Australia: language test requirements hard for migrants to meet

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From ABC Online
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1625775.htm
AM - Community groups concerned test requirements hard for migrants to
meet


AM - Friday, 28 April , 2006  08:08:00
Reporter: Brendan Trembath

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Some representatives from Australia's ethnic
communities are concerned about the possible content of a compulsory
citizenship test. While they accept that new Australians should know
something about the laws and history of their new home, the groups say the
language requirement will be hard for many migrants to meet.

Brendan Trembath reports.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: Andrew Robb's call for a compulsory citizenship test is
somewhat worrying for ethnic community leaders like Voula Messimeri. She
chairs the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia.

VOULA MESSIMERI: It just seems to be such an easy solution to say that,
you know, we will have a citizenship test. My thinking is, and certainly
the view of FECCA is that citizenship is something that should be embraced
willingly by people, rather than sort of either pass or fail.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: What about English language, should that be a barrier to
prospective immigrants, if they don't speak sufficient English?

VOULA MESSIMERI: Australia has a very long and very proud tradition of
accepting people from all around the world and that, by necessity, means
that there will be people that arrive and, you know, arrive to the door
now that speak no English at all. If we take the examples of the refugees
that are accepted by Australia from the African continent, there are many
languages in that particular continent and people who come to the shores
without any basic grasp of the English language. Are we to say that those
people are not going to be accepted on that basis? I think that the issue
about English proficiency is that it is our common language, we should be
striving and we should put resources behind the acquisition of language
and adequacy in that language, by all Australians including new people to
these shores. But to say that that will become the threshold for passing
or failing a test is not really the way for us to embrace new arrivals to
this country.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: The proposed citizenship test has also worried groups
such as the Sikh Council of Australia. The organisation's secretary is
Bawa Singh Jagdev.

BAWA SINGH JAGDEV: We in the Sikh community would be against this sort of
introduction that prospective immigrants should qualify some English test
because what happens if in their own countries where the language, where
English is not the first language, it will be difficult for them to pass
the English test.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: Do you have any reservations about having to study up on
so-called Australian values, customs, laws and history?

BAWA SINGH JAGDEV: Well, I do have. Once you decide to migrate to a
country, you have to accept that, but to enforce those, we are against
those.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: Why is that?

BAWA SINGH JAGDEV: I don't understand very much what do they mean by
Australian values.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Dr Ameer Ali is the President of the Federation of
Islamic Councils. He too has some concerns about the idea of a citizenship
test.

AMEER ALI: There are so many things I can think of. This is the only
country, I'll tell you, where a journalist can call the Prime Minister and
crucify him for mistakes that he made and call him by the first name which
country in the world allows this? And we are a peculiar democracy, a
peculiar sense of equality. Everybody is like everybody else. So that is a
value that I appreciate, that's something commendable. This typical,
unique Australia.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Dr Ameer Ali, the President of the Australian
Federation of Islamic Groups.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1625775.htm