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Interestingly, in the developed world it seems to be the Anglophone countries that have the shittiest attitude towards border control these days. The US is noto

• thomasz 13y ago
  I would appreciate if you wouldn't cite the 'world socialist website - Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International' as a reputable source. Some of their articles are surprisingly good, but it's still the publication of an obscure trotzkyist sect.
  • cstross 13y ago
    What's your problem with Trotskyite news sources? I assume most folks here are smart enough to evaluate any given news site on the basis of its accuracy and to differentiate between editorial bias and factual incorrectness. If you really can't bear to see news and opinions from sources you personally disagree with, how are you ever going to test your opinions?
    • nols 13y ago
      That's not really how it works, you can't cite a source and then have people evaluate it on its accuracy. We don't know enough to know the accuracy, that's why you used a citation. A publication's reputation is what people use as a benchmark for its accuracy. There are scientific studies saying smoking isn't harmful, and it's totally a coincidence they're funded by tobacco companies. That's why a source's reputation is important.
    • thomasz 13y ago
      Well, one problem is that publications like the wsws are not news in the strict sense. They do not have the staff and the founding that's necessary to engage in traditional reporting. What those publications are doing is to interpret secondary sources. The article in question does little else than showing us the authors reactions after watching [0]. Some people might find this reaction of the "International Committee of the Fourth International" interesting, but I guess it's safe to say that most are not. About most people here being able to evaluate the accuracy of those sites: That's the problem with posting links like that. People read it, look at the header and dismiss the whole thing as completely blown out of proportions, which sadly isn't true this time. [0] http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601700/n/manus-whistleblower http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601700/n/manus...
      • gress 13y ago
        How is that different from mainstream news outlets publishing articles sourced from Reuters or AP?
        • aet 13y ago
          Reuters and AP are reputable and have reporters on the ground. AP has won 50+ Pulitzer prizes. See http://www.ap.org/company/pulitzers http://www.ap.org/company/pulitzers.
          • gress 13y ago
            That doesn't address the point - many mainstream 'news' outlets work by rewriting stories syndicated from Reuters and AP - not by having their own reporters. The comment I was responding to was attacking the wsws for not being 'news' because it doesn't have it's own reporters. It's perfectly reasonable to criticize it for having a political stance that you don't credit, but I don't see a case for somehow categorizing it as 'not news' when its practices are the same as many traditional news outlets, just with a less mainstream perspective. Note: I'm not supporting whatever wsws's stance might be - I'm just pointing out that much of mainstream news is similar in how it operates.
  • bausson 13y ago
    Maybe publications with enough funding are not 'strict' either. They are some always interest at play. Well funded publications are either government-backed (in some communist/socialist countries), which might mean unfair treatment of some news, or corporation (or corporation-backed), which means a stance on some subjects (let's say:liberalism) that isn't exactly fair either. The best (or, some might say, only) way to get news is to get it from different sources, which preferably does not share the same point of view.
  • enraged_camel 13y ago
    In light of an article about prejudice, did you mean this comment to be ironic, or...?
• tphan 13y ago
  Your Australia-related articles were posted in July. Tony Abbott didn't become Prime Minister until September.
  • girvo 13y ago
    Yep. Although, if you're an Australian like I am, you must know that this is all going to get worse. I'm sick of our Government (no matter who seems to be in power at the time) taking every single page out of the American playbook. I like our country, why do we have to try and be them? :(
    • adventured 13y ago
      America didn't invent fascism. It's recycling a playbook that various parts of Europe mastered nearly a century ago. Interestingly, the most dangerous and powerful aspect of American fascism in fact was born from what it took to fight Europe's WW2 mess (and the NSA is a direct descendant of that as well). History is often rich with irony. The playbook Australia is taking a page out of is a very old one indeed.
      • girvo 13y ago
        Good point. Queensland is about to pass another ridiculous law that curtails human rights and due process: yay! :'(
    • snupples 13y ago
      Fucking seriously? I know it's popular to hate "America" lately -- since it makes a nice big clean target and it gives you a nice fuzzy "edgy" feeling to do so -- but it seems more like Australia's leading the pack when it comes to overreaching soft-authoritarian policy.
      • girvo 13y ago
        Actually, it's more "Queensland" that's the problem, although I think things are going to get rapidly worse at the federal level too. Fuck my state. Who's idea was it to give a populist idiot (Newman) a super-majority? (I agree with you, for what it's worth, but there is definitely a not-so-subtle undercurrent in politics of "We should do what America does")
• raverbashing 13y ago
  Not necessarily, even though I concur that the UK border may be more "picky" than the US border But for example, there used to be some contention with Brazilians entering Europe through Spain (Madrid specifically) And there have been cases of Americans being denied entry in Europe even in friendly countries like Ireland
• wisty 13y ago
  > Australia under Tony Abbot runs concentration camps for victims of famine, civil war on Nauru They are called "refugee camps". And Australia has a reasonably high refugee intake. Unlike most countries, though, Australia resettles most of their refugees, so they aren't classified as "refugees" anymore. It's a pain finding the numbers, since everyone wants to talk about "refugees per head of population". There's hundreds of thousands of former refugees with PR or citizenship who aren't counting in Australia's "refugee population", because they've actually been resettled. Though you'd be perfectly justified in pointing out that Abbott cut the refugee intake, quite dramatically. Or that beating up on "boat people" was just making them a scapegoat, trying to placate the wider concern about overpopulation and immigration in general (which politicians won't touch, because the Treasury Intergenerational Report says Australia needs lots of young immigrants to keep the economy going as the baby boomers start going gaga).
