Jesus Points

Published on March 21, 2005

Joyce: When I was in South Africa several years ago, I attended a seminar for citizens hoping to expatriate themselves to Australia. It was a shady business, since many people — especially many whites — wanted in to Australia, and the seminar leaders made their money by counseling the would-be immigrants on padding their applications; […]

Joyce: When I was in South Africa several years ago, I attended a seminar for citizens hoping to expatriate themselves to Australia. It was a shady business, since many people — especially many whites — wanted in to Australia, and the seminar leaders made their money by counseling the would-be immigrants on padding their applications; entry was awarded on a point system: 10 points for youth, 40 points for a desirable set of skills, 5 points for certain “cultural languages” (i.e., Afrikaans), and always, many points for money. But what the seminar leaders didn’t tell us about was the apparent existence of “Jesus points,” which may result in the naturalization of 30 immigration detainees — mostly from Iraq and Iran — who have converted to Christianity in the three years they’ve been held by the Australian government. The detainees’ cases are about to be reviewed after heavy lobbying by Australian churches and the strong Family First party for the government to relax refugee policies for Christian converts. The lobbyists claim they are acting to save the lives of apostates from Islam, who would face persecution if they were returned to their countries as Christians, but the push to accept the new converts rests not on any law that would apply to refugee cases across the board, but on ministerial leniency which is applied on a case-by-case basis by officials who become impressed with a specific Christian detainee’s plight or, one could assume, zeal.

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