According to your way of thinking, all things that are illegal are equally illegal, and all things that are immoral are equally immoral. That is absurd. If strict illegality is your standard of measure, you wouldn’t disagree with a law that sent people to Nauru for jaywalking.
But if we want to look at the world through your very narrow window, where only the legality of immigration is relevant, then tell me about the legality of European settlement of Australia in the context of Aboriginal laws. Also tell me why it was considered important to declare that Australia was an empty country.
side note: I’ve recently started watching “The Americans” (no spoilers please, I’m barely halfway through season one), and the show uses “illegals” to refer to the (undercover) soviet spies. I’ve never heard that usage before. It’s probably historical, and I’m wondering whether the current usage is meant to evoke this subversive meaning.
Our Bush-era PM (Howard) fairly effectively stopped people coming to Australia by boats by fucking with them via something called “temporary protection visas” that would be granted for a limited time, until the person could return to their country of origin. Most of the refugees who got TPVs were eventually given permanent visas but only after years in limbo and this uncertainty (plus incarceration on Christmas Island, Nauru or Manu Island until the TPV was granted) was enough to deter the large majority of refugees. I believe these places were set up under Howard in 2001 as part of the “Pacific Solution” (solution, my ass).
Once that dickweed PM was out on his ass the next guy (Rudd) got rid of TPVs (cause they were in violation of our duties under the UNHCR) and refugees started coming to Australia by boat in comparatively large numbers. An important thing to understand is that many people die at sea trying to make this journey, so there is a humanitarian concern at play but in reality the popularity of these kinds of policies is driven by the conservative right’s general xenophobia.
When Rudd’s government started becoming publicly unpopular and when Abbott was making political hay on the backs of people dying at sea and the Rudd government’s supposed inability to “control the border”, Rudd reopened these places for “offshore processing” but they had not yet started turning refugee boats back at sea or illegally denying them refugee resettlement in Australia. I fucking hate Rudd for this because it was a desperate attempt to gain votes from xenophobes in a situation where they were out on their ass next election anyway, merely giving a cruel gift to Abbott that he would only make crueler (as per his personality).
Now we’re here. This sucks and I fucking hate my countrymen for being so fucking ignorant, selfish, blind and collectively criminal. Thankfully it would take a miracle for Abbott to get a second term IMO because he’s shaping up to be the most personally unpopular Australian PM in history, but the damage has been done to the refugees, the nations in which these prison camps exist and my respect for more than half of the population of this country.
I’m really sorry world. I’m doing my best to shit all over this guy, but really we need the world to keep writing stories on this subject and keep putting Abbott and conservative xenophobes in their place by shaming them. Anyway - this is so upsetting that I actually can’t even think properly, I just want to start punching people and lashing out at people that I know vote for these jerks - so I’ll just let John Oliver humorously tear Abbott a new one:
