AT ITS inception in 2001, it was seen as a neat answer to a thorny question: how to screen asylum-seekers intercepted at sea on their way to Australia in a manner forbidding enough to deter more from coming? But over time the “Pacific solution”, of packing the would-be refugees off to camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG) to await their fate, itself became a problem.
Ever more unwelcoming Australian governments declared that even those found to be legitimate refugees would never be admitted to the country, yet few other states could be persuaded to take them, and few of the asylum-seekers could be persuaded to settle in the countries that would, such as Cambodia. Some 2,000 people have mouldered for years in the island camps, earning Australia rebukes from human-rights groups at home and abroad. This week, however, a solution to the solution may perhaps have been found. America has offered to take many of the stranded migrants. (Australia previously offered to admit some Central American refugees in what is being seen as a quid pro quo.)
Many Australians have an atavistic fear of an uncontrolled flood of Asian migrants, and no...Continue reading
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