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 Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees
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By David Crawshaw
October 02, 2007 07:13pm
THE UN has contradicted Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' argument that Sudanese refugees are having trouble adapting to Australian life.
Mr Andrews said today Sudanese refugees appeared to have "greater challenges" than other migrants who had come to Australia, as he defended the Government's decision to slash the intake of African refugees.
Despite the Darfur crisis in Sudan, the Australian Government has allocated just 30 per cent of refugee places to Africans this year, down from 70 per cent in 2004-05.
"We were concerned about the rate of settlement of some communities in Australia," Mr Andrews told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
Many Sudanese had lived through a decade of conflict and had lived in refugee camps for long periods, he said.
"Their level of education, on average, is about grade three levels compared to three or four years' more education for most other refugees that have come to Australia," he said.
"We don't do them any service if we bring them to Australia and we're not able to help them properly settle in this country."
The minister's comments come a week after the fatal bashing of Sudanese refugee Liep Gony, 18, near a Melbourne train station.
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said refugees should be accepted based on their need for protection, not their ability to integrate.
"UNHCR is not aware of any empirical evidence that suggests there are integration difficulties associated with Sudanese compared with any other comparatively newly arrived group of refugees," a UNHCR spokeswoman said.
"Indeed, we note previous comments by the Victorian police ... that Sudanese people are under-represented in crime statistics.
"UNHCR hopes that the doors will remain open to refugees from any part of the world on the basis of their need for protection, not on the basis of race, religion, nationality or perceptions about their ability to integrate."
Marion Le, from the Independent Council for Refugee Advocacy, challenged Mr Andrews to provide hard evidence of Sudanese failing to adapt to life in Australia.
"It's rather mean-spirited to say we're going to switch (away from Africans) because they haven't done as well as we hope," Ms Le said.
About 13,000 refugees are expected to settle in Australia this year.
Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria chairman Phong Nguyen said the refugee program should be based on need, and the greatest need was in Africa, where millions were stuck in refugee camps.
Refugee Council chief executive Paul Power said Mr Andrews had linked ability to settle in Australia to a person's race rather than their circumstances.
Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett said Mr Andrews was pandering to a Hansonite view of African refugees and appeared happy to smear them to try to snare votes.
Labor argued some migrants from all backgrounds had trouble integrating into Australian life – not just Africans.
Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said refugees and humanitarian entrants needed better support to help them settle into Australia, particularly through improved English training and job opportunities.
Mr Burke's comments came as it emerged up to 18 Sudanese were thought to be living in a two-bedroom house in suburban Canberra.
The case, revealed by Ms Le, followed another case in Canberra in which seven African people, including children and a pregnant woman, were sharing a one-bedroom flat.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22520679-29277,00.html#
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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TENSION in Tamworth, NSW, over Sudanese refugees in the community is set to ignite again, with two of the new arrivals yesterday pleading guilty to maliciously wounding a former co-worker.
Elfatah Yacub El-Haj and Mou Bol Alak admitted attacking two fellow refugees with a bottle and a hammer during a late-night home invasion in Tamworth last year.
A third Sudanese man, Mayan Achiek Toul, who is accused of waving a knife around and threatening to kill an occupant of the house, also intends to plead guilty to malicious wounding and assault.
The trio was living in Tamworth at the time of the incident and attacked the men who had previously worked with them at a local abattoir.
There had been friction among the group because the attackers had been dismissed from their positions at the Peel Valley Abattoir.
One of the victims was struck in the head with a broken bottle and a hammer during the attack while another received stomach wounds.
Ater Maker Ater, 25, who received cuts to his fingers, told police he believed he was attacked because he still held a job at the abattoir and his assailants did not.
Tamworth Council last year voted to reject a request to take further refugees from nations such as Sudan, Somalia and the Congo.
At the time, Tamworth Mayor James Trelour said the city was struggling with the 15 refugees it already had, stating they were having problems assimilating.
But, amid claims of racism, Mr Trelour was forced to apologise this month, announcing the council would work to accept a further five Sudanese families.
During a plea hearing in the District Court yesterday, Judge Greg Woods referred to the controversy.
"Are there any complications likely to arise out of this matter with Tamworth?" the judge asked.
"I know from the current publicity that there have been matters aired in public in Tamworth which may cause some excitement about this matter.
"Is there anything in it that requires me to make it a condition of bail they don't go back to Tamworth?"