  • jacalata 13y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. Refugee applications/admittals are normally counted per year. A refugee who was awarded citizenship/residency would be counted in that year. But there are very few of them (certainly not hundreds of thousands) since Howard introduced the TPV in '99, and anyway who cares? Do you also need to know how many Australians are descended from 1 pound Poms to see how many refugees we should allow in this year? Does the refugee policy in the '80s being reasonable somehow excuse how awful it is today? You should know that 'resettlement' actually means 'sending to a third country', and yes we do resettle more refugees than anyone but the USA and Canada. That doesn't get counted in our refugee population because we sent them to another country.
    • wisty 13y ago
      > Refugee applications/admittals are normally counted per year. Yes, but whenever someone says "Australia has less refugees than Germany", they are talking about total displaced persons. Germany rarely grants PR or citizenship to refugees, because they are mostly on TPVs (thus still refugees). > You should know that 'resettlement' actually means 'sending to a third country', and yes we do resettle more refugees than anyone but the USA and Canada. That doesn't get counted in our refugee population because we sent them to another country. Bullshit. Australia is the third country which they are resettled to. Australia (and the US, and Canada, and a couple of EU countries) accept the vast bulk of resettlements.
• crusso 13y ago
  Anglophone countries that have the shittiest attitude towards border control these days Meh, any Western hand-wringing about the evils of Anglophones has to be counter-balanced with the fact that net migration to those "evil" countries continues at a brisk pace, often illegally.
  • metaphorm 13y ago
    large difference between the immigration process, which usually begins months ahead of time in the foreign country first, and border security for a visitor. the U.S. has more open immigration policy than many other countries but it also has a really shitty and thuggish border security policy that is a direct consequence of the ongoing security theatre that we play at because of terrorism.
• asimeqi 13y ago
  You most probably hold a British passport which is a very valuable document. Let me tell you as a holder of a not as valuable passport, who needed a visa to get anywhere, how I have seen the world. I now live in the US. Before coming to US I visited many European countries. At the border of all those European countries I was treated as a criminal. I waited very long hours while people in front of me holding same kind of passports as me and then myself were interrogated like in a police interrogation. I missed connections because of those interrogations. In one case when I did make the connection, I heard the pilot of the plane speaking to passengers about how the delay was caused because of waiting for people of my nationality. Even people associated with people of my nationality were considered suspicious. A friend of mine was married to a Canadian man who had the same name as a famous American actor. When they tried to go together to one European country, that man was also interrogated for 2 hours by the border police because they thought his passport was fake. I was once traveling via train from European country A to European country B. I happened to be in a cabin with a man from country B. The border police of country B (this was before Schengen) took him outside the train and interrogated him for 30 minutes because they thought his passport was fake. He had a pocketful of documents, bank cards, credit cards, phone numbers of his family members etc. and the border police still were suspicious. I was so used to the long lines and humiliation that I thought they were normal for any border crossing. Then I traveled to US. Imagine my surprise when I got off the plane, walked a long corridor, passed by a drug detection dog, got into a huge room with many passport control booths, in 5 minutes found myself in one of them, the immigration officer asked me where I was going and what was the goal of my trip then stamped my passport and I-94 and I was done. Even if I didn't go anywhere from there, the trip was already a success. It made me feel like a human. In the time since then I have seen the checks in many European countries improve and in the meantime US has added the annoying process of fingerprinting, but in my view US border control still offers better human experience compared to European countries. I was once crossing the border from Canada to US and there was this old woman trying to get into US with an expired (like 30 years old) British passport. The border agents still found a way to let her in. Since Schengen she probably would be let into other European countries but I am sure before Schengen she wouldn't be able to go anywhere. I know that there are people who have negative experiences while trying to get into US as there are negative experiences for people trying to go anywhere, but I think most of the noise associated with them is unjustified and if US border control need improvements other countries need them even more.
• moocowduckquack 13y ago
  I'm from the UK and personally I think we are the last people who should be winging about immigration, given how much of the map we painted red.
• shirro 13y ago
  I admit I don't like Abbott but using terms like concentration camps isn't fair to Australia. We have a very multicultural country with large migrant intake and we take in a reasonable number of asylum seekers. We are a very desirable destination because of our standard of living and political and economic freedom. We can't just open our doors or we would be flooded and we barely have enough water for our current population in many of our southern cities. Australian's as a whole do not want to reward people smugglers or see kids drowning when their parents try and queue jump their way into the country on overcrowded leaky boats. Detention centres aren't a very humane way to deal with the problem and criticism is warranted but perhaps we should direct a bit more attention to the countries these people are escaping and the countries they transit.