Right now there is an appeal seeking to have Australian citizens recognised by birth right.
Naively, I thought that if you were born in a country it became your homeland. I think most reasonable people would assume the same.

"The law says a child is recognised as a citizen if either of his or her parents is an Australian resident or citizen, according to an amendment to the Australian Citizenship Act in 1986."

"If we win it will backdate the law to before 1986. There would have been thousands of cases of foreign nationals who would have departed or [been] forcefully deported within that time. US, Canada, and New Zealand have no problem declaring everyone born in their country to be a citizen."
– Michaela Byers, Lawyer.

What’s the problem here? Is the government worried that people will give birth in Australia to claim the Maternity Payment which is currently $3079 per child?
Are they worried about too many children? Was the treasurer referring to bi-cultural or Asian or Muslim families when he said:

"You should have one for the father, one for the mother and one for the country. If you want to fix the ageing demographic, that’s what you do."

Or is this just another sinister, thinly veiled racist policy enforcement from this government through DIMIA?

Images from here

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Political, Welcome to my country. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Click to leave a comment.