The court was told it was already part of the mens' bail conditions that they remain in Sydney and not travel back to Tamworth.
"I think that would be more prudent," the judge said.
All three men were granted bail.
Toul will re-appear in court today when he is likely to enter pleas.
The two other men will face a sentencing hearing in March.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Australia shuts door to Africa
By Ben Packham and Peter Jean
October 03, 2007 01:00am
THE Howard Government yesterday slammed the door shut on refugees from Africa.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said that no more Africans would be allowed into Australia under the humanitarian refugee program until at least July next year.
And he said there were no guarantees any Africans would be accepted in the next intake. Announcing a move critics slammed as simplistic and inhumane, Mr Andrews said the program's quota for Africans had already been filled.
"We won't be considering any new applications until June or July next year," he said.
Australia has already accepted, or is processing, about 3900 Africans this year - 30 per cent of the total humanitarian refugee intake.
This quota was cut from 50 per cent in 2005-06 and 70 per cent in 2004-05, due to what Mr Andrews said were concerns about Africans' ability to integrate.
"Whether we leave it at 30 per cent or take it up or down will depend very much on whether we are having success in terms of their integration into the broader community, and what other humanitarian refugee needs there are around the world," he said.
Africans are being replaced in the program by Iraqi refugees from camps in Syria and Jordan and Burmese awaiting resettlement in camps in Thailand.
Mr Andrews said Africans, particularly Sudanese, had experienced serious problems settling in Australia.
"They tend to have more problems and challenges associated with them. Their level of education, for example, is a lot lower than for any other group of refugees," he said.
"They've been in war-torn conflict for a decade, many of them. Many are young and many have been in refugee camps for decades.
"It doesn't make much sense to me to acknowledge you have a problem but not actually slow down the rate of intake until you've dealt with it," he said.
But senior federal Labor MP Alan Griffin attacked the Government's move as "a simplistic approach".
"I think the real issue here is what's being done in terms of support services, and I think this Government's been pretty ordinary when it comes to providing support services."
"The nature of refugees is that there are almost always going to be issues," he said.
And Ethnic Communities chairman Phong Nguyen said it was wrong for the Government to turn its back on millions waiting in African refugee camps.
"It is simply inhumane for the Australian Government to close the door on these people based on perceptions that some African refugees are not integrating into the Australian community," he said.
Mr Nguyen compared the prejudice faced by Sudanese refugees to that faced by Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s.
"I feel for them because I was one of the Vietnamese refugees coming here more than 30 years ago," he said.
The move follows a series of incidents involving refugees from war-torn Sudan.
Liep Gony, a 19-year-old Sudanese refugee, last week died after being beaten near Noble Park railway station.
In August the Federal Government announced that all new refugees will have to sit an "integration test".
The new gateway test - which was developed with African refugees in mind - will assess their ability to adapt to the Australian way of life.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Tamworth rejects Sudanese refugees
By Rob Taylor
December 15, 2006 02:54pm
A GROUP of Sudanese refugees has been refused residence in Australia's most "Friendly Town" because of fears they could spark a repeat of the race riots that gripped Sydney a year ago.
City officials in the NSW city of Tamworth said today they had rejected residency for five Sudanese families because they could stir racial unrest in the city, 260km northwest of Sydney.
"We need to change the (refugee) program significantly because of the cultural difference of African people, things such as their respect of women in their community," Mayor James Treloar told Reuters, dismissing fears of a divisive race row.
Tamworth in January hosts Australia's largest country music festival and recently won a tourism award naming the busy rural hub as the country's premier "Friendly Town".
But Mr Treloar said local people and some "redneck elements" had aired concerns at a council meeting about 12 other Sudanese already living in the city, saying most had come before local courts for crimes ranging from dangerous driving to rape.
"They will not take a direction from authorities, so we've got a fairly significant cultural problem," he said, adding that health services for Tamworth's 40,000 population were already stretched.
Local churches said they would launch a petition calling on the council to reverse its decision, which was a response to an immigration department programme to resettle refugees in regional areas to help reverse a drift of Australians to major cities.
Several councillors and business leaders said they would try to overturn the decision, arguing that the arrival of the refugees would not fuel the kind of tensions that led to last December's Sydney beach riots where mainly-white surfers battled Lebanese-Australians.
