrants is parallel to the situation in other industrialised countries, ⁽⁵⁹⁾ where "guest workers" are recruited on a temporary basis from poorer economies nearby.  For Australia, the main white outpost near South East Asia, this would be quite the worst solution imaginable, even if unemployment here were not so high.  The absence of such a scheme means, however, that there are jobs in Australia which would not get filled or stay filled if it were not for the presence of refugees, unless they were replaced by other migrants with similar attitudes.

One implication of this situation is not widely appreciated.  When refugees who hold jobs of this kind are paid, they spend much of their wages on goods and services provided by other Australian residents.  Moreover, the prospect of refugees or other migrants coming here means that future markets in Australia are likely to be larger than they otherwise would be, which increases the attractiveness of investing in industries that produce wholly or partly for the home market.  In both ways jobs are created, including jobs that Australians who are not refugees are willing to take.  This particular argument for letting in refugees does not apply where refugees obtain jobs for which non-refugees compete.  But as yet there is no evidence that such situations preponderate.

It remains a matter for deep regret that so many of the Indo-Chinese in Australia should have to take semi-skilled or unskilled employment.  A student of American immigration has pointed out that the refugees from Nazism or from 1956 Hungary who were to rise in the occupational scale began to move upwards within a few years of arrival.  Unlike those refugees the Indo-Chinese are not coming on the eve of the kind of economic stimulus provided by the Second World War, or at a time of high employment.  Their skills are less transferable and there are few established members of their own ethnic communities to help them.  "It is too early to predict how well the Vietnamese refugees will succeed in their occupational adjustment." ⁽⁶⁰⁾

(b) WHERE THE REFUGEES ARE LIVING

There are no figures for where the Indo-Chinese settle in Australia, only for those passing through the various migrant centres, though there are data as to where some of them live next.  Informal evidence exists of movement to the east from Adelaide and Perth, where refugees find jobs hardest to get, and of some movement south from Brisbane, where they find jobs more difficult to obtain than in Sydney or Melbourne.  In the last two cities the Indo-Chinese can still secure employment, though if middle-aged or teen-aged, they face the same difficulties as other job seekers in these age groups.  At a guess, about 40% of the Indo-Chinese now live in Sydney, perhaps 35% in Melbourne and less than 10% in Brisbane, with smaller percentages in Adelaide, Perth and Wollongong -- the six cities where migrant centres are located.

Some refugees have settled in other towns, a process encouraged by the Community Refugee Settlement Scheme, through which organisations and individuals have found initial accommodation, and often helped to arrange employment, for 765 refugees since 1979. ⁽⁶¹⁾  Only a few families work on farms.

The relative ease with which Indo-Chinese have found jobs in the mainland state capitals corresponds closely to the differences in overall employment rates between these cities ⁽⁶²⁾ -- just as the movement to Sydney is part of a wider trend whereby it is now gaining population through internal migration. ⁽⁶³⁾  The other reason why three-quarters of the Indo-Chinese live in Sydney and Melbourne is the sheer extent of manufacturing in each city, with the result that each offers a large absolute number of jobs of the kind that refugees have been relatively willing to take.  Unfortunately unfilled jobs, or jobs with a high turnover, will not necessarily increase as fast as the jobs are filled, especially if the recession continues and workers other than refugees become less particular as to which jobs they will take and hold on to. ⁽⁶⁴⁾

Structural Change.  With so many refugees employed in secondary Industry, what of their employment prospects if Australia produces fewer of those goods than it can more appropriately import?

Several studies suggest that in the long term the restructuring that would follow a lowering of tariffs (the effect of which would be partly offset by the consequent weakening of the Australian dollar) or a big rise in the value of exports of minerals and coal (which would strengthen the Australian dollar and thus hurt the import-competing industries) would in neither case greatly reduce the size of the secondary sector. ⁽⁶⁵⁾  We would produce different manufactures rather than fewer.  The concentration of our manufacturing in the mainland state capitals, each of which now supports a variety of industries, will also ease the process of adjustment.  Help will be needed, particularly in country towns, which have never offered much in the way of jobs for women;  but few refugees are settling in these towns, nor should they be encouraged to do so.

Location by Suburbs.  That migrants are helped during their first years in a new country by living close to people with similar origins has ceased to be a matter for argument.  Some concentration is desirable, and quite harmless.  But no ethnic community should build up so quickly in one part of a city that the present residents see their neighbourhood changing overnight with no end to the process in sight.  That was precisely the situation in areas of Britain till 1962, when the scale of immigration from elsewhere in the British Commonwealth was regulated, at last.

There is much less basis for similar fears anywhere in Australia.  Yet circumstances are producing a degree of concentration in two adjacent Sydney municipalities that calls, not for alarm, but for making a start with mild corrective action.

The three migrant centres in Sydney to which almost all Indo-Chinese go initially are at Villawood, East Hammondville and Cabramatta -- suburbs fairly close to each other in the western industrial area.  Of Indo-Chinese who moved out of these centres in the period June 1978-August 1979 the municipality of Fairfield received 32.4%, while 14.0% moved to Bankstown, which adjoins it to the east. ⁽⁶⁶⁾  There is also evidence of Indo-Chinese coming into Fairfield from elsewhere, which would support the claim in a report by the municipality that, counting in refugees in the nearby migrant centre at Villawood, it contains 14.5% of all Indo-Chinese in Australia. ⁽⁶⁷⁾  The area is one where many refugees would choose to live anyway, since their jobs are there or close by, ⁽⁶⁸⁾ and a good deal of apartment housing is available.

