Australia grapples with African and Sudanese refugees 

By Levi Obijiofor 

Friday, 12 October 2007 

In the past one week, a major debate has erupted in Australia about whether or not African refugee migrants in Australia are incapable of integrating into the wider Australian society. The debate got off to a bang following an announcement by Australia’s Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews that he would reduce drastically the intake of African refugee migrants in favour of refugees from Asia and the Middle East. His reason? He said he received reports that suggested Sudanese refugees in Australia have been slow to integrate into the Australian community. In addition, he said the reports showed that Sudanese refugees in Australia were involved in higher than expected criminal activities, including gang violence.  

The Australian immigration minister’s quick-fire decision to halt further intake of African refugees constitutes a nervy, one track solution to problems in one or two Sudanese refugee communities. Above all, the minister’s comment about African refugees, in particular his views on Sudanese refugees, have undermined rather than enhanced Australia’s image as a multicultural and tolerant country. 

There are serious issues of credibility and racial profiling about the minister’s decision to punish African refugees on the basis that a section of an African migrant community is having problems integrating into Australian society. By deciding to slash the number of African refugees allowed to enter into Australia, the minister has concluded, in a woolly and illogical sense, that if Sudanese refugees in Australia are creating problems, it must be assumed that ALL Africans in Australia must also be guilty of the same offence. More precisely, does a migrant community from one African country represent the entire African community in Australia? Does a refugee group from one African country reflect behavioural traits that are common among all Africans?  

One does not have to be a professor of sociology to grasp the simplistic nature of the minister’s claims and the reasons that informed his decision to slash the number of African refugees that would be allowed into Australia from mid-2008. Unfortunately, the minister is adamant that he has shut the door on more African refugees getting into Australia before that date. It is a shocking decision that has reignited echoes of racism from migrant and refugee advocacy groups in Australia. Nothing other than racial profiling could be deduced from the illogical reasons tendered by the minister for his decision. If the minister had been looking for a way to reduce the number of African refugees coming into Australia, he has found a weak excuse in the problems he identified in the Sudanese refugee community.  

By halting further intake of African refugees on the basis that Sudanese refugees are having problems adjusting in Australia, the immigration minister has cast a slur on all Africans inside and outside of Australia. Africans in Australia are now more than likely to be perceived as trouble makers who are disrupting the peaceful lifestyle of other Australians. But even the claim that Sudanese refugees are slow to integrate is highly contested. Sudanese and other African migrant groups have seriously disagreed with the minister’s views. 

The minister’s claims about the inability of Sudanese refugees to integrate into the society may soon become the fuel that extreme right groups need to start hurling abuses against Africans in Australia. In fact, this is already beginning to happen. An African community group in the municipality of Wagga Wagga (in the state of New South Wales) told the media that Africans in the city were already being vilified openly on the streets following the minister’s claim that African refugee groups are incapable of assimilating into the Australian society and that certain sections of the Sudanese migrant community have recorded higher than usual incidents of crime and gang-related violence. A Sudanese community leader, John Moi, told the media on Tuesday this week: “We have been hearing incidences on the street and the market places that the people are being called black people – ‘Go back to Africa’”.  

The immigration minister and some sections of the media tend to forget that Africa is a vast and complex continent of at least 54 independent countries made up of more than 700 million people. Culturally, politically, economically and indeed socially, African countries differ in various ways. These differences are not reflected in western news media reports about Africa. When some Ghanaians or Senegalese are reported in the news, the media adopt a generic term to refer to them as “Africans”. But when some Germans or Belgians are reported in the news, the media refers to them as Germans or Belgians and not as Europeans. Western news media tend to refer to westerners by their nationalities or countries of origin. However, when Africans are involved, the media ignores the fact that Africa is not a country but a continent.  

Mercifully, the minister is not having things all his own way. Reactions from high profile Australian politicians suggest that the minister’s comments about African refugees are not reflective of wider public sentiments on the issue. For example, Opposition Labour Party’s immigration spokesperson said that rather than cut the number of African refugees coming to Australia, the minister should improve services designed to help refugees to settle properly into the society. The chairperson of the African Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Council, Abeselom Nega, said: “The Minister is absolutely wrong when he says that Africans have problems integrating with this community, and this is not the first time that he has made such comments.” This theme was taken up by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh. She argued: “Those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics… What that tells me is that these people are law-abiding citizens, by and large that they are not committing crimes at a rate any higher than the average citizen from any other part of the world.”  

So, where did the immigration minister get his statistics on crimes and gang-related violence associated with the Sudanese refugee community in Australia?  

The minister’s decision and the way it has been reported by some sections of the Australian media constitute part of the ideology of Afro-pessimism which has been used since colonial times, unfortunately, to describe Africa and Africans. The ideology has been fed consciously into the breakfast cereals of many adults and children in the west. Consequently, over a number of years, the mental and psychological image of Africa that is ingrained subconsciously in the minds of western media audiences is that Africa is a failed continent ravaged by political instability, economic backwardness, extraordinary famine and drought, poverty, diseases and culturally primitive ways of doing things.  

Some of these may reflect the true situation in Africa, helped largely by a group of corrupt and dawdling African political leaders. However, the ideology of Afro-pessimism denies everything positive about Africa. What we have is a western conceived ideology that creates an image of Africa as a continent that cannot help itself, an Africa that can survive only by the grace and compassion of westerners. 

