Andrew Bolt
Hu jumped a queue
Andrew Bolt
11mar05
We were never going to deport a 104-year-old woman, we were just trying to be fair to others. But that didn't stop the Left media's hysteria.
STORIES that "prove" the Howard Government is evil to "refugees" are so welcome to crusading journalists that facts now barely matter.
Who can forget those teary tales about the Bakhtiari family of "Afghan refugees"? Or about the boy traumatised by a fellow detainee's suicide bid that never was?
Then there was that front-page Age story that began: "A disabled Iranian woman set fire to herself in a toilet at the Woomera Detention Centre after giving up all hope of being released."
That story, if factual, should have read: "An Iranian woman set fire to a disabled toilet at the Woomera Detention Centre to avoid being sent home."
But even this "reporting" cannot beat the frenzied hype this past fortnight over the case of Cui Yu Hu.
Anyone with sense would have, or should have, known immediately there was no way the Government would deport this 104-year-old woman. Anyone of sense should have realised this was a fight over money, not the right to stay. But no.
In 1995 Hu came from China on a 12-month visitor's visa to see her adopted daughter in Melbourne, but never went home, saying airlines would not fly her thanks to her age.
Our immigration officials aren't the SS. They quietly gave her a bridging visa rather than formally decide she was indeed here unlawfully and set a costly precedent by having Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone still give her a parent visa.
They even sent Hu a letter last September - one of many - explaining this, and assuring her she could stay:
"In view of your age and frailty, it has been decided to defer any decision indefinitely, to enable you to remain in Australia as the holder of a bridging visa.
"For some years it has been the position of the Australian Government that the number of parent visas available in the annual migration program will be strictly capped to limit the number of visas granted.
"This position has been taken in view of the very substantial costs imposed on the Australian community associated with the medical and related needs of elderly persons, who, as non residents, have made no offsetting contribution in Australia during their working lives.
"Consequently there is a very long queue of applicants waiting for parent visas."
You bet. How many immigrants here have parents overseas who would love to jump the queue as Hu did and come over in their last years for top health care, free on Medicare?
Oh, did I mention Medicare? The trouble is Hu could not get Medicare on a bridging visa. And so her family began a media campaign to make Vanstone give her that parent visa to which she wasn't entitled.
Except, of course, Hu's struggle was not presented as a fight for free health care, but a fight against a deportation that could kill her. A fight against this monstrous Government.
The Age kicked it off on February 23 with a story headlined "Happy 104th birthday - now leave", and starting: "Cui Yu Hu's relatives cannot believe the Immigration Department would seriously consider deporting a 104-year old."
Then came other breathless headlines: "Aust to deport 104-year-old: report" (ABC online); "Human cost of an inflexible policy" (Age); "Red tape tangles woman's staying power" (Age); "Mixed messages from a minister short on pity" (Age); "104-year-old may die if flown home" (AAP); "104-year-old may die if flown home: Chinese" (Sydney Morning Herald); and "Deportation defies belief" (Bendigo Advertiser). Age
TV bulletins ran footage of Hu, crying, begging to stay and feebly waving an Australian flag. Radio hosts saddled their high horses.
It hardly seemed to matter that as early as February 23, the Immigration Department was telling anyone who'd listen - hello? - "at no stage has there been a suggestion of deportation".
Vanstone went on television the next day to insist her department "tried to make an arrangement that (Hu) stayed here peacefully and lawfully for the rest of her life".
The Herald Sun has no trouble understanding plain English. On February 24 it ran a story under the headline, "Frail widow deport reprieve", followed the next day by: "Gran, 104, can stay - Vanstone". But other reporters simply couldn't take yes, yes, yes for an answer.
Not when there was a Howard Government to bash.
Only two days ago did the Age finally announce what had never been at issue, under a headline similar to (but duller than) one the Herald Sun ran two weeks earlier - "104-year-old given permission to stay".
But the damage was done. Newspapers and television stations in Britain, the United States, Malaysia, South Africa, India, New Zealand and Bahrain had spread the word about our wicked bullying of a helpless old lady.
"She could have been deported by Australian authorities or locked away in a detention centre," salivated the BBC. In their dreams.
China's press was especially horrified, the state-run Xinhua news agency gasping: "The world's oldest illegal immigrant, a 104-year Chinese woman, has been ordered to leave Australia" in "a further embarrassment for the Australian Immigration Department".
And remember - from the very start, immigration officials repeatedly said Hu was not being deported.
Even Hu's spokesman, Chap Chow, who worked for a Labor MP, admitted this week: "It was all about medical care. It wasn't about residency. There was no time at all that we felt she would be deported." Reread that last sentence. Mind you, that hadn't stopped Chow from being quoted in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald last month saying Hu "cannot go home because there is no one to return to", and "she is concerned at the thought of leaving her family". Or from warning this week: "The whole world is watching this case now."
And why wouldn't the world think we'd cruelly turf out this 104-year-old, when even our top "refugee" advocates could believe something so silly?
Marion Le, for instance, complained: "It seems as though common sense as much as compassion has gone out the door." Ranted Julian Burnside, QC: "It is hard to imagine what sort of idiocy is driving the department to deal with a case like this with such disregard for basic human instincts."
Is that so? Well, it's not hard for me to imagine the idiocy driving Burnside or his allies in our media to deal with a case like this with such disregard for basic facts or common sense.
Not when there is another story to beat up - this time about a Government so evil that it's ready even to kill a little 104-year-old lady.
bolta@heraldsun.com.au
MEMO to the ABC's Media Watch: this is the kind of media-watching you're paid to do. Drop your jihad for the Left and get on with it.
Andrew Bolt
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