"It will reflect on Tamworth and I feel it will be somewhat of a negative effect. To say that we can't provide for another five families is I think a bit ridiculous," Tamworth Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Max Cathcart said on ABC radio.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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A LAWYER for Australia's Sudanese community has threatened a Victorian university with legal action if it publishes an article by a controversial Sydney-based law professor
Called `Rethinking the White Australia Policy?, the 6,800-word article was written by Associate Professor Andrew Fraser, who's been banned from teaching at Sydney's Macquarie University after making racist remarks.
The Canadian-born academic wrote a letter to his local suburban newspaper in July, claiming Australia was becoming a Third World colony by allowing non-white immigration. He claimed Africans had low IQs and that their migration increased crime.
Prof Fraser said ``a rising ruling class of Asians'' threatened the social, political and economic interests of ``ordinary'' Australians, and he also publicly supported an anti-refugee campaign by neo-Nazi group White Pride Coalition.
Lawyer George Newhouse today warned Deakin University to scrap plans to publish Prof Fraser's contentious views in its next law journal.
``I am shocked that a university would even want to publish something along these lines,'' he said.
``I put the university on notice that if they repeat the racial vilification, a claim for compensation may be made against the university and the editors that publish or republish this poison.''
Mr Newhouse said he had already commenced proceedings on behalf of the Sudanese Darfurian community in the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
``In respect of Mr Fraser's racial vilification surely it is not appropriate to publish his slander whilst proceedings are on foot,'' Mr Newhouse said.
``If the journal persists in publishing racial vilification they would be joining in the racial vilification.''
A spokesperson from Deakin University said there were no plans to scrap the article.
``At this stage it is one of the articles that will be included the October edition,'' he said.
Prof Fraser's work was assessed by two respected academics before it was accepted, the spokesman said.
``Because the law journal is a legal publication of some standing, the articles are peer reviewed,'' he said.
``They might not agree or disagree with the content, but they see this work as a considered position of some academic standing.''
But Mr Newhouse said the work promoted racism and intolerance.
``This is not about academic freedom, it goes to the heart of the right of all Australians to live together in peace and harmony,'' he said.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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The Sudanese took me over
By Joe Hildebrand
October 20, 2007 12:00am
The Daily Telegraph
THE truth is that everything was going just great for me until I got taken over by the Sudanese.
I had a steady job, a nice girl who used to make me waffles on Saturdays and a cool yet mutually respectful relationship with my father.
That all changed once the Sudanese overran me. Soon I started staying out late, dabbling in exotic fruits and listening to free-form jazz.
I wasn't the only one. My mother was fighting a courageous battle with cancer using nothing but bircher muesli and meditation - then the Sudanese hit town.
They left nothing but ashes in their wake. The locals still call them "Burners of great fire".
My mother was mercifully left alive, thank God, but the cancer was gone and with it her last chance of meeting Pat Rafter.
It was then I realised that hard decisions had to be made. We had to get the Sudanese out of the country before they killed again. We couldn't repeat the same mistake we'd made with the Irish.
There was only one small problem. The country I was in at the time was Sudan. Luckily I checked again and it turned out to be western Sydney - and there was silly old me wondering why the white people were failing to integrate properly. Whoops!
Despite this, my mind was clear: They had to go.
Firstly, they were flooding the country with drugs. This would not have been a problem if they had distributed them all around the country but, no, they had to give them all to Ben Cousins.
Now not only has the country lost a great footballer but millions of impressionable young people will never know that it's cool to take drugs.
That of course was not the only devastation wreaked upon Australia's sporting pride by the Sudanese.
When the Wallabies were knocked out of the Rugby World Cup there was not one - I repeat, not one - try or goal scored by a Sudanese player.
Talk about lazy.
And then there's the violence. Every Sydneysider remembers where they were that day in December 2005 when they ran riot in Cronulla, their chests emblazoned with those immortal words of menace: "We flew here, you grew here."
On a personal level, as I have already said, my life has also been shattered. See, that's the thing about the Sudanese: They're everywhere but there's never one around when you need them. When my mum took my dog Barney and sent him to bisexual dog heaven, who was there to stop her?
Was there a Sudanese guard at the veterinary clinic waving pro-life placards that day?
No, there was not.
And when my parents' marriage was falling apart, was there a Sudanese social worker on call to tell my dad to stop shagging his banjo student?
No, there was not.
And, for all their wanton violence, was there a Sudanese kid at my high school to stop Daniel Taylor from bashing me up at the outside lockers?
