There’s been a lot of chatter about the Australia / US refugee deal that Malcolm Turnbull teed up with Barack Obama in the waning weeks of the latter’s presidency, and whether it’ll still go ahead under Trump. The deal – in which detainees on Manus Island and Nauru will be sent to the United States for settlement – seemed like a little bit of a rebuke of Trump’s whole shtick.
Turnbull said he was confident after his chit-chat with Trump on the phone that the deal would proceed as planned, though the White House themselves made no mention of that agreement in their announcement of the 25-minute call.
Well, now we have formal confirmation from Team Trump. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed Trump’s administration will honour the deal, which he said involves 1,250 people. He said that they will be subject to “extreme vetting”.
There will be extreme vetting applied to all of them, that is part and parcel of the deal that was made and it was made by the Obama Administration with the full backing of the United States Government.The President, in accordance with that deal to honour what had been agreed upon by the United States Government and ensuring that vetting will take place in the same manner we are doing it now will go forward.
Of course this is a good solution for those incarcerated on our island prisons without charge. After remaining somewhere where human rights abuses have been alleged by a number of organisations, they’d be happy to get out. It does absolutely beg the question as to why they have to be shipped halfway across the world rather than, you know, here.
Source: ABC.
Photo: Getty Images.
