Asylum seekers
Asylum seekers
In reporting on the issues surrounding asylum seekers and refugees, the Australian government and media often present us with texts that create a narrow representation of asylum seekers in our country. They have through carefully constructing their language positioned the reader to hold a negative attitude towards asylum seekers and refugees. Quite often the media describe asylum seekers as ‘boat people’ or ‘illegal immigrants’ but it is stated by Australian Greek author Christos Tsiolkas that in fact 85% of boat people are genuine refugees and that as signatories to the UN refugee convention we are obliged to offer these people asylum. On the other side of the scale though coalition candidate Fiona Scott argues that the primary cause of traffic jams in sub urban places are initiated due to the increasing number of refugees and opposition leader Tony Abbott also states that ‘the point of the matter is if we stop the boats we will have less pressure on the budget’. That budget being the pension. Abbott has injected a $420 million dollar budget into buying boats of Indonesian fisherman and stem the flow of refugees. The fact of the matter is, is that our governments and press have demonized boat people for 15 years. Organizations like the asylum seeker resource Centre worry they’re fighting a losing battle. Refugees are so generalized that many people are led to believe that our country is being flooded when in fact only around 8,600 refugees are made legal, since though refugees are so over generalized by the media and government this leads us to believe that boat people are the leading contributors to our influcuating traffic problems and that they are stealing our jobs, this then positions the reader to become defensive toward refugees. Abbott states that buying the fisherman’s boats will help stop the asylum seekers but several of the fishermen said that this would only allow then to buy bigger and better boats for the use of transporting refugees overseas. In relation to the arrival of asylum seekers in our borders, the word predominately used by the media announce it as ‘intercepted another boat’, the word intercept is used so often in our median that every time the public read about boat people they become hostile towards them as the word intercepted suggests wrongdoing by the boat’s passengers. It also positions the reader to accept the harsh treatment of refugees by constantly using the word ‘intercepted’. The lack of broader context in each and every text creates a narrow representation of the reality facing asylum seekers, this then leads to the reader feeling less sympathetic towards asylum seekers. Because of the broad narrow representation created by the media and government gives us less potential to think and speak critically about the asylum seeking topic, if the media gave the full information in articles it would allow us to be unbiased towards refugees. Yet since they provide information that fails to inform us of all aspects of the topic we act hostile towards the topic. I believe this is wrong as every human being should have equal rights no matter what color or where they are from.
Bibliography
http://theconversation.com/where-to-now-for-asylum-seeker-policy-under-tony-abbott-18010
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/07/22/asylum-seekers-where-australia-stands