When you go out of your way to invite people to your country, the people have a right to believe they will be treated fairly.
The Australian government didn't just allow the Lebanese to immigrate but aggressively promote the immigration??
Yes. During and after WW II, Australia experienced severe labor shortages and determined that its population was too small. Prior to WW II, only Brits were encouraged to immigrate. However, AU was too far away for many Brits to make the move. So after WWII, AU significantly loosened their immigration policies to all of Europe and to allow more people to come each year. I have a couple of German friends who have been living and working in Sydney for several years now. Unlike the US or Europe, its relatively easy to get a worker's permit in AU.
Here's more discussion on the subject:
"Further immigration
The war had emphasized Australia's relative emptiness, and the labour shortage continued after the war. This encouraged the development of a government-sponsored immigration scheme, starting in 1948. It was initially decided that an intake of 70,000 a year, together with natural increase, would result in a 2% population increase annually, this being considered the maximum increase possible without economic strain (although later this maximum was revised).
Old immigration policies were abandoned: no longer were immigrants settled on the land, and no longer was immigration only encouraged from Britain, as it was realized that the large number of displaced persons in Europe offered a ready source of immigrant labour. Numerically, the programme was very successful. In the first three decades following the war over 2 million new immigrants settled in Australia, including about one-third from Britain, which included children who were shipped from UK orphanages from the end of World War II until the late 1960s."
tiscali.co.uk
Even if they did I don't see how you can say the government victimized them. The government didn't require that they live in certain "special neighborhoods". I doubt the government aggressively discriminated against them for jobs. It may have failed to prevent the discrimination but that isn't the same thing.
AU has never been a very open society. If you are going to make a dramatic change in your immigration policies, then you best make sure that things are changed on every level. I don't know if the gov't did that. What I do know is that immigrant groups in AU have faced significant discrimination. As late as the early 1990s, we were getting films out of AU where Anglo Saxon girls would start going out with a Spaniard, or a Gypsy or a Greek much to the consternation and disgust of her Anglo Saxon parents.
Ethnic tensions between Anglo Saxon Aussies and the Lebanese are not something new. That's why PM Howard's comments that the problems weren't racially inspired is a bunch of baloney.
So under the circumstances, I see the gov't to be the one at fault here.
If I accept some of your statements and assumptions I can see why you blame the Australian government for helping to create the situation, but even if I did accept these statements I don't see how that means that they are the victims of the government. The government didn't attack them, the rioters did. The lesser acts of discrimination and hostility where also not for the most part committed by the government. While the governments actions are part of the chain of events that led to the circumstances in which the attacks and discrimination occurred I think someone is the victim of the actual perp, and the government isn't it.
I am not surprised........apparently, you don't believe gov'ts and/or their leaders should be held accountable for their behavior or lack thereof. I do.
ted |