In Melbourne the four centres where Indo-Chinese go initially are at Altona and Maribyrnong (western suburbs), Nunawading (to the north) and Spring Vale (to the east).  Moreover, the motor vehicle industry, which seems to employ even more Indo-Chinese in Melbourne than in Sydney, is based on southern, eastern, northern and inner suburbs.  Lastly, Housing Commission flats are more readily available than in Sydney.  The outcome is that though refugees have concentrated mildly near each of the centres, there are also a number in Kensington, North Melbourne, Richmond and Fitzroy-Collingwood, while the main area of concentration appears to be Footscray. ⁽⁶⁹⁾

The Indo-Chinese have been highly successful in overcoming the initial prejudices of some landlords and estate agents.  Refugees with large families (in the nuclear sense) may find it hard to rent accommodation because of fear of wear and tear from numerous children, but Housing Commission or Trust accommodation -- including high rise flats, which are not particularly popular with Australians -- is sometimes available.

(c) PUBLIC OPINION TOWARDS THE REFUGEES

For an Australian Government to announce in an election year that its current annual target figure for admission of Indo-Chinese will remain at 14,000 was only practicable for two reasons.

First, on this matter it has in recent years led rather than followed opinion.

Secondly, the percentage of Australians wanting to maintain or increase the current intake has risen from 23-30% (according to two surveys published in June-July 1979) ⁽⁷⁰⁾ to 47% (according to polls conducted in July and September 1979, ⁽⁷¹⁾ the second after the intake had been raised to 14,000).  Significantly, in the September poll as many as 68% said they would welcome individual Vietnamese settling in their area.  This is consistent with the accounts given by Indo-Chinese interviewed on behalf of the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission Task Force of good or satisfactory links with almost all their workmates (and neighbours, if they were in communication) and of their children's happy relations with both teachers and fellow pupils. ⁽⁷²⁾

In November 1979, the Victorian State Council of the Liberal Party called for an increase in the number of Indo-Chinese who were resettled annually to 24.000. ⁽⁷³⁾  There was no adverse public reaction.  The Federal Leader of the Labor Party had helped the Government by saying in August that on balance, Australia's record on the admission of Asians was "quite good, and we should continue to improve it." ⁽⁷⁴⁾ In October Dr. Cass, spokesman on immigration and ethnic affairs, stated that a Labor Government "would do no less in taking its share of Vietnamese refugees than the Liberal Government was doing" and went on to describe Australia's refugee intake over the past three years as "chickenfeed". ⁽⁷⁵⁾

The ACTU Congress has asked for an immigration policy which would give special consideration to refugees and the families of resident Australians. ⁽⁷⁶⁾  Most significantly of all, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia, shortly before a decision by the Government about the number of Indo-Chinese refugees to be admitted in 1979-80, had the generosity to ask for an increased intake, ⁽⁷⁷⁾ even though refugees and the relatives of residents are mostly distinct categories that compete for entry.

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# 3. A REFUGEE POLICY

(a) WHICH GROUPS SHOULD WE ADMIT?

The number of refugees (in terms of the U.N. Convention), of other displaced persons and of persecuted people anxious to leave their homelands is huge -- so huge that countries of resettlement will always face some painful choices between eligible applicants, since there is a limit to the numbers they are willing to accept.

In these circumstances there is little point in a country like Australia offering to take symbolic handfuls of all groups of refugees needing resettlement.  Host countries should specialise, if only to reduce the additional per capita cost of translation, interpretation and language instruction imposed by the presence of even one extra group with its own language.  There would still be not the slightest chance of any one refugee community becoming so large as to dominate any sector of Australian life.

At present, migrants accepted as refugees or near-refugees come almost wholly from Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  This is appropriate, given our links with these parts of the world and the numbers there with "well-founded fears" of being persecuted.  However, in some circumstances Latin Americans and black, part-white and white Africans may also have strong claims to enter. ⁽⁷⁸⁾  Since it is vital for refugee admission to have all-party support, the government should be willing to accept genuine applicants of all shades of the political spectrum, including at the present time Chileans, Argentinians and Uruguayans.

Of our Indo-Chinese, 85% are Vietnamese, 11% Lao and 4% Kampucheans. ⁽⁷⁹⁾  The balance we have struck is due partly to our criteria for choosing individuals and families, and partly to the places of first asylum from which refugees have applied.  Among those who at one time were in Thailand, more of the Vietnamese proportionately had white collar backgrounds, hence Australia and other countries of resettlement included a relatively high proportion in their intake from Thailand.

In addition, almost all refugees who obtained first asylum in Malaysia and Indonesia were Vietnamese.  Australia was particularly willing to take refugees from these two countries, because of our special wish to be on good terms with them and because they are the countries from which some refugees have come on to Australia without prior permission.  Australia's reputed ability to absorb migrants means that no other country will take such refugees off our hands, hence our duty morally and under the U.N. Convention to give them first asylum becomes in practice a duty to offer permanent settlement.

In the weeks preceding the 1977 election, the arrival of uninvited Asians in numbers to which there was no obvious limit triggered off an outcry that could have endangered the whole programme of refugee acceptance.  To be sure, only 2067 have arrived in this way, ⁽⁸⁰⁾ but that is partly because our preference for refugees from Malaysia and Indonesia made those countries less willing to push back new arrivals who might then have descended on Australia.  It also made the refugees with temporary asylum in either country less willing to sail for Australia without authority.  Official priorities must be deemed to have been justified by the fact that in the last two years only 9 boats have arrived without permission, compared to 37 in the previous twelve months.