Well, yes, there was actually but the pacifist ####### just sat there eating his lunch.
And so I wholeheartedly support the Federal Government's decision to stop the amount of Sudanese "refugees" coming to Australia.
It's good for society and, more importantly, would probably place downward pressure on interest rates.
My only other request would be for the Government to also get rid of other anti-social elements in the community.
As a starting point may I suggest:
WIL Anderson (Sorry Wil, I just can't get over it);
THE remaining Daddo brothers;
BOTH Karl Rove and Rove McManus, just to be on the safe side;
ALL celebrity chefs;
MARK Holden;
MARK Holden again, just to be on the safe side;
EVERYONE who's ever been on Big Brother;
EVERYONE who's ever wanted to go on Big Brother, even secretly when no one else is around;
WHOEVER makes cabbage;
MY FIRST girlfriend Kristy, who dumped me for her ex-boyfriend Mike even though he never really loved her the way I did;
MISSY Higgins;
THE guy from The Chaser with the stupid hair who doesn't like Princess Di. I mean, seriously, who doesn't like Princess Di?
PARENTS who give their children ecstasy and then use them to get into nightclubs
DARRIN'S rampant homosexuality; and lastly
DARRIN
I think that should just about do it.
Oh, and Kevin Andrews too. He might be a nice enough bloke but he looks like one of those eight-year-old kids who gets possessed by Satan in Monday night telemovies.
And, surely, looks are enough?
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Herald Sun
October 11, 2007 12:15pm
AUSTRALIA needs to turn its focus to accepting refugees from Asia, particularly Burma, rather than from Sudan, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews last week cut the number of Sudanese refugees coming to Australia following concerns that they were failing to integrate and were becoming involved in crime.
Mr Downer said there were 25 million people classified as refugees around the world each year.
He said Australia took in 13,000 of those every year, which was "very generous'' by international standards.
"I think it would be normal for Australia as an Asia-Pacific country to give particular emphasis to Asia and particular emphasis to Burma at this time,'' Mr Downer told ABC Radio.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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'You are a black dog'
By Chris McCall
Sydney - Sudanese refugee Ajang Deng was riding his bike home when a group of white men attacked him with a beer bottle in the latest in a spate of racist attacks that could play a role in Australia's looming election.
The attacks followed a controversial statement by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, who last month blamed African refugees for gang violence, saying they had difficulty integrating into Australian society.
Critics say the comment was at best ill-informed, at worst racist, and noted that it came during early campaigning for the country's general election scheduled for November 24.It followed a widely publicised video of an attack in a shop in which a Sudanese man died.
Witnesses say the video, widely cited as an example of Sudanese "gang" violence, in fact showed violence by white Australians towards Sudanese.
Deng, 17, came to Australia last year under a refugee programme from a camp in Kenya with his half-brother Teng, having fled southern Sudan where his father Gor was killed in the troubled country's long-running war.
The pair was riding home through a Melbourne suburb on October 9 when a group of four young men attacked them, shouting "You are a black dog" and knocking Ajang Deng off his bike before knocking him unconscious with a beer bottle.
"After that I don't know what happened," Deng told AFP.
He woke up seven hours later in hospital with a serious head injury.
Bill Kour, spokesperson for the Sudanese Lost Boys Association of Australia, said the spate of attacks began with Andrews' comment.
"When I heard that comment by Kevin Andrews I was shocked because I thought that someone like him could not say that," said Kour.
Two days after the attack on Deng, Kour said he was targeted at a bus stop he had used for five years, where he was well known and accepted despite his race in this predominantly white country.
"Two people just came up me and they are just abusing me," he said. "Now everything changed. That incited this hatred towards me and my people."
A spokesperson for Andrews could not be contacted for comment.
Australia last month reduced its intake of African refugees from 70 percent of the annual total of 13 000 to 30 percent, leaving many refugees already in the country unable to bring close family members over for months.
Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government has in the past played on fears of asylum-seekers effectively at election time, with his 2001 election victory ascribed to a tough stance on a boatload of Afghan and Iraqi refugees.
But analysts say the issue is largely a spent force politically, as most voters who would be alienated by the government's stance have already been alienated and the impact this year should be no greater than at the last election in 2004.
"I think Howard alienated a certain group of people a while ago. I think those people were just as alienated last time as this time," said veteran political commentator Malcolm Mackerras.
