Login / Join
Immigration Daily News #OperationForceBack protest in Melbourne tonight and tomorrow nightAustralian Immigration Daily News
Breaking Australian immigration news brought to you by Migration Alliance and associated bloggers. Please email help@migrationalliance.com.au
- Font size: Larger Smaller
- Hits: 5200
- 6 Comments
#OperationForceBack protest in Melbourne tonight and tomorrow night
Latest news on #OperationForceBack: Controversial Australian Border Force visa checks, Operation Fortitude cancelled
Migration Alliance encourages Australians to protest by way of civil disobedience by way of unwarranted and excessive show of force. We are calling the protest #OperationForceBack
Officers from the Australian Border Force (ABF) will be positioned across Melbourne tonight and tomorrow night and have said that they will be speaking with anyone they cross paths with.
Under s189 of the Migration Act 1958 an officer must 'reasonably suspect' someone before they stop and search them. Under the Migration Act, there is not a broad power to stop and search a person without suspicion.
The ABF can't issue a general warrant to cover the whole of the Melbourne CBD to in-effect give themselves 'open access' to the general public.
These powers are reminiscent of those exhibted in Europe before WWII. The world has moved on since then.
Migration Alliance encourages Australians to protest by way of civil disobedience by way of unwarranted and excessive show of force. We are calling the protest #OperationForceBack
1. Do not answer questions or engage in talk with the ABF this weekend. It will be a feeding frenzy for the tort lawyers, who will spend all of next week defending false imprisonment clients.
2. If you see an ABF officer questioning or talking to a member of the public, get your phone out and use your phone to video the detention and/or questioning of that person. Send the footage to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Migration Alliance will refer all the footage to solicitors for a class action.
ABF announcement on twitter, above.
For anyone who is unlawful or concerned about getting caught, please understand that "by overstaying your visa or by failing to comply with a visa condition you do not commit any criminal offence, with the exception of working without permission" says Accredited Specialist Immigration Lawyer, Christopher Levingston.
Welcome to Australia! Welcome to Stasiland!
Twitter feeds now displaying #AustralianBorderFarce
Image from Twitter today above.
Media: Please call Liana Allan on 0405188262.
Comments
-
Friday, 28 August 2015The chaos in Melbourne's CBD has apparently forced DIBP to cancel "Operation Fortitude": http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2015/aug/28/protest-against-border-force-visa-crackdown-shuts-melbourne-streets-live
-
Friday, 28 August 2015I'm not in principle in complete opposition to the concept. However I am concerned on what criteria that the department will use to "stop and question" people on the street. What constitutes reasonable suspicion? Are they just going to stop people who do not have blonde hair and blue eyes? Bearing in mind that some of these people may actually be the unlawful non citizens as opposed to the swarthy looking Indian or Australian born Chinese whose ancestors arrived during the Gold rush of the 1850s. Is there any transparency on the criteria or is this a Stalinist initiative which will give an inordinate amount of power to a government department public servant exercising dubious decision making without accountability?
-
Friday, 28 August 2015
Australian Border Force! "Force" is that an appropriate use of a word, is 95% of what they do "service"?
This is Australia, land of the (not so) free.
It seems clear that the ABF have lost their way. This is not a "Police State" - we are not at war (at least I don't think we are?)
This is not the USSR in the 60's nor is it Germany in the 30's. My Father fought for a free country, free of oppression and military dictatorship. The Third Reich came to power in 1934 on "softer policies" than those they were infamous for between 1939-45.
We are all cognisant of the need to protect our borders and to ensure visa holders are "compliant" (what a dreadful forceful word) with visa conditions but let us not loose sight of the fact that most visa holders are decent and honest people, not many spray grafitti, trash store windows, steal cars, deal drugs, pimp out international students so why are we targeting any visa holder? As Chris points out, despite what others may think, nearly all breaches are NOT criminal.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 - 183?) wrote "Napoleon for the sake of a good name, broke into pieces, half the world"! -
Friday, 28 August 2015
Not much different between us and the Nazis.
-
Friday, 28 August 2015
"Is there any transparency on the criteria or is this a Stalinist initiative which will give an inordinate amount of power to a government department public servant exercising dubious decision making without accountability?"
What's the surprise? Its already happening for years, called GTE. Just made no noise so far as most of the rejected are offshore and have no voice for themselves. And for the record, I've seen many blue eyed blonds refused on fabricated grounds, so at least we all can be sure the system is uniformly discriminating against everyone, only the power-trip is well and alive.
Immigration blog
I should be ready to carry my passport and Ipad to conduct a VEVO check on myself when requested!
this is such a great idea, I can almost faintly hear the goose stepping boots chanting in the background and saying "Kristallnacht"