http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUYGkVtqY-0

Australia’s Christmas Island detention center.

From time to time it’s useful to look at how other migration-destination countries deal with illegal immigration—if only so we can feel better about the United States. Case in point: human rights advocates have told Australia’s Parliament that the country has the harshest immigration detention system in the western world.

In a hearing held by the legislative body’s Joint Standing Committee on Migration, a university human rights expert decried abuse of children in custody, and a refugee advocate called for the abolition of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers.

Illegal immigrants who arrive in Australia by boat are sent to detention centers on remote islands, including Christmas Island. A group of detainees was held on Nauru for four years, before being released in 2005 due to a” decline in their mental health.”

Meanwhile, illegal immigrants from Afghanistan and Iran are being smuggled into Australia by human-traffickers, and Australian politicians are accusing one another of being soft on border security.

You might think that immigrants fleeing persecution in their home countries would face a fair system, but News 21’s Mira Jang found things to be radically different in a recent cover story for the Los Angeles CityBeat.

While some judges deny asylum in almost every case, others grant asylum even in the shakiest cases. From the story:

Immigration lawyers, judges, and advocates expressed frustration over a system that they say operates against the intended purpose of the asylum process. Instead of awarding deserving asylum-seekers the protection they need from persecution in their home countries, many immigration judges, they say, violate the process with their personal beliefs, unprofessional temperaments, and intellectual incompetence.

Go read the rest here.

(Wikipedia photo)