Europe is all at sea over its boatpeople policy

All nations face defining decisions over control of their borders.

Boatpeople crisis a global problem

Illegal people movements, some boatpeople drowning at sea while others are turned away by navies of countries where they would like to land, calls to settle everyone who arrives drowned out by calls to distinguish refugees from economic migrants, righteous ­demands to smash people-smuggling, furious debate about sovereignty — in Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean, these issues reached crisis point this week.

This is a global phenomenon. The technology of cheap transport, and the globalisation of this technology, means we are in a radically new era in which the ability of large numbers — millions — of people to move vast distances to new countries has never been greater.

The events of the past week — the deaths in the Mediterranean and boat turnbacks by Malaysia and Indonesia — demonstrate that the Abbott government is no outlier in all this. Rather, it