Now that the number of refugees awaiting resettlement from either Malaysia or Indonesia has fallen, Australia can turn to the larger and longer backlog in Thailand.  In due course we will have to consider the claims of Kampucheans there without refugee status, whether or not they have relatives in Australia, for there is virtually no chance of the Heng Samrin regime agreeing to voluntary repatriation.  True, a number are known supporters of the Khmer Rouge, but if they are willing to leave at all, it may be possible to induce China to take its share.

Where particularly serious persecution, or family ties with Australian residents, create special claims to admission, we should accept Indo-Chinese direct from their homelands.  The situation in the Communist countries of Asia differs from that in Europe in the 1950s and 60s, when Communist governments tried to keep all their people, which meant that the democracies could easily find room for the few who escaped.  The governments of Indo-China -- and of China, for that matter -- know that the Western democracies will not admit all applicants to immigrate.  They realise that while the willingness of boat refugees to risk their lives in order to get away reflects seriously on the Communist regimes, the numbers wanting to leave in safety scarcely do so;  for no regime could be expected to eliminate quickly the gap between living standards in Communist Asia and in the West.  The Communist governments also seem to realise the disadvantages of overpopulation.  For all these reasons they will see the emigration of some of their people as positively helpful, as well as a bargaining card.

The countries of resettlement, for their part, will be strongly tempted to maintain their present policy of seeking the help of Communist governments in limiting the outflow.  This is not wrong, provided some of their nationals are allowed to leave and provided we can influence who is permitted to do so.

(b) WHICH APPLICANTS SHOULD GET PREFERENCE?

The Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs has named three criteria for selecting individual refugees:

• reunion of immediate families, which accounts for "a large share" of the refugee intake;
• "previous association with Australia" or qualities or qualifications showing ready adaptability to the Australian environment;  or
• forming part of "the hard core" -- "those who have already been rejected for resettlement and who have no prospect of a new home elsewhere." ⁽⁸¹⁾

Since so many Indo-Chinese who reached Australia are forced to take less skilled jobs, despite the nature of their previous work, too much weight should not be given to "qualifications".  However, Australia has every right to a share of such well-qualified applicants as may still be available.

There is no ground for preferring small nuclear families to large ones.  Indeed, so far as our intake of refugees is limited by the fear that refugees will sometimes obtain jobs at the expense of other Australians, we should try to reduce the proportion of job-seekers by giving large families preference.

To have relatives in Australia enhances the chance of admission for a non-refugee. ⁽⁸²⁾  Where it affects the selection of refugees, the result can be, e.g., that refugee brothers of Australian residents are enabled to come here, even though the non-refugee brothers of other residents are unable to do so.  However, the chance of a non-refugee rejoining his relatives is not affected by how we choose between refugees, even if the family links of some refugees are less close than his own.

Australia decided last year to admit unattached minors, provided they were accompanying other relatives.  Similar decisions were made at the time by the U.S.A. and Canada, thus effectively overcoming the problem of unaccompanied minors being left alone in refugee camps. ⁽⁸³⁾  The possibility of letting others in, if accompanied by an adult non-relative, should be sympathetically considered.

A problem when family reunion is made a ground for admission is that on some previous occasion the refugee may have made mistaken statements concerning relatives in or outside their country of origin.  (Sponsors at the Australian end may also give mistaken information and in good faith, as when someone honestly thought to be a sister turns out to be a half-sister.)  Wrong statements about age are likewise not uncommon.  It is important that in all these cases there should be opportunities for voluntary correction before and after the refugee reaches Australia. ⁽⁸⁴⁾  The authorities may even have a legal duty to accept such corrections where statutory entitlements are concerned.  In other contexts, correction should be a privilege, not a right, lest Pandora's box be opened too wide.

Once extended families are split, the evil can be compounded by some countries' practice of not admitting refugees who have turned down offers to go elsewhere.  If a brother leaves a Thai camp for the United States and his sister, anxious to join him, receives and refuses an offer to come to Australia, she becomes ineligible ever to migrate to the USA.  Yet the only reason why one relative was taken and not another may have been that they were interviewed on different dates.  The Australian Government should liaise with the American authorities so as to avoid the pointless hardship which this outcome can cause.

We should also continue to take the advice of Poul Harding, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, that children in Thai camps should not be adopted from abroad "so long as their family situation cannot be satisfactorily determined", and that if a child is removed from Thailand, governments should "provide firm assurances in advance that the child will be returned to the parents or family members whenever they are located."  As this would often be impracticable or unthinkable, ⁽⁸⁵⁾ Mr. Harding has also asked for assurances that governments will promptly accept the child's remaining family members once they have been located and have expressed a wish to rejoin the child. ⁽⁸⁶⁾  Fostering, not adoption, is the proper name for arrangements made subject to these conditions.

(c) EMPLOYMENT AND TYPE OF EMPLOYMENT

This brings us to the problems of refugee settlement.

Any group entering Australia at the rate of 14,000 a year may meet with difficulties if the inflow continues for ten years -- difficulties that would be minor if it tapered off after a year or so.  As things stand, a long term influx of Indo-Chinese or other Asian refugees will be a cause for some concern if

1. too high a proportion are forced to seek semi-skilled or unskilled employment;
2. refugees with prior training, who can seldom use it in Australia without further training, and may be too tired after hard manual labour to engage in part-time study, are also too poor (especially those who have large families) to be able to save enough to study full time;
3. upward mobility is therefore slow;  and
4. Australia becomes a country where whites preponderate overwhelmingly in the top and middle occupations, while the lower range is shared by whites and a significant number of Asians.

