Opinion & Commentary
Sorry, we're not a soft target
Church and other refugee support groups are absolutely right. The plight of the boat people is terrible. Pure compassion dictates that they should be welcomed with open arms.
Some of the boat people are fleeing from intolerable autocracies that have plunged their countries into mass poverty. Afghanistan is clearly the world’s most repressive society, particularly for women. Some boat people are economic refugees from countries that have neglected economic opportunities for half a century. Only a very few among them seek easy pickings in our open society.
The boat ‘people’ are husbands and wives, children, elderly parents, brothers and sisters. They are not very different from the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who are queuing to come to Australia, except in one respect. After paying large bribes to get out of their countries, they have substantial cost in air fares to get to Southeast Asia and then have to pay people smugglers $20,000 or $30,000 dollars for each man, woman and child to go the last lap.
The word is out that we are a soft target and that a formidable lobby will almost certainly make Australia even softer. The numbers arriving illegally in Australia must be expected to increase exponentially, reducing the number of legal refugee and immigration places. The people smugglers will not cease their activities unless the countries in which they operate close them down.
The selection of the boat people is straightforward. Those who can afford $100,000 or more per family can come. The groups pressing for a much more welcoming attitude to boat people are in fact suggesting a new approach to refugee and immigration flows Australia. Ignore the fact that these are queue jumpers who steal places from poorer refugees and other immigrants in the pipeline. Wealthy people are no less deserving of immigration places than poor people (though their background makes them more demanding). Let the selection criterion be cash instead of the tedious and costly processes that have been hammered out in bipartisan politics over the years.
We have a special immigration category for refugees. Succoring those most in need in life threatening situations involves bureaucracy and burden sharing among developed democracies. International rules had to be established to stem a refugee tide that tended to flood from political and religious persecution to the livelihood needs of poor people living in countries where ideology has triumphed over common sense to entrench poverty.
Our immigration officials worldwide try to reconcile the interest of would be immigrants and Australian society. A points system gives priority for connection with Australia, skills, some knowledge of English and those who will not be a burden on the health system. This system has evolved over years to create the maximum benefits and minimum costs for immigrants and Australian society. It is, admittedly, a selfish system that seeks to avoid problems for Australia as well as for the migrants, though no worse, indeed much better, than that of most countries that accept immigrants.
We also have a business immigration category. This is known in East Asia Region as the parachute program. The principal participants are wealthy people who fear that mainland Chinese takeovers in Hong Kong and Taiwan will make their present comfortable and open lifestyles impossible. Some ‘cronies’ in other East Asian countries, who fear that their depredations will have to come to an end if reforms ever take place, also buy parachutes to Australia. Then there are some genuine entrepreneurs with capital who want to do business in Australia.
The implication of the refugee activists’ position has attractions. We could save the expenses of our bureaucratic but democratic refugee and immigration processing by selection by cash payments. The people smugglers would be cut out. Their expenses are minimal and their profits are high. They buy up unseaworthy rust buckets, provide scarcely any food and water on board, and pay pittances to the families of seamen who get jailed. For some 200 men, women and children, $30,000 a head gives $6 million per rust bucket.
This year the people smugglers have earned some easy $30 million off Australian shores. We could save the immigrants misery and uncertainty, and sometimes death, on the voyages.
Our immigration could become a big money earner if inflows were to rise to make room for more of the world’s disadvantaged as the lobbies propose, say, to 300,000 or more people a year. At $30,000 a head that would mean an income of $9,000 million a year for Australia. Unfortunately such numbers would be likely to run into opposition from trade unions and ‘greens’. While we remain a democracy, the number of newcomers has to be negotiated by parliament in the usual tedious way.
At the end of the day, rational economist that I am, I would prefer to see the present immigration selection system continue rather than that it be replaced by a cash criterion that is implied by boat people lobbies. It is fairer to immigrants and to Australian society. The immigration totals and the criteria for refugees and other immigrants should continue to be subject to democratic debate. If this means saying clearly, by tough measures, that there is no back door to Australia, so be it.
About the Author:
Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes was a member of the Fitzgerald Committee to Advise on Australian Immigration Policies. She is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.
