Boat People, or How We Lost Our Charity

Greetings Dear Ramblers,

After a rather mediocre political discussion with my father, who seems to be of the opinion that "boat people" are criminals, I could not help but to put my thoughts into words. As this rather non-event policy issue seems to be soaking up more than its fair share of the limelight in this particular election lead-up, it seems topical to discuss it, and to dive beneath the superficial surface presented by our politicians and media outlets.

Firstly, let me start by defending my father's point of view. I see where he is coming from. As first generation voluntary immigrants to Australia, we were not escaping oppression. Instead, we were just wanting to start afresh in a country that provided so many more opportunities to live the lives of our hopes and dreams. We had to fight through a very difficult and lengthy process of some two years of paper-shuffling to finally be accepted into this country. My mother, father and I value the opportunities we have been given to make something of our lives in Australia.

It would only be natural to look askance at those "queue jumper" boat people. We had to tick so many boxes to be let into the country, so why should other people be allowed to waltz in just because they arrived by boat on our northern shores? It seems rather unfair. Criminal, in fact. These people are breaking national and international laws by arriving unasked at our borders.

Now, that's all well and good as an argument, and I feel the visceral undertow that the mass media and vapid politicians have tapped in to. However, it just doesn't cut it. I realise that there is a lot of complexity here - but first we must identify the real issues, and prune away all of the rhetoric and bullshit.

The whole "queue jumper" thing misses the point. The real point is this - we need to establish if the people arriving at our shores are genuine refugees or genuine free-loading queue jumpers. To label them all as queue jumpers is a gross over-simplification. So, I agree that we need to detain people arriving illegally at our borders, whilst we are determining whether they are genuine refugees or not.

However, the whole media and political spin has gone way beyond this. By default, we are labelling all of these people as criminal queue jumpers from the very outset. This sets a very negative vibe, and makes it so very easy for the xenophobes amongst us to score cheap political points (just look at the latest meandering bullshit spouted by that old-school race expert and White Australia throwback Philip Ruddock). It is hard for us to feel any of the ordinarily human emotions for these people, such as pity, empathy or solidarity, when they are drawn, caricature-like, in the media as criminals willing to throw their own children overboard.

Now, I don't want to fall into the trap of over-simplification myself. There are a few more angles to be explored before a proper understanding of this issue can be obtained. The role of people smugglers is a case in point. One way of looking at people smugglers is that they provide a lifeline for utterly abject and desperate people who have nowhere else to turn. Another way of looking at it is that people smugglers are criminals of the first order who profit from the misery of others. Both of these points of view are true.

The detainment and processing of asylum seekers is costly and time consuming. At current levels of approximately 2,500 boat people a year, we are at the limits of what our facilities can cope with. If 10,000 boat people arrived each year (or perhaps 40,000 as arrive by boat in Italy each year) we would quite likely have some major problems. The tyranny of distance has shielded Australia somewhat from the refugee problem - it is difficult to get all the way to Australia by boat.

The other issue of boat people is this - Australia currently caps its refugee intake at 13,750 people per year. The boat people are counted in this total, along with the people who have applied for refugee status through official channels. These official refugees are the lucky ones of a sad lot of humanity - people stuck in temporary refugee camps on non-hostile soil who have legal recourse to throw themselves at the mercy of international law. So, in this context, the boat people could be seen as queue jumpers.

The reality, as always, is much more complex than the rather 2-dimensional picture the media presents in their 2-minute grabs whilst we are eating our breakfasts, or the bile that the radio shock jocks spew at us through our car speakers as we drive to work. Here is my counter argument, presented as a rather simple what-if.

What if China invaded Autralia and made us all their bitches? Might makes right in this world, so we would be in no position to argue. Let's continue this hypothesis and say that the Chinese powers that be decide to impose strict martial rule, and dissenters are taken away and tortured and/or killed. You are a fine upstanding citizen - you used to pay your taxes, you used to do the right thing, only now you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. World events beyond your control have transformed your very existence. You and your wife and your children are exposed to lethal danger every single day. You have no authorities to appeal to, no guardian angels to pray to. There is no migration department where you go into a nice office, press a button to get your number, wait in a comfortable chair, and approach the window to state your case when your number is called. There are no refugee camps to which you can escape and live in squalor as your application for official refugee status is processed.

The only possible avenue of escape lies in you selling everything you own and have worked hard for, bribing some guards or officials, paying unscrupulous people smugglers with every cent that you have, and jumping on a boat to New Zealand.

However, when you get to New Zealand, they all call you a queue jumper and a criminal, detain you, prod you for a while, and then tell you to fuck off back to Australia. You are sent back to Australia, and you and your family are tortured and executed.

This is potentially what happens to genuine refugees. They don't have an office they can go to for migration to another country. They don't have any other option than to break the law in order to flee from oppression to save their lives and those of their loved ones. There is no queue to jump. There are no legal options at all for these people to escape oppression.

Of course there are ingenuine people who attempt to play the refugee angle and try to jump the queue, but we cannot just tar all boat people refugees with the same brush because of this. Each and every person who arrives unasked at our shores should be detained but treated charitably. Whilst they are detained, their application for asylum should be considered fairly, and the appropriate decision to return them or welcome them made. Immigration department figures show that, on average, 85-90% of boat people are genuine refugees.

Australia is a rich country. Our general levels of wealth are such that we can cope with a few thousand poor lost souls coming to our shores each year. Our current annual cap of 13,750 refugees represents about 0.06% of our population. Does our charity really only stretch so far? Anyone who thinks that this is an unacceptable burden on our population and infrastructure has got rocks in their head.

I can only say this - we should treat refugees in the same way that we would wish to be treated if we were refugees. Being a refugee is not a matter of choice. World events beyond your control could plunge you from a position of privilege and comfort (or poverty as your starting point for that matter) to one of mortal danger for you and your family.

Charity begins at home, and when people have lost their homes, they need that charity all the more. Do not harden your hearts, based on cynical political spin and populist media beat-ups. Do not blindly accept the messages of intolerance that the hate mongers in politics and the media dish up to you. Instead, deconstruct the issue, study the facts, apply emotion, intellect, compassion and logic, and make up your own minds.

And if you still come to the conclusion that all asylum seekers are criminals, I hope for your sake that you are never placed in the situation of being a refugee by events beyond your control. The only option left to you would be to accept your fate and, hand in hand with your loved ones, go quietly to the torture chambers.