There is also a chance that less skilled work may become harder to get.  As a result incoming Asians, despite their industry and tenacity, may less often be able to find work at all.

Lastly, in Sydney low earnings (or, alternatively, unemployment benefits), along with the high level of rents and the largely fortuitous location of the three migrant centres to which Indo-Chinese are directed, may lead over the years to a degree of concentration in one or two municipalities that some residents will see as a threat.

If tension develops as an outcome of any one of these situations, it will be blamed on racial prejudice.  The charge will be partly true, yet any comparably large intake of migrants, lacking marketable skills and finding communication acutely difficult, would also face problems and could also meet with resentment if they arrived in Australia at a time of economic difficulty.

It must be made possible for enough Indo-Chinese and their Australian-born children to move up the economic ladder far enough and fast enough to create soon an occupational pattern less dissimilar to those of migrant groups who have been here longer.

The problem of English.  This outcome must be worked for without departing from the basic principle that after their first months here, when some special help is warranted, refugees should be treated similarly to other migrants whose mother tongue is not English.  The problem can be attacked partly through better translation and interpreter services.  Safety advice to non-English-speaking factory workers could be improved within the next twelve months, but even in a matter like that, it is hard to protect the rights of the weak at a time of unemployment if they lack a knowledge of English, and hence dare not even attempt to change their jobs when necessary. ⁽⁸⁷⁾

Australia's language problem has come to be of the same order as its water problem.  It will only be attacked with the necessary energy as part of a wider response to the fact that our workforce is insufficiently skilled occupationally.

The apparent surpluses in some professions are a good reason why some potential entrants should look elsewhere.  But most of the surpluses may prove temporary.  The long predicted excess of nurses in NSW has been followed by a shortage. ⁽⁸⁸⁾  The demand for additional teachers is so greatly affected by a slight change in the acceptable size of classes that precise predictions of teacher demand, like those made recently by the Tertiary Education Commission, can prove highly misleading. ⁽⁸⁹⁾  Professionals who are kept out of their professions by the language gap, and by the practical difficulties preventing further study, are likely to be of most use if retrained as soon as possible.

As for the more numerous skills not requiring formal credentialling, a condition of acquiring or using them in Australia is a knowledge of English.

"Of all migrants in Australia in 1974 who had left unskilled jobs overseas before arrival in Australia at some date before 1974, only a quarter were still in unskilled jobs." ⁽⁹⁰⁾

Those who had moved up included the English-speaking component and some migrants who had been here for over thirty years, but this only points to what could have occurred, more generally, had more resources gone into English instruction from the forties onwards.

Anyone wanting to learn the majority language should be able, like the refugees and like the tradesmen brought out on assisted passages, to study it full time while receiving an Education Allowance calculated at the same rates as unemployment benefits.  The Government now says that the unemployed need not seek work if they are taking official full time English courses, including advanced courses, but it requires them to accept jobs if offered while they are studying.

The next step is to help migrants who are employed now and would be ill-advised to give up their jobs in order to study English full time, but who cannot hope for promotion till their knowledge of the language improves.  Subsidised part time instruction, by agreement with employers, is what is needed.  It is a matter for regret that the new Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs has ended the arrangement whereby wives of employed husbands used to be paid an allowance, equal to unemployment benefit for single people, while they studied English full time for the same 10-week period for which the Education Allowance is available to the Indo-Chinese. ⁽⁹¹⁾

The experience of the Indo-Chinese refugees in the United States is instructive.  Between July 1975 and August 1977 five telephone surveys were conducted on behalf of what was then the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.  By the last date the proportion in jobs was high by American standards (95.1% for all males), but lack of English still correlated with inability to obtain work.  17.7% of those in professional employment in Vietnam had been able to find similar work in the U.S.;  more than a third of the clerks had obtained clerical-type jobs;  6% of all ex-clerks had moved upwards since entering the U.S. workforce;  and 44.2% of craftsmen had been able to transfer their skills. ⁽⁹²⁾  This is very different from the Australian record and must be due partly to the knowledge of English that the first refugees had acquired in Vietnam, during the American presence.

Refugees and Occupational Training.  Recently the Washington Post reported on a survey covering 500 refugees who had arrived at various dates since 1975.  The more recent arrivals had less education and poorer job skills than those who had entered before 1978.  In the whole sample, 28% had received no English language instruction, 60% were unable to speak English and 41% were on welfare.  The United States relies much more heavily than Australia on voluntary agencies and the report, while praising the volunteers as "incredibly dedicated", concludes that by and large the agencies "do not provide refugees with the vital services essential to self-sufficiency." ⁽⁹³⁾

We would do better to follow the example of Canada, with its Manpower Training Program.

"French or English language training is available on a priority basis to those adult refugees who are destined for the labour force.  This training is designed to help them gain sufficient knowledge of one of the two official languages to find work related to their usual occupation.

"Refugees requiring such training must be referred to a course by an Employment counsellor at a Canada Employment Centre.  Training is provided at no cost to the adult and, in addition, those refugees who are not sponsored by relatives, groups or organizations may be eligible for an allowance to assist them with basic living expenses during the training period.  The allowances range from $20 to $125 a week, depending on the number of a trainee's dependants.

