Highly Recommend Watching Stateless On Netflix

Stateless is an Australian TV series about an immigration detention camp, "based on true events".  The key event is an Australian woman who ends up in the camp.    

 

An Afghan family on the run to Australia.  

Two of the guards.  We see how the life of the one on the left deteriorates because of what he has to do in the detention center.  But his life is further complicated because his sister is a fervent immigrants rights activist.  

Tamil refugees who confine themselves to the roof and put razors to their throats when officials try to get them down.  There was no explanation of how they ate or took care of other needs, or why they couldn't be gotten when they were asleep.  But they did like to send these messages to media in helicopters.

The series was released on Australian television in March this year and on Netflix in July.  

Compared to the views we've gotten of kids in cages and refugees packed into much too small areas in the US, this camp looks pretty good.  But these detention centers in Australia were shut down in 2013.  Now refugees are detained offshore.  From Human Rights Watch:

"Since July 2013, Australia has forcibly transferred more than 3,000 asylum seekers who traveled there by boat to camps on Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

This experiment in human suffering as a deterrent has not worked. Seven years on, more than 370 people still choose to endure horrific hardship in Papua New Guinea and Nauru rather than return to conflict and persecution in their home countries. They languish in limbo, separated from families, futures uncertain. The United States has taken more than 700 people in a resettlement arrangement with Australia, and over the years the Australian government reluctantly transferred more than 1,200 asylum seekers and refugees back to Australia for medical treatment. Some of those in Australia live in uncertainty in the community on temporary bridging visas, but more than 200 are detained in centers or hotels."

I'm posting this  because the story is well told from different perspectives and reminds us that there are lots of desperate human beings who have displaced for various reasons who face persecution at home.  And with climate change, more and more people are going to be displaced.  

The US has not just wasted four years, but put tens of thousands of these fragile people under increased stress because we have a president whose longest lasting close advisors include hateful people like Stephen Miller.

This show is a reminder of why immigrants come, that they are intelligent human beings, and that we're contributing to the wretched conditions of their lives.  

Will it help convince anyone if I mention that Cate Blanchett has a supporting role in the series?