Nauru Scrambles as Australia Closes Island’s Detention Center

A national policy of accepting asylum seekers as refugees is complex. On one level, the policy can be viewed as an endorsement of dissident political claims. On another level, the policy is economic, benefiting some social groups and causing hardship for others. Countries that create detention centers outside their borders do not eliminate the challenges. In 2001, Australia’s government instituted a new border security policy, detaining captured refugees in an off-shore center located in the world’s smallest nation, Nauru. Today the 100 jobs the center provides constitute nearly a fifth of all revenue for the tiny island, once home to a booming phosphate mining industry. But the Labor Party took control over in November 2007and aims to fulfill an election pledge of closing of the center because of costs and humanitarian concerns. The closure will aggravate an already desperate economic situation in Nauru, reports Nick Squires for the Christian Science Monitor. A diverse economy is the best defense in an era when fast-changing politics can destroy an industry overnight. – YaleGlobal