By Peter Boyle
It was an ABC television reporter who led the question about whether the 34,000 Chinese nationals offered temporary residence in Australia after the Beijing massacre could bring in a further 300,000 relatives under the immigration law's provision for family reunion. But it was immigration minister Gerry Hand's decision to reply in the affirmative, albeit with qualifications.
Hand's statement is seen by some members of Australia's Asian community as a cynical attempt to invoke the racist "yellow peril" bogy — presumably to justify the government's May 12 decision to slash immigration by 31,000 and to tighten entry requirements for some categories.
"The minister is playing with racism", said Jason Cheng, a 21-year-old Australian of Chinese background and a spokesperson for the Democratic Socialist Party in Melbourne. "The Keating Labor government is not prepared to deal directly with rising unemployment, so it is scapegoating migrants in the hope of distracting the public from its failures. In the process, humanitarian considerations, anti-discrimination and fair play are being tossed out".
The "concessional family" category of immigrants (non-dependent relatives) will suffer the biggest cut, from 19,000 this year to 6000. The "independent, skilled" category will be reduced from 30,000 to 13,400. Immigrants in these categories will be subject to tightened English language proficiency tests and will have to pay up front for language training if they have poor or no English but are accepted because their skills are needed by Australian employers.
Refugee numbers will be cut by 2000 to 10,000. This comes a week after the federal government hastily passed legislation removing the right of the courts to order the release from custody of refugees awaiting appeals against deportation. Eve Lester, coordinator of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, condemned this as a "deplorable and shameful attempt to deny these people their right to review by law". She said that the new law may breach international conventions on human rights and the status of refugees.
The quota for family reunion for dependent relatives will be increased by 2000 to 39,000, and Hand says that he does not question family reunion as a humanitarian right of immigrants. However, his comments on the hypothetical future influx of 300,000 Chinese together with recent demands from employer organisations, the ACTU and most major parties for a greater preference for immigrants who are immediately "useful" to industry, suggest that family reunion may soon be under threat.
Although Keating cabinet's cut in immigration numbers is close to that the coalition parties, they and the Australian Democrats are now demanding even bigger cuts in immigrant intake.