Aust visas: Just too many hurdles

 INCREASINGLY, in circles where Papua New Guineans with some knowledge of history gather, there can be heard references to the continuation of the “White Australia policy”.

This unfortunate reference is made in the context of Australia’s very strict immigration policies and the agonisingly painful delays for most Papua New Guineans seeking visas into Australia.

The lines outside the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby stretch into the street at times.

Questions, checks and counter-checks stretch to weeks before any visa is granted. Often they are refused. Particularly annoying is the insistence that the Papua New Guinean applicant for a visa comes up with bank statements showing balances of no less than K10,000 in the bank.

The unfortunate event in recent years where Sir Michael Somare, then the prime minister, was forced to remove his sandals by Australian immigration officers and the repeated references over the weekend by Foreign Minister Bob Carr to Papuans rather than Papua New Guineans tends to reinforce the feeling that there is something pointedly anti-Papua New Guinean in all this.

Indeed, Carr’s attempts at explaining away the policy did more harm than good. He came across as rather arrogant with a “take-it-or-leave-it-but-this-is-the-way-it-is” attitude.

Rather than be bashful about it or gloss it over with sweet diplomatic words, this week’s visit by Prime Minister Julia Gillard provides an opportunity for the PNG government to put this matter to rest once and for all.

Until then a small lesson in history for those who do not know about the White Australia policy.

The policy describes early Australian immigration policies which favoured migrants from white nations such as England and other parts of Europe.

That was reinforced in the 1850s when white miners clashed with the far more industrious Chinese diggers in Victoria and New South Wales. Following the clashes, restrictions were introduced on Chinese immigration.

Later the policy was turned on the indentured labourers for Queensland factories and cane fields from the Pacific islands, including Papua New Guinea. The islanders were referred to as Kanakas. The Kanakas were opposed because white factory workers feared  the migrants might threaten their jobs by accepting lower wages.

In 1901, the federal government passed an Act ending the employment of Pacific Islanders. The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 received royal assent on Dec 23, 1901. It was described as an Act “to place certain restrictions on immigration and to provide for the removal from the Commonwealth of prohibited immigrants”.

In 1919, the prime minister, William Morris Hughes, hailed it as “the greatest thing we have achieved”.

Prime minister John Curtin reinforced the philosophy after the outbreak of the World War Two, saying: “This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race.”

In 1957, non-Europeans with 15 years residence in Australia were allowed to become Australian citizens. The revised Migration Act of 1958 abolished the dictation test and avoided references to race.

In 1966 after reviewing the non-European policy, the Australian government announced applications for migration would be accepted from well-qualified people on the basis of their suitability as settlers, their ability to integrate readily and their possession of qualifications positively useful to Australia.

Papua New Guinea, a black nation sitting at the top of Australia was by this time an Australian colony but it felt to the core the brute discriminatory nature of the White Australia policy.

Even though people from the southern half of the future PNG, Papua, were considered Australian citizens, they could not migrate to Australia. They could not intermarry.

All of this came to a halt in 1973, two years before PNG’s independence, when the Whitlam Labor government removed race as a factor in Australia’s immigration policies.

It made it law that all migrants of whatever origin be eligible to obtain citizenship after three years permanent residence.

By 1978 the federal government commissioned a comprehensive review of immigration in Australia and adopted new policies and programmes for Australia’s population development.

Australia’s current migration programme allows people from any country to migrate to Australia, regardless of their ethnicity, culture, religion or language, provided that they meet the criteria set out in law.

This is the history but the recent references to the White  Australia policy has come about because of certain stringent requirements by Australian Immigration which seem a throwback to an age long gone.