Okay, fair enough, the decision to grant refugee status or visiting visa to anyone from any part of the world is always a matter for the immigration department of every country. In other words, the decision to grant or deny refugee visa application is always at the behest of the relevant authorities in each country. But even at that, there are aspects of the United Nations (UN) convention on refugees that govern the treatment of refugees. One of these is that countries that are signatory to the UN convention should exhibit internationally acceptable standards of behaviour toward refugees. Refugees might appear like beggars but it is absolutely inhuman to treat them or refer to their condition in such a way that their dignity and humanity are denigrated.  

Robot  Villager

# 1 The Australian immigration minister’s quick-fire decision to halt further intake of Africa...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 11.10.2007 22:15

Fjord  Villager

# 2 The extrapolation to all African refugees is clearly not warranted; the observation about Sudanese refugees (and certain particular African refugees) have been reproduced elsewhere too. The same can be said of Jews. What tips the balance is involvement in criminal activity. You can't be a welcome guest if you fail to integrate and engage in criminal activities. . Posted by Fjord| 11.10.2007 23:14

JAGA-JAGA  Villager

# 3 This is strange news. We have Sudanese refugees all over North America and there haven't been any such report. I'm sure the minister has a sinister motive which must be exposed immediately in order not to worsen the situation of these Sudanese refugees and also other peace loving black Africans. Posted by JAGA-JAGA| 12.10.2007 13:25

katampe  Villager

# 4 This is strange news. We have Sudanese refugees all over North America and there haven't been any such report. I'm sure the minister has a sinister motive which must be exposed immediately in order not to worsen the situation of these Sudanese refugees and also other peace loving black Africans. There has always being this debate between the conservative and liberal intellectuals about multiculturalism in the western world. If the debate has not be heard in North America, I will say maybe in the US. The reason being the United States has never supported multiculturalism as an official policy. It prides itself as a melting pot, meaning integration against cultural separatedness. In Britain, Australia and Canada, the debate has been ongoing. There are policy papers out there that support the notion that african immigrants find it hard to integrate. I think there are several layers of integration. One that is commonly known is the ability to participate in gainful employment and carry-on with day- day matters. Many countries have facts that show Africans haven't been on top of the game. For instance, Nigeria records a high crime rate. In the definition of gainful employment and participation in the civil life of a country, Nigerians can be said to equally have an issue of integration.The research of immigrants serving jail sentences in western world would reveal Nigerians have a high rate of offenders. But what seems to give Nigerians cover is that they are more involved in high collar crime, as such some gloss over the issue, and assume they can participate in gainful employment if they wanted, but greed would not allow. In Canada, Britain and Australia, there are many immigrants, especially from Somalia, and Sudan that the children are perceived to be slowing others down in class. There has been white flight from some of these school districts. The replay of what happened in America when white folks abandoned the inner cities for suburban houses. At least, we know the reason why the suburbs had large plots , and it wasn't just because of the american dream, but more to do with keeping the blacks out. By making the plots larger, it commanded higher sale prices, as such most blacks were kept out. And in cases where blacks could afford them, they made sure that realtors or some other funny laws kept them out. It is this the perception that blacks have criminal tendecies that is playing itself out. Whites are becoming hostile to blacks because of the perception that they come to their country and end upin criminal activities, while others sponge off the system. I think this perception held for sometime in Ireland and still persists in some quarters. I won't be suprised in the near future , if immigration laws become more stringent for Africans. Most Africans moving overseas today, unlike their predecessors are badly educated and would find it hard to participate in the new economy that you folks increasingly need higher levels of education to function. Posted by katampe| 12.10.2007 14:29

Celticologist  Villager

# 5 One of the beauties of western democracies though is the amount of stumbling blocks that will make the minister's plan difficult to implement. Plus.....there are many other ways to make it to eurocentric Australia. I think he is talking about the front door method, the one he distinctly knows and has authority over. I would think that immigrants personally need to consider and be clear about the socio-cultural demands of whatever society they choose to migrate to. It is worth examining if the values in that next society will enhance, corrupt or compromise the convictions that they (immigrants) hold dear. If I was moslem for example, the choice of consciously residing in the west would be a complete taboo. Would be as despicable as accepting secular laws to govern where my wife wears or not wear the burkha. There isn't much there in terms of cultural compatibility, just a lot of painful compromises. Even where there are resources in place to jump-start integration and get it running, a percentage of success also depends on the one being integrated. Among second generation Turks in Germany is a large number who despise that system they live in, there are even long term residents among the adults that barely speak any German. I once met Somalis in the UK who proudly told me that they will never raise their hands to swear and become "british" for any reason; there is a tendency to see such moves as a form of taboo. To some extent, I assume they have determined how far they could go and what next they simply can't compromise regardless of the cost. Posted by Celticologist| 12.10.2007 16:08

Adeola Aderounmu  Villager

# 6 Australia grapples with African and Sudanese refugees Sorry that I'm going to be very trivial here: But what is the difference between Sudanese and Africans? Why can't the title just read: Australia grapples with African refugees? This reminds me of my service year in Ibadan in 95/96. A story went round that there had been an accident at Ojoo. It was reported that 3 people and 1 mallam died. Posted by Adeola Aderounmu| 13.10.2007 16:18