"Refugees requiring skill training are eligible for such training on the same basis as other residents of Canada and again must be selected and referred to an appropriate course by a counsellor at a Canada Employment Centre.  Those referred to skill training will have the course paid for by Employment and Immigration Canada and are eligible for allowances under normal criteria ..." ⁽⁹⁴⁾

In France three reception centres "take only single persons and give them socio-professional adaptation courses which can lead to accelerated professional training or pre-training courses or even directly to gainful employment. ⁽⁹⁵⁾  However, it is right as well as expedient that such opportunities should be available also to other migrants.

(d) LOCATION AND RELOCATION

Every refugee should be offered the chance to stay in a migrant centre on arrival.  There he can receive a little instruction, in his own language, about those matters which someone ignorant of English must know in order to survive in this country.  (Jet lag is a problem, so the programme should not be overloaded.)

It is desirable, however, gradually to reduce the period of residence in migrant centres below the present average of 22 weeks.  All centres have a total capacity of about 9700.  (The exact number depends on assumptions about family composition and hence room-sharing.)  Average daily occupation in the two four-week periods before 31 May 1980 was 8959 and 9293. ⁽⁹⁶⁾  Extra accommodation or a quicker throughput will soon be needed.

If housing elsewhere is subsidised for a period equal to the present average period of residence in the centres, minus the time that a refugee family has spent there, and if language classes are provided nearby, refugees would be able to move out at a much earlier stage.  The classes could also be attended by refugees who had not previously availed themselves of opportunities for instruction, perhaps because they then had the care of small children.

If local people were involved through the Community Refugee Settlement Scheme (CRSS), guidance for them through discussion groups could be arranged at the same time.  CRSS can be of real help here, provided the refugees who are sponsored under it do not miss out on full time English instruction.  They are eligible for the Education Allowance, but regrettably, that fact is not mentioned in the official handout (now under review) in which interested groups are given details of how the scheme works.

To date most offers of sponsorship received by the State committees administering CRSS have come from outside capital cities.  Here the committees are rightly guided by the official document, which says that if refugees are not located reasonably near people with similar ethnic and cultural background, then an offer of support should involve as a minimum about 16 individuals or 4 families if the refugees are not to be unduly isolated. ⁽⁹⁷⁾  The capitals, however, are where most of the refugees are likely to find work.

Sydney has its special problem of undue concentration in two adjacent municipalities.  As a first step, more Indo-Chinese should be accommodated in the migrant centre at Coogee, to the east.  Secondly, the cooperation of the Commonwealth Employment Service should be sought in finding jobs away from the Fairfield-Bankstown area.  The housing officers of Commonwealth Accommodation Services could also play a part if some were located away from the migrant centres and were asked to find accommodation in other suburbs.  Here, especially, CRSS groups could fill a valuable role.

The suburbs where mild concentration should be fostered need to be carefully chosen, having regard to job opportunities and/or public transport to where jobs are available, to the level of rents, and to the willingness of organisations and individuals in the locality to help in the first difficult months.

The hope of Northern settlement.  A word may be said here about the evergreen proposal to solve the problems of Asian migrants, and their hosts, by settling the former in the Northern Territory.  When such a proposal comes from Territorians and shows their wish to maintain and enhance their present reputation for reasonably good relations between whites, Chinese, aborigines (in Darwin, anyway) and other minorities, it would be churlish not to respond.

Experience, however, shows all too plainly that migrants from the tropics, free to choose their place of living, are neither more nor less willing to settle in the North than Australians who were born here.  Australia north of Capricorn is as close to the equator as is Indo-China, but the climatic implications of that fact will not attract refugees in appreciable numbers.

The economic outlook for the Northern Territory needs frequent reassessment as technical, agricultural and environmental knowledge accumulates.  We should remember, however, the warning of a CSIRO scientist:

"There is no comparable region in Australia where the white man has so consistently over-estimated the power of his technology in the field of primary industry to draw forth bounty from the land." ⁽⁹⁸⁾

It can be argued that the North should be settled for non-economic reasons and that its resources should therefore be used more fully than they would be without government subsidy.  However, any incentives to live and invest there should be offered on a basis of strict equality to all Australian residents.  Some of the few Indo-Chinese who were formerly farmers might like to farm there, but so would many Australians, hence subsidisation of refugee settlement would be resented, especially if the subsidy per head needed to keep particular schemes viable were to grow far beyond the level first envisaged.

On the other hand, it is impracticable to require refugees to live and work in the Northern Territory for a specified period.  Ethical objections apart, there is also the very practical one that some of the refugees would drift south, without permission, in the fairly realistic hope of merging undetected with the local Chinese and Indo-Chinese communities.  To prevent this, would they be asked to carry identification cards?  Would there be police raids on their homes?  Or on cafes that had been cordoned off so that customers, waiters and kitchen staff could all be interviewed?  It would be madness to add a policing job of this kind to the already considerable task of controlling illegal immigration.

(e) GOVERNMENTAL AND VOLUNTARY HELP

In the USA in 1975, the estimated minimum cost of settling a refugee from Indo-China was $US5601.  Of this amount only $US500 was provided by the Federal Government.  Refugees were held in camps at Federal expense, but agencies were required to assign refugees to sponsors and move them out within 45 days. ⁽⁹⁹⁾

An official Australian estimate in 1979 put the cost to the Commonwealth Government at SA2300 for the first six months, ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ when virtually all Commonwealth help is given.  To set against this help is the fact that relatively few of the Indo-Chinese are old, or will become old during the next twenty years.  The taxes they pay are therefore likely to exceed the benefits they receive.

