Subject: CND-EP Special for Australia, July 12 (II), 1990

From: Bo Xiong <yawei>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 13:22:11 -0500

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=====================  Europe / Pacific Section (CND-EP) =====================
                              July 12 (II), 1990

                 Special Issue on Immigration Affairs 
          Regarding Chinese Students in Australia (Series VIII)
            (This issue is distributed to Australia only)

   **** Chinese Students in Australia Should Get Organized and United ****

Dear Editor,
  If there is another issue of ND-EP, could you please put this article on?
Many thanks.       A CND Reader in Australia
=====================================================================(55 lines)
   I fully support Anthony's proposal that Chinese students in Australia
should be more actively united and upgrade our Union of Chinese Students and
Scholars in Australia be a more representative organization. This can be 
done by a paying member system. 
   At present, the UCSSA has only about 33 organization members and no 
individual member. Apart from its name, this organization legally only 
represents those organizations and consequently those individual members
of the organizations. I guess this is a major difference from the IFCSS
of USA. 
   To be such a form, there were a lot of historical reasons, such as no
time to have extensive election to generate delegates, the language 
students are not easy to be contacted, etc.
   However, from the last year's practice, I see the Union, especially 
the organizers have made effective efforts in representing the whole
Chinese students in Australia. One example is that they created a point
of view to protect the interests of those language students who overstayed
their visas (ilegal migrants). When they were lobbying they claimed that 
those overstayed their visas do not deserve the punishment to be sent back
to China facing persecution. This point of view was later accepted by 
Gerry Hand, the immigration Minister.
   Another difference from the counterpart of USA is that the leaders of 
UCSSA, such as Zhang XueDong, has not been on leave from his study, like
Liu YongChuan. This has created more pressure to the student leaders. It
is no good to anyone if we "force" the student leaders sacrifice too much.
We should be clever enough to set up a system to represent and protect
Chinese students' interests and hence future partly China's interests.
   From the Westen countries' union movement history, we can see it is
clear that a professional union is necessary. The advantage is the efficiency
and most importantly, the long last. It is not fair if we always let others
work hard representing and protecting us without proper acknolegement, ie. pay.
Also for legitimacy we have to elect our representatives and should not 
expect those existing ones be automatically represent us.
   In Australia, there are many social workers serve various people. 
Many of them are paid by the government funds. However, for Chinese students,
as we are a "new category" of temporary residents, there are so far not
many work for us, except the refugee advisers.
   If among the 20,000 Chinese nationals here on 20th June 1989, there are
half would participate the Union, and the Union modify its constitution to
let personal members, the revenue will be $300,000, for a $30 member fee.
It will be enough to employ clerical and legal personals work for it. It 
probably can set branches at each state, with part-time payed persons.
   If the fees are too high, may be only a national body is set up and 
each member only pay $20 or $15. 
   I think the hard thing is who are going to organize it and to persuate
our countrymen and countrywomen to pay. We have to believe these are necessary
overhead. We do have rights that need protection.
   May be the second UCSSA congress, if it is under plan, can be a good 
chance to implement this and other proposals. Before that we should put it
on the Chinese newspapers, as many language students relies on them.
   Finally I would like to thanks those UCSSA leaders and volunteers for
representing Chinese nationals in Australia. I believe they have done a good 
job. The 4 year stay and other benefits, though not good as we expected, are
not separable from their lobby efforts.

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