However, refugee activists are concerned about what official pandering to such views may mean.
It is now several years since Pauline Hanson's anti-immigration "One Nation" party shocked Australia's Asian neighbours by picking up parliamentary seats, but Hanson is running again in this election.
In late 2005, racist riots in Sydney's beachside suburb of Cronulla made worldwide headlines, with the fact that no one died largely ascribed to tough and effective policing at the time.
Human rights activist Marion Le said Andrews' comments may embolden racist white Australians, who might go further than they would otherwise dare.
"He allows them to feel justified in calling people names or spitting on people in the street," said Le.
While it was not likely to be a major election issue, Le said it could alienate a small number in the refugee community who have obtained Australian citizenship and can now vote, who would have voted for Howard's Liberal party.
"I think it will have an effect where there are lots of African immigrants. (But) a lot of people coming in under a Liberal government will vote Liberal because they feel grateful," she said. - Sapa-AFP
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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| Quote: "UNHCR hopes that the doors will remain open to refugees from any part of the world on the basis of their need for protection, not on the basis of race, religion, nationality or perceptions about their ability to integrate |
ُEver since the modern societies have codified the right of asylem and refugee acts, the notion has been articulated over the need for protection rather than any other human capabilities.
The Australian Minister of Immigration statement about the Sudanese brings to mind the old bigotry that has come to haunt the black communities in a number of predominantly white societies
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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An appeal to Minister Andrews
Thursday, 11 October 2007
Sudanese community member Gatwech Puoch writes:
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrew’s remarks last week -- about Sudanese people facing difficulties to integrate and adjust into Australian mainstream community, and the reduction of Sudanese refugee and special humanitarian intake to 30% -- were received with great disappointment by many Africans, particularly the "Sudanese" all over Australia.
Mr Andrews’ timing was utterly inappropriate. It came down like a storm as the Sudanese community was grieving the tragic murder of young Sudanese Liep Gony at Noble Park train station on 26 September by people likely to be from "white community". This has had a huge effect on Sudanese community members across Victoria.
We are concerned that the Sudanese will become a potential target of the ill-informed racist minority in the mainstream community who will incorrectly interpret the Minister’s statement by pouring their fury onto the Sudanese people. If not addressed urgently, significantly increased racial discrimination and social vilification in public places as well as in schools, will severely affect our children and young people being educated in Australia.
In my opinion the Minister shouldn’t blame the Sudanese community for integration difficulties, because he is the minister responsible for the refugee integration and their wellbeing in their new home – Australia.
What he should contemplate is the fact that Sudanese people are the most recent incumbent community in Australia, we’ve been here less than ten years, compared with other refugee communities.
The Sudanese community came to Australia as a result of protracted civil war (1983-2005) and underwent difficult circumstances. Consequently, I believe the minister should acknowledge the naked fact that these new members of our Australian society still have the post-war symptoms that include trauma, depression, grief and loss, guilt and shame.
The young people who are now the victims of crime are a disadvantaged generation with a history of interrupted education – in fact many have not had an opportunity to attend regular school in their lifetime at all. So they require extra support in Australia.
To me and to many refugee experts, integration has prerequisites, like language learning. But we need more than the 510 hours that the immigration minister offers to adequately equip the new arrived refugee with the skills to integrate in wider community. We also need to learn about the culture and the lifestyle of the host country.
The Sudanese community should not be blamed entirely for lack of integration. Instead, questions should be raised about what the government and various service providers are doing to encourage that integration.
In conclusion, we applaud the enormous support and advocacy from the diverse Australian community who are trying to force the minister to withdraw his decision of reducing the Sudanese humanitarian intake.
We appeal to the Minister and the government to establish dialogue with Australian-Sudanese people and publicly remove the negative perceptions within the mainstream community generated by his statements.
Send your tips to [email protected]
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Herald Sun
Lock out these refugee thugs
Australia's humanitarian program has allowed thousands of Sudanese refugees to come to Australia in recent years.
But there are growing doubts about the wisdom of the decision, especially with the rise of gangs of Sudanese youths and drunk drivers.
There are about 18,000 Sudanese in Victoria, with many traumatised by their experience of civil war -- and the challenge of living in a Western society.
A Sunday Herald Sun survey of 400 cases at magistrates' courts across Melbourne found 14 per cent of offenders came from the Horn of Africa and the Middle East -- many of them refugees -- about 20 times the representative proportion of the population.