If so, however, it will be the Commonwealth that benefits, not the States and not local authorities.  Labor ministers and spokesmen on immigration are not alone in believing that too much of the burden is left to other levels of government. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾  Nor can the Commonwealth's own many-sided involvement with refugees be handled efficiently given the present staff ceilings in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

All parties endorse the proposals in the Galbally Report for "closer involvement of ethnic communities themselves" ⁽¹⁰²⁾ in meeting their members' needs.  The staff and volunteer helpers of the Indo-China Refugee Associations are not, for the most part, Indo-Chinese, but they operate increasingly by putting Indo-Chinese who need help in touch with fellow countrymen who are able to give it.

So good a notion should not be pushed too far, too soon.  While new settlers are coming, and even for a time afterwards when the inflow ceases, ethnic helpers, paid or voluntary, will need back-up services that they themselves may be unable to furnish on the scale needed.  This applies especially to legal advice, and to skilled counselling on those family and marriage problems that arise from the conflict between imported and local standards.

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CONCLUSION

The personal qualities of the Indo-Chinese make them assets to Australia as people.  Eventually their coming will bear fruits culturally.  Yet only the desperate need of the refugees themselves would cause us just now to accept migrants of whom so huge a proportion will seek less skilled employment.  For this means either that they take jobs that other Australian residents shun -- a deplorable fate for any ethnic group -- or that they compete for jobs with that section of our workforce which, more than any other, is bearing the burden of the current recession.

Suppose an insurrection in Australia had forced many of our professionals and executives and some of our farmers and teachers to escape to Taiwan.  Suppose it admitted them, at some slight inconvenience, but could offer most nothing better than work in its factories.  That situation would differ from the immigration of the Indo-Chinese inasmuch as these have moved from poor countries to a rich one.  Some will produce more and will live better than they did back in Indo-China before the changes of government.  Quite often immigration can make the migrants better off without making anyone else worse off.  Yet there is no clear evidence that it either raises or lowers average living standards in a rich host nation.

As for the fruits of cultural contact, they will not be reaped, on any appreciable scale, while former teachers work on the factory floor and former doctors sweep the floors of hospitals.  This is no way for Australians to encounter the ancient civilisations of Indo-China, or the French-influenced culture of its middle class.

It is, however, a strength of contemporary Australia -- and of the other countries accepting refugees in large numbers -- that their motives are, for the most part, unselfish.  Not entirely so;  for in Australia's case our standing in South East Asia would have suffered considerably had we done nothing to relieve the pressure on our ASEAN allies.  But we did not need to persuade ourselves that the refugees would bring net benefits of an economic or cultural kind before we agreed to let them in.

Some supporters of the old "White Australia" policy feared that if Asians were admitted to this country, they would never become equal citizens and would compete for the poorest paid work, thus causing racial friction.  Today in our streets we are face to face with Asians who have been pushed into doing the lowliest jobs in the Australian economy.  If we do more to enable them, and other migrants whose mother tongue is not English, to surmount the language barrier, then members of every ethnic group will be found more quickly at every level of Australian society.

That way, our forefathers' fear of a racially stratified society -- which was partly a nightmare, but partly a possible reality -- will have no chance to materialise in the difficult decades that lie ahead of us.

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ENDNOTES

1.  United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, signed by the President, Vice-Presidents and Executive Secretary of a Conference of Plenipotentiaries on 28 July 1951, Article 1, Paragraph A Clause (2).

2.  Information supplied by the UNHCR, Australian office.

3.  Hon. Michael MacKellar MP, then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (House of Representatives) 24 May 1977.

4.  Hon. Ian Macphee MP, Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 6 June 1980.

5.  The target figure was the same in 1979-80, when 14,900 are expected to be admitted.

6.  As at February 1977, quoted by Amnesty International which believes the true figure to be "far higher".  Report 1979, p.116.  The Report mentions several other estimates and two comments by the Vietnamese Government.

7.  Bruce Grant et al., The Boat People:  an 'Age' investigation (Melbourne, Penguin Books, 1979) p.27.  The present account draws heavily on this excellent compilation, the material which tallies with evidence from other sources.

8.  Ibid., p.28.

9.  An exception was made for temporary retailing of goods that were not controlled.

10.  Ibid., p.98.

11.  Canberra Times, 3 August 1979.

12.  Australian, 13 June 1979.  Cf. the admitted guess of a former Saigon publisher that the government had reaped $A2500m. in six months.  Australian, 2 July 1979.

13.  The Hoa in Vietnam Dossier (Hanoi, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1978) reprints the correspondence between them on this issue.

14.  SMH, 14 June 1979.

15.  SMH, 23 June 1979.

16.  Australian, 28 June 1979.

17.  Grant et al., p.64.

18.  Deputy Prime Minister Batuk Mahathir Mohamad, SMH, 16 June 1979.

19.  Malaysian Foreign Minister Tunku Rithauddeen, SMH, 18 June 1979;  Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Tan Sri Ghazali, Australian, 16 July 1979;  Thai Prime Minister General Kriangsak, Melbourne Age, 13 June 1979;  John Everingham, "Thais threaten to expel 100,000", Australian, 28 June 1979;  Dr. Thanat Khoman, former Thai Foreign Minister, Canberra Times, 5 July 1979.

