August 28, 2008 12:00am

news.com.au
All aboard? Not quite
Alan Howe

NEW Zealanders concern me for a couple of reasons: you have to worry about any people who look west to Australia and see it as the big smoke; and, we end up sending so many home for misbehaving.

Not that we export too many do-badders. Indeed, we don't dispatch back to ungrateful lands anywhere near enough foreigners.

Right now we are debating whether it is right to extradite alleged Nazi war criminal Charles Zentai to Hungary, where it is claimed he beat to death Peter Balazs in Budapest in 1944 for failing to wear the yellow Star of David then required of Jews.

If there is evidence enough for Zentai to stand trial, then we must send him to his fate, notwithstanding his citizenship.

And if found guilty he must never return.

But it is the 900,000 "when-it-suits-me-Australians" floating around our commonwealth that trouble me: migrants too lazy to become citizens or, perhaps, still harbouring unbreakable allegiances to an otherwise abandoned homeland.

One of the great strengths of our migration program -- the 20th century's most successful -- has been the ease with which we have allowed foreigners to be naturalised.

Turkish children born in Germany to "guest workers" have had great difficulty in becoming German citizens; ask any Korean in Japan how he's going in becoming a local; or try, as an Australian, seeking citizenship in the Middle East or Asia.

Central to the almost frictionless success of our immigration program has been the manner in which "new Australians", as we so quaintly knew them, were brought in to the fold to become "real" Australians.

All they need do is stay two years and behave themselves.

But we made a mistake years ago in giving now unthinkable privileges to some migrant groups -- they could even play a role in our democracy and vote. Voting non-citizens is surely a concept unique to Australia.

As a result, we encouraged complacency about citizenship among some groups.

So we tightened the system: dropping the proviso that 10 years' residence meant you couldn't be deported; taking away the right of most non-citizens to vote; introducing the "character test"; and giving ourselves the option of deporting those who had been sentenced here to either 12 months' jail, or cumulative sentences totalling more than two years.

It is this last provision that has been the most contentious, and the one tripping up the Kiwis.

Based on 2007-8 statistics, New Zealanders are six times more likely than the next migrant group, the British, to be sent back and permanently banned from Australia.

But it is the criminally minded British and the Europeans who make the most noise about being sent back whence they came.

Remember the self-pitying claims by persistent Melbourne-based burglar Robert Jovicic? It was said the former heroin addict had committed a "string" of robberies.

Just how long was that piece of string? Well, he clocked up more than 150 offences, and included in his 15 years of court appearances were a dozen counts of burglary in 1986, nine in 1989, 27 in 1991, and convictions in 1992, 1993 and 1995.

It might even be that he got away with a few. But he served more than two years in jail and, finally, we decided the non-citizen had failed the character test and must go.

He had been born in Paris to Serbian parents, came here as a youngster, and never took out citizenship over many decades.

We sent him back to Serbia, which accepted him, conditionally, and encouraged him to seek work.

Recently, the Rudd Government has allowed him back -- to stay. Keep your doors locked.

Last year, we sent home to Manchester -- a cruel and unusual punishment, I'll accept -- wheelchair-bound Englishman Michael Evans after he was convicted of the attempted murder of his wife.

Supporters said Evans, who chose never to take out citizenship, was ill and had a shortened life expectancy.

But hadn't he gone to work on his Australian wife's life expectancy?

For once, we stood firm. I spoke to Evans's lawyer, Greg Barns, yesterday, and there is no doubt Evans's life was blighted. So many are. He thinks Evans may have died.

At the same time, we deported Swedish-born Stefan Nystrom, who had served eight prison sentences for almost 90 offences including armed robbery and intentionally causing serious injury.

Melbourne-based Nystrom was born while his mum was in Sweden, and came here after 27 days.

But he chose not to become an Australian as surely as he chose a life of crime.

If we want the indolent 900,000 -- shamefully, I was one myself years ago -- to get on board our great democracy, let's launch an advertising campaign that talks of the benefits of citizenship for us all.

And let's significantly lower the threshold of criminal activity that sees the reluctant "Australians" sent home.

news.com.au