Stories in the media over the weekend reported that the Turnbull Government has reached an agreement with the United States to resettle the approximately 1800 people who are currently being held at "off-shore processing centres" on Nauru and Manus Island to the United States.

The outlines of this agreement can be found, among other places, in this story in the Sydney Morning Herald.

According to the SMH article, the people who are being held on Manus Island and Nauru will be given the opportunity to go to the United States or to "repatriate". Otherwise, they will be given the option of a 20-year visa to remain on Nauru. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has expressed confidence that this agreement will be implemented, notwithstanding the outcome of the recent presidential election because it is an "agreement with the United States". 

However, other media reports suggest that the Prime Minister's confidence that this agreement will be honoured may very well be overly optimistic.

After all, many of the asylum-seekers who are on Manus Island and Nauru are from Iraq and Afghanistan, and are of the Muslim faith. 

And has not President-elect Trump not infamously called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States"? (Might I not observe that this demand by Mr Trump stands in utter conflict with principles of religious liberty which have been a hallmark of the United States since the time that the Mayflower arrived at the Plymouth Colony in 1620, not to mention principles of Constitutional law that have been enshrined in the Bill of Rights, not to mention the Refugees Convention?)

Well, here's another article in today's SMH where a person who is described as the leader of an anti-immigration think-tank and Trump supporter in the United States is quoted as saying that he believes that this agreement will be "dead on arrival" and will not be accepted by the incoming Trump administration.

There have also been news reports that there has been a wave of anti-Muslim violence in the United States since the US election last week. 

In light of these reports, one has to wonder if it really would comport with Australia's international obligations under the Convention to send the asylum seekers to the US. In view of what is happening over there, is there not some significant risk that the asylum-seekers would be subject to persecution in the United States on the basis of religion? (I find it tragic that as a person with origins in the United States I find myself writing such a sentence!)

What is clear is that Mr Trump seems fully committed to the anti-immigration agenda on which he ran his election campaign. Here's another report from the media that Trump intends to carry through on his pledge to work to immediately deport or incarcerate 2 - 3 million "undocumented immigrants" when he takes office. 

It surely appears that all sides of politics in Australia have finally agreed that it is time to put an end to the off-shore processing regime on Nauru and Manus.

But it's a really live question as to whether this agreement will be able to be carried out, or whether it will be blocked by Trump.

Whatever happened to those famous and inspiring words of the poet Emma Lazarus that are inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and that are taught to every schoolchild in America as a lesson in the American values of religious freedom, tolerance, and welcome to immigrants from all corners of the world:

"Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Lady Liberty weeps.

Thoughts?