20.  Canberra Times, 15 November 1979.

21.  Sydney Daily Telegraph, 21 June 1979.

22.  Adam Malik, SMH, 17 August 1979.

23.  Dr. Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, SMH, 11 August 1979.

24.  Melbourne Herald, 12 December 1978.

25.  SMH, 21 June 1979.

26.  Canberra Times, 9 June 1979;  Sydney Daily Telegraph, 6 July 1979;  Hobart Mercury, 3 July 1979;  SMH, 9 July 1979.

27.  Australian, 24 July 1979.

28.  Information supplied by UNHCR, Australian office.

29.  SMH, 2 May 1980.

30.  "How many of the boat people die?", SMH, 3 October 1979.  This estimate, which also appears in Grant et al., op. cit., p.81, includes at least 500 drownings due to Malaysian policy.

31.  SMH, 3 September 1979.

32.  SMH, 13 August 1979.

33.  SMH, 2 May 1980.

34.  Australian, 4 September 1979.

35.  SMH, 4 August 1979.

36.  SMH, 26 October 1979.

37.  SMH, 14 May 1980.

38.  Canberra Times, 16 June 1979;  SMH, 9 February 1980.

39.  SMH, 29 October 1979, 3 November 1979.

40.  SMH, 9 February 1980.

41.  By British soldiers, through special rifle sights for use in the dark.  Australian, 7 February 1980.

42.  This figure includes Canada's promise to admit a total of 50,000 during 1979 and 1980, a figure since increased to 60,000.  Press Release by Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, Canadian Minister for Employment and Immigration, 3 April 1980.

43.  Information supplied by UNHCR, Australian office.

44.  Sarah Monks, "Uncertain future for these refugees", Brisbane Courier-Mail, 10 March 1980.  At the risk of pedantry, may one point out the great importance of knowing how the question was framed, and whether the sample had any claim to be random?

45.  In 1978-9 the Commonwealth Government paid 41% of the operating costs of maintaining migrant families in the centres.  Report of CACS Ltd., 1978-9, Canberra Times, 3 October 1979.

46.  Information supplied by CACS.

47.  Hon. John McLeay MP, Minister for Administrative Services, Adelaide Advertiser, 31 July 1979.

48.  Ainsley Jolley, Michael Connell & Yetta Grunberg, "Indo-Chinese Refugees in Victorian Manufacturing" Research Discussion Paper No. 2 (Melbourne, Victorian Chamber of Manufactures, April 1980) p.11.  For details of an interesting scheme in which one refugee filled the role of a Cultural Communicator, see P.J. Housden, "An Exercise in Refugee Integration into Australian Society and the Workplace", Human Resource Management Australia, Spring 1978.

49.  Information supplied by Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

50.  Jolley et al., p.11.

51.  Survival and Beyond:  Vol. 2, Key Concerns of Refugees.  Report to the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission from the Indo-Chinese Task Force (Sydney, October 1979) p.13.

52.  Calculation based on Table 4.1 in Darrel Montero, Vietnamese Americans (Boulder, Westview, 1979) p.41.  An "In-Camp" survey in 1975 showed only 42.9% as having held white collar jobs, even at that time, but reasons have been given why this was probably an underestimate.  Barry Stein, "Occupational Adjustment of Refugees:  the Vietnamese in the United States", International Migration Review, Spring 1979, pp. 38, 30-31.  This important paper has been republished by the Clearing House on Migration Issues, Melbourne, as Reprint No. 357.  On the experience of recent arrivals, see Washington Post, 26 January 1980.

53.  Information supplied by Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

54.  I.F.Gray, Officer in charge of the Migrant Section of the Department of Employment and Youth Affairs in Adelaide, Canberra Times, 12 November 1979.

55.  Mr. Brian Dummett, Ford's labour relations supervisor at Campbellfield, Vic., as reported by Hugh Lunn, "The Vietnamese in Australia", Weekend Australian, 6-7 October 1979.  See also Mr. Dummett's remarks in "How the Vietnamese Find Work", Melbourne Age, 5 May 1980.

56.  Chris Milne & Robert Ball, "Assimilation -- a key to success", Adelaide Advertiser, 3 November 1979.

57.  This conclusion emerges even from a particularly depressing study of the employment conditions of migrant women, Des Storer et al., "But I wouldn't want my wife to work here ...":  a study of migrant women in Melbourne industry (Melbourne, Centre for Urban Research and Action, April 1977) p.29;  but see also p.103.

58.  G.W. Ford et al., "A Study of human resources and industrial relations at the plant level in seven selected industries" (October 1975) in Policies for Development of Manufacturing Industry (Jackson Report), Vol. 4 (Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, April 1976) p.19.  On the problems of migrants see pp. 20-32, 85-87.

59.  See, e.g., Christian Dufour, "Unpleasant or tedious jobs in the industrialised countries", International Labour Review, July-August 1978, p.408.

60.  Barry N. Stein, op. cit., p.38.

61.  Statement by Maurice Neil MP on behalf of the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs at a Conference on Ethnic and Immigration Studies held at University of NSW, 15 June 1980.

62.  Adelaide 8.5%, Perth 7.8%, Brisbane 6.6%, Melbourne 6.2%, Sydney 5.2%.  The Labour Force in Australia, March 1980 (Canberra, Australian Bureau of Statistics) p.12.

63.  Internal Migration Australia, 12 months ending 30 June 1979 (Canberra, Australian Bureau of Statistics) p.11.

64.  Cf. comments by spokesmen of Victorian employers' associations in David Wilson, "Where have all the jobs gone?", Australian, 25 January 1979.