"Australia has one of the most generous humanitarian resettlement programs in the world at 13,000 a year," Mr Andrews said yesterday.
"But immigration is a process, not an event.
"Successful immigration requires integration into the broader community."
A high-profile court case this week highlighted the crime spree of a Sudanese man, Hakeem Hakeem, 21, who raped two teenage girls and an elderly women in a drunken, drug-fuelled episode. He was sentenced to 24 years in jail.
Hakeem had been in Australia for only one month before committing the crimes. The proposed new policy would focus on settling refugees from the Asia Pacific region.
Sudanese elders believe their community is being unjustly targeted.
The elders yesterday blamed failures in Australian welfare and education systems for crimes in the community.
Jago Adongjak, an educator at the South Eastern Region Migrant Resource Centre and an elder of Melbourne's 7000-strong Sudanese community, said many fellow migrants who had escaped the war-torn nation were facing a different conflict in Australia.
"I came here because there was a war in Sudan and I was a target for the junta," Mr Adongjak said.
"I was expecting a peaceful land of opportunity -- and there are opportunities -- but we are also facing a battle here, to survive."
Mr Adongjak dismissed claims the community did not respect or trust authorities as much as other cultures and had drink-drive issues.
"The Sudanese are not as bad as we are portrayed," he said.
"We know because we have just had a meeting with the police and they told us according to their statistics the Sudanese are not anywhere near the worst community for crime in Victoria.
"And I know because I live in the community.
"On the issue of drink-driving, I would not say the Sudanese are exceptional either."
The major cause of crime and restlessness in the community was disadvantage, he said. Large families did not receive adequate housing, with several children sharing small rooms.
Children struggled at school because they only had nine months to learn English before being put in classes based on their age, rather than ability.
Parents also found it hard to provide because their professional qualifications were not recognised, so they had to settle for lower-paid jobs, Mr Adongjak said.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Adelaide Now
Sudan refugees plead for more support
MSUDANESE refugees in Australia have accused the Federal Government of failing to provide them with sufficient support to find work and establish themselves in their new communities.Mary Mamour, 37, who fled Sudan for Australia in 2003 but remains unemployed, said that, apart from English classes, there were few services available to her.
Ms Mamour, who lives in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown with her three sons, said the support provided by Centrelink was undermined by the fact many refugees could not read or use a computer.
"We have many people who want jobs but they can't find them ... (they would) work for a chicken company or meat company, or any work - a cleaner," Ms Mamour said.
Blacktown is home to about 3000 refugees from Sudan, and NSW Labor MP Paul Gibson said many of their children had not previously been to school, yet were expected to survive in school here without sufficient support, such as transitional classes.
One of the architects of Australia's multicultural policy, Jerzy Zubrzycki, said black African refugees were at particular risk under the current administration. Arrivals from Africa are expected to account for about half Australia's 13,000 refugee and humanitarian intake in 2006-07, down from about 70per cent in 2004-05.
Like the influx of people from Lebanon after the outbreak of civil war in 1975, East African refugees are fleeing conflict and suffer cultural obstacles to their integration.
"Because we did not provide sufficiently for those who came in the 1970s and 1980s, we had the riots in Cronulla," said Professor Zubrzycki, a former immigration policy adviser to Liberal and Labor governments.
The federal Opposition has warned the Government against repeating the mistakes of the past in failing to provide sufficient support for refugees, or risk reaping "a bitter future harvest".
Opposition multicultural affairs spokesman Laurie Ferguson said inadequate support and the decision to concentrate large numbers of the refugees in a few urban areas had led to social dysfunction.
"The fact very few resources are provided to help in the settlement of refugees will form the basis for long-term social problems," he said.
But an Immigration Department spokesman said support for refugees now was "more streamlined, systematic and well-co-ordinated" than that provided in the 1970s.
The spokesman said refugees were provided with household goods, English classes, access to literacy and numeracy education and access to funding for other activities.
,No support ... Mary Mamour, a Sudanese refugee, says the Australian Government doesn't do enough to help refugees establish themselves in their new communities. Picture: James Croucher / News Limited newspapers
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Sudanese race row clouds Australia election
By Rob Taylor
MOOROOKA, Australia, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Alsiddig Mohamed is angry and, like thousands of Sudanese living in one of Australia's election-turning swing seats, he wants the conservative government to know and feel it.
