Yeah, I think we should move to an open-borders policy, but by degree. There’s no way Australia could cope with one million people coming in a year, let alone 50 million. Migration is a different issue to refugees, however. I could understand arguments for immigration to be slowed down better than I can understand the need to implement a ‘solution’ to the supposed problem of people smuggling.

More broadly, things could go the other way also. If we had the GFC return with a vengeance (something predicted by a few economists here and there) , then one possible outcome would be a number of nations basically closing borders, re-implementing tariffs, abandoning free trade, and so forth.

Perhaps I’m utopian in my dreams, pragmatic in my thinking, but do you think a globalised open migration policy would work? Would that be the same argument put up for the globalisation of goods, services and production? So if tariffs are out, so should be borders? Or is it just a share-the-wealth-around argument?

And if we liberalised migration, do you mean by degree – so we’re just raising the numbers by some unspecified amount, or is that advocating a complete open policy?

(These are genuine, not rhetorical, questions by the way.)

Its not our fault we have all the wealth. If those lazy bastards did some hard work and got off their backside instead of relying on our charity then they wouldn’t have to jump all those walls we built to get into the west. They’d be able to afford suits and passports and we’d let them in.

John Galt was right.

This is just propaganda:

http://coromandal.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/walled-world-td-architects.jpg

Stace, you make some good points. Yes, immigrants and refugees are conflated in this faux-debate – the numbers of the latter are fairly trivial when compared against the former.

I think both sides of parliament are very happy for this debate (and most others) to be hijacked by hacks, and to live and die by the media cycle. The effect, as you say, is apathy, and perhaps cynicism. This apathy and cynicism is very convenient, because it allows media and politicians to portray the status quo as something inevitable and immutable. The apathetic are not likely to take to the streets.

Notwithstanding the smoke and mirrors in the debate here, I think that there are some pointers as to how we might forge a position on this. For starters, anybody whose breast-beating and ‘strong’ or ‘tough’ policy position consists in demonising and brutalising asylum seekers ought to be treated with suspicion from the outset. We can ask ourselves, if a genocide were to commence somewhere tomorrow, whether would we be passively complicit with this (as the US and UK were in the 1930s) or whether we would at least try to make a difference.

I agree also that people in danger should be prioritised over ‘economic migrants’. I think it’s important not to be too dismissive of this last group, however. Most immigrants to Australia, from the Irish and Chinese, to the Italians and Greeks were in some sense ‘economic migrants’. The real problem, in my view, is not the influx of people but the flight of capital (i.e. to countries with lax or non-existent labour laws, low wages, etc).

Political rabble rousing and fence-sitting aside, in amongst the contemptuous outrage on one side and the utopian advocacy and hand-wringing on the other, I have no idea what to believe or think. I could make a semi-informed guess, but in truth, buggered if I really know.

Any time anyone counters one argument with stats, I just think … yup, bullshit most like…whether it comes from the refugee advocacy groups, government, or the fuck-off-we’re-full mob. Stats mean nothing outside some sort of explanatory context.

Certainly, the demonisation of these people is vile. One thing I don’t agree with, however, is your argument promoting a case for economic refugees. These people are really economic migrants. Those who desperately need asylum should always have precedence.

Getting the two mixed up is just what’s got us into this over-heated and despicable faux debate in the first place. Once you meld, or confuse, migrants and refugees into one, wholesale mistrust, rejection and hatred of ALL becomes an easier case for bigots to make. If we’re not clear about which is which, we end up sacrificing and shafting refugees to keep the anti-immigration mob happy.

Anyway, in extremis, would you really want to see someone like Karzai’s thieving, conniving brother in some down-on-his-luck future getting priority over some poor sod from the bulldozed slums of Kabul who’s fled persecution for opposing political corruption? I certainly wouldn’t.