65.  Peter Dixon, John Harrower and Alan Powell, "Long term structural pressures on industries and the labour market", Australian Bulletin of Labour, June 1977;  Robin Pope, "Revaluation:  Help or Hindrance to Manufacturing in Australia?", paper delivered to ANZAAS Conference, September 1977;  Wolfgang Kasper & Thomas G. Parry (eds.), Growth, Trade and Structural Change in an Open Australian Economy (Canberra, ANU Research School of Social Sciences, Department of Economics and Sydney, University of NSW Centre for Applied Economic Research, 1978), esp. the papers by Richard Blandy and Joan Vipond.

66.  Calculation based on figures in Survival and Beyond:  Vol. 1, Refugee Services in NSW (Sydney, October 1979) p.73.

67.  Community Project Officer's Report, "An Assessment of the Refugee Situation within Fairfield City" (Sydney, Fairfield City Council, January 1980) pp. 3-4.

68.  Cf. Jolley et al., pp. 14, 15.

69.  Personal communication from Robert Bennoun, Indo-China Refugee Association (Vic.), 27 May 1980;  Jolley et al., pp. 8, 9.

70.  Bulletin, 10 July 1979;  SMH, 13 June 1979.  For details of earlier polls, see K. Rivett, "Towards a policy on refugees", Australian Outlook, August 1979, pp. 148-9.

71.  Information supplied by Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs concerning a poll conducted on behalf of the Australian Population and Immigration Council;  Melbourne Herald, 27 September 1979.

72.  Survival and Beyond:  Vol. 2, Key Concerns of Refugees (Sydney, October 1979) pp. 15-16.

73.  SMH, 19 November 1979.

74.  West Australian, 15 August 1979.

75.  Hobart Mercury, 4 October 1979.  Subsequent to a meeting of State and Federal ALP ministers or spokesmen on immigration, Dr. Cass said that the number of refugees admitted each year should be determined by the money available "to supply them with housing, employment and other assistance" and that the ALP policy on refugees did not differ materially from that of the coalition government.  Weekend Australian, 15-16 December 1979.

76.  Melbourne Age, 14 September 1979.

77.  Brisbane Courier-Mail, 9 July 1979.

78.  The question of admitting refugees from Zimbabwe is discussed in K. Rivett, "Do a refugee's politics matter?", Australian Quarterly, June 1979.

79.  The proportions as at 31 May 1980.  Information supplied by the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

80.  SMH, 12 February 1980.

81.  Ian Lindenmayer, First Assistant Secretary, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Canberra Times, 1 August 1979.

82.  For the current position as regards non-refugee applicants, see the widely reported announcement by the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs on 23 May 1980.

83.  Information supplied by the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

84.  Roslyn Langtry, "Family reunion and Australia's immigration programme", Multicultural Paper 5 (Melbourne, Clearing House on Migration Issues, 1979).

85.  Harold W. Fry, "Resettling Indo-Chinese Refugees:  private sponsoring can aid in happy integration", Canberra Times, 28 February 1980.

86.  Canberra Times, 24 December 1979.

87.  According to a survey of 1216 unemployed women and 193 employers by (he NSW Council of Social Service, migrant women see their lack of English as their main handicap in job-seeking, though not as making them unable to do the kind of jobs they seek.  Unemployed Women:  a research report (Sydney, Council of Social Service of NSW, December 1978) pp. 98-9, 102-3.

88.  SMH, 24 April 1980;  Adele Twomey, "Statistics show need for nurses", SMH, 16 June 1980.

89.  Federation of Australian University Staff Associations Education Committee, FAUSSA Newsletter, 5 May 1980:  Susan Cram, "TEC Figures Under Fire", National Times, 4-10 May 1980.

90.  R. Blandy in Kasper & Parry, op. cit., pp. 341, 343.  The statement concerning mobility was documented in R. Blandy et al., "Migrant Workers in Australia -- Industrial Cannon Fodder?", Australian Bulletin of Labour, April 1977.

91.  SMH, 17 January 1980.  The Minister defended his decision in a letter published in SMH, 7 February 1980.

92.  Montero, op. cit., pp. 42-45, 191, 39-41.  Contrary to the text, the correlation between proficiency in English and ability to find work is statistically significant.

93.  Washington Post, 26 January 1980.

94.  Indochinese Refugees Newsletter (Ottawa, Ministry of Employment and Immigration) 22 August 1979, pp. 4-5.

95.  Francois Ponchaud, "Reception of Indochinese Refugees in France", Migration News (Geneva), October-December 1978, p.8.

96.  Information supplied by CACS.

97.  Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, "Community Hosting and Friendship Scheme, Community Refugee Settlement Scheme:  information for individuals, groups and organisations wishing to assist in the settlement of refugees in the community", p.6.  "The only bad thing we did was to stick some of the Vietnamese out in rural areas as single families.  That was murder for them", commented Edward Sponga, a senior American Administrator.  Quoted in "Making It in America -- story of the Vietnamese", U.S. News and World Report, 21 November 1978.

98.  C.J. Lacey, "Forestry in the Top End of the Northern Territory:  part of the Northern Myth", Search, May 1979, p.174.

99.  Montero, op. cit., pp. 26-8.

100.  Lou Engeldow, Secretary, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Canberra Times, 31 July 1979.

101.  SMH, 23 February 1980.

102.  Migrant Services and Programs:  report of the review of post-arrial programs and services (Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, May 1978) p.4.