Mohamed, 41, is unhappy about racial overtones in the campaign for the Nov. 24 election, after the conservative government froze its refugee intake from Africa, blaming crime and a gang culture amongst Sudanese arrivals
The announcement has shocked Moorooka in the Queensland seat of Moreton, an ethnically-diverse electorate with African, Chinese and Indian immigrants. It is held by Prime Minister John Howard's conservatives by a tight 2.8 percent margin
"I wanted to start life again, but now the government has made us very angry. Everyone from the African community is very angry and we all want Labor to win," the softly spoken Mohamed, who calls himself Adam, tells Reuters over a breakfast pancake.
Moreton is one of at least four seats tipped to change hands to Labor's Kevin Rudd in his home Queensland state, which election analysts say is key to toppling Howard's 11- year government.Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews was pointing mainly to problems in the southern city of Melbourne, where a Sudanese teenager was recently bashed to death, when he called the freeze
But Moreton's local member of parliament, conservative Gary Hardgrave, joined the ensuing debate, saying his community was "exhausted" by Sudanese arrivals totalling 6,000 in Queensland.
Also fuelling race accusations is former firebrand lawmaker Pauline Hanson, who attracted almost a million votes with her anti Asian-immigration views at the height of her rise in 1998.
Hanson is running again for a Senate seat in Queensland, this time on a platform to stop Muslim immigration. While few analysts give her any chance of winning a seat, she has backed the government's position on African and Sudanese refugees.
"You can't bring people into the country who are incompatible with our way of life and culture. They get around in gangs and there is escalating crime that is happening," she said.
QUEENSLAND CRUCIAL
Australia is a nation of immigrants with one in four of the 21 million population born overseas. It expects to take in around 165,000 migrants this year including 13,000 refugees, now to come from closer to home including Myanmar and other parts of Asia.
Howard has won four straight elections with his tough stand on illegal immigration and push for "Australian" values, with undercurrents of nationalism.
Labor currently holds just six of the 29 lower house seats in the northern tropical "Sunshine State". Labor's Rudd needs to win 16 more seats to win power on Nov. 24, with polls showing he has a solid election-winning lead over Howard.
Howard, 68, said it was "contemptible" to suggest his government was playing race politics to win the election. But Moorooka voters see it differently and many are furious about the targeting of the Sudanese community.
In a small arcade, shoe shop owner Geoff Richters, 67, says the only crimes the Sudanese are guilty of are being loud and culturally different as they gossip on the footpath.
"They are the most delightful people, and smart. They know how to run a business. I've been here 13 years and I'm one of only two white-owned shops left," he says.
Mohamed spent four years in a remote outback jail for illegal immigrants after arriving by boat from Malaysia, working as a camp chef until his 2001 release allowed him to open the Umdorman Cafe on the outskirts of Brisbane in northern Queensland state.
A fence separates his Sudanese-dominated side of the highway from mostly white-owned shops across the street, but cultural differences are easing with time, he says, which conservative MP Hardgrave will soon find out.
"I think it will be very bad here for the government," he says.
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Re: Australia: Integration difficulties associated with Sudanese Refugees (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has branded Federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews as a politically-motivated racist for criticising Sudanese refugees
Mr Andrews says concerns about crime, gangs and tensions between African families have led to a cut in the number of African refugees accepted into Australia
Ms Bligh says the comments sound as though they have come out of America's deep south in the 1950s
"There is no more pure form of racism, and to have it come out of the mouth of the Immigration Minister of this country is something that I think Australians will see for what it is - a very transparent and desperate act in the lead up to a federal election," she said
Ms Bligh says she is shocked by the Immigration Minister's sweeping generalisations about Sudanese refugees
She says police statistics do not show a higher rate of criminal activity among Sudanese immigrants
"I've become very familiar with this community and to have them so viciously attacked by the Federal Immigration Minister is going to be very hurtful and painful to people who are trying to rebuild their lives after some of the most traumatic experiences that can be imagined," she said
Queensland Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney says Ms Bligh should butt out of federal issues and focus on running the state
Mr Seeney has refused to weigh into the debate, and says the Premier should have done the same
"I'm not going to buy into the argument either, I'm interested in the Queensland Government issues that I think the Premier should be concerning herself with," he said
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Mohamed Omer
JOK BIONG
الفاتح ميرغني
يوسف الولى
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست