A Dying Man’s Last Wish

A Pakistani student, Hassan Asif, who came to Australia to study architecture, was diagnosed with terminal skin cancer in July 2015 while he studying in the country. He had been receiving outreach palliative care right after the diagnosis. As his condition deteriorated, he was transferred to a specialist medical institution for intensive care. The doctors declared that he was in no condition to go back all the way to Pakistan to his family, although he had planned to go back to his home country someday and work as an architect.

Because he knew he was dying, and that he could not go back home, he made an appeal to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to allow his brother and mother to travel to Australia, so he could be with them as he dies.

In an emotional appeal, he requested that like anyone who has limited days left in the world, he would also want to spend this time with his family as his mother desperately wants to be with him during this time.

The fate of a Bangladeshi woman together with those of several thousands of other asylum seekers detained offshore could be decided today when the full bench of the High Court of Australia hands down its decision on the legitimacy of Australia’s offshore detention facilities.

For the past nine months, lawyers for the woman who was on a boat intercepted by Australian authorities in 2013, have argued it is illegal for the Australian Government to operate and pay for offshore detention in a third country, according to a report on the ABC.

The woman was initially detained offshore but was brought to Brisbane to give birth in late 2014. Her lawyers from the Human Rights Law Centre then filed an application to prevent authorities from taking the woman back to Nauru.

In a similar case in 2014, Australia's offshore processing operation in Papua New Guinea was upheld by the High Court. The court found in this case the law designating PNG as a regional processing country was valid under the aliens power in section 51 of the constitution.

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A lower birth rate and an ageing population means a diminishing tax base. How then is Australia going to support itself in the next few decades, if this continues?

The number of people aged between 15 and 64 for every older person has fallen from 7.3 in 1974-1975 to an estimated 4.5 this year. By 2054-55 that number is likely to be 2.7, according to Treasury statistics.

These figures presumably take into account current migration planning levels which have been set at 190,000 per year. But by the way things are going, it doesn’t look like it is enough.

Late last year, the ABS released statistics showing that the total birth-rate, or fertility rate, was 1.8 babies per woman. This rate is well below the replacement level of 2.1. Last year’s rate was lower than the 1.88 in 2013, and charts a downward trend evident for the past five years.

Altogether, 299,700 births were registered in Australia in 2014, down from 308,100 in 2013. For the first time the ABS mapped birth rates and found families in city centres have a much lower birth rates than outer suburbs, where the rate exceeds two children.

The refugee crises and what it means for the LGBTQI Asylum Seekers

In the times we live in, there are more people forcibly displaced by situations beyond their control. War, poverty, and climate change have caused more migrations than both World War I and World War II combined and in 2015, around 60 million people were forced to become refugees.

Many people among these refugees belong to the LGBTQI class (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Intersex), and Australia’s immigration policies directly create the conditions which increase the trouble these people have to go through during their migration. These conditions increase the harassment, exclusion, humiliation and violence against refugees who belong to the LGBTQI group.

It has to be kept in mind that these people are already coming from places where they have faced rejection and hurt by the general attitude against the LQBTQI community and have come to foreign lands to escape war, terrorism, and trauma.