It must have come as a shock to his conservative Australian fans. Appearing on ABCTV's Q&A panel in April, conservative humorist P. J. O'Rourke turned his acidic wit on fellow conservatives who wanted to limit the number of asylum seekers entering the country.
While his fellow panellist, deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop frothed at the mouth about how 'since last August there has been an increase in the number of people arriving by boat' and how 'the people smugglers are back in business', P. J. had this to say:
'You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do. I mean 36,000 you said in Italy? ... We laugh. That's a day in the United States. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know ... the thing is when somebody gets on an exploding boat to come over here — they're willing to do that to get to Australia — you're missing out on some really good Australians if you don't let that person in.'
His very wide and very humorous tirade went even further:
'Let them in. Let them in. These people are assets. One or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later ... I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do.'
So today's asylum seekers are tomorrow's 'really good Australians' and 'assets'. O'Rourke gave hard-headed conservatives more than just 'bleeding heart' reasons to show compassion to refugees. He reminded us that compassion also paid economic and nation-building dividends.
That was also the message delivered to the National Press Club on 11 August by exiled World Uighur Congress leader Rabiye Kadeer. A number of innocent Turkish-speaking Uighur men have been kept at the Guantanamo gulag waiting to be resettled. It took our American allies some seven years to realise the men posed no threat to anyone.
'All of the Uighurs in Albania, Bermuda and Palau are living very normal and productive lives — so we'd be happy if Australia took the four', Kadeer was quoted in The Australian.
The plight of the Guantanamo Uighurs in Albania, Europe's poorest nation, came to the attention of the international media in 2007 when Al Jazeera English broadcast a 24-minute documentary called A Strange Kind Of Freedom. The