Abbott government agrees to resettle 12,000 Syrian refugees in Australia

[Disir]

He said women, children and families from persecuted minorities sheltering in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey would take priority.

"I do want to stress, women children and families - the most vulnerable of all," he said.

He denied there would be any preferential treatment given to Christians over Muslims despite reports of some backbench anti-Muslim sentiment. "It's those who can never go back that we're focused on," he said.

The government will also spend $44 million supplying 240,000 refugees with cash, food, water and blankets in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.


Read more: Change of heart: Abbott government agrees to accept 12,000 Syrian refugees
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Bah, it's just money.

 

[ThirdTerm]

In 1999, around 8,000 refugees from Kosovo were accepted by Australia on a temporary basis but almost all of them were sent home. Perhaps the majority of 12,000 Syrian refugees would be accommodated in military barracks and they would be eventually sent back to Syria just like Kosovar refugees a decade ago. America is also pressured to resettle Syrian 10,000 refugees, who would be permanent settlers as always the case in the US. Every country that is part of the military coalition currently bombing Syria has a moral obligation to take in up to 10,000 asylum seekers from Syria.



My family came to the United States from the Soviet Union, which posed more of a threat to the American public then than Al Qaeda or ISIS does today. Like the Arabs who want to immigrate here today, we were sometimes met with suspicion, our loyalty questioned, our motives suspect, simply because of where we were born. I remember the moment I arrived in the West as clearly as probably every child fleeing Syria today does: the look of uncertainty in my parents’ faces when we landed in Vienna; the shock of realizing that they had no more idea of what to do than I had. I imagine that this was the same feeling of imbalance and astonishment that Aylan Kurdi and his brother experienced before their deaths. This nation did right by my family. It should do right by families like theirs.

I was once a refugee. US must welcome Syrians, too | Fox News