Asylum-Seeking Children In Australia

We sometimes get so wrapped up in our own domestic problems that we don't realize other countries around the world may be facing similar issues.  Take Australia, for example.  Asylum seeking children from Sri Lankan and other countries have been trying to enter Australia.  For the most part they have been stopped, but those that do reach Australia's mainland by boat are sent to camps in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific nation of Nauru where they face long periods of detention while they are processed.

Sound familiar?  It doesn't sound too much different than the flood of immigrant women and children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua coming to America for a better life.  It appears that there is a cover up in Australia regarding the condition of the immigrants.  The government apparently asked a former healthcare worker to cover up evidence that children held in the camps were suffering from widespread mental illness caused by their confinement.

Refugee advocates say that long-term detention, combined with a lack of clarity on where and when the asylum seekers may be resettled, contribute to a host of mental health problems at the facilities.

The detainees in Australia number in the hundreds at this point, much less than the thousands that are flooding our borders, but they face the very same problems.  We sometimes get so caught up in our own problems that we aren't aware other countries around the world are facing the same issues.  People who live in substandard conditions and are faced with bloodshed and possible death, are always going to want to come to a better place.  We need to find a way to allow people from other countries to come to America, but in a legal, non violent way.  After all, both America and Australia are countries of immigrants.  Housing them for months, sometimes years, in detention camps, is not the answer.  These pictures were drawn by some of the children in the Christmas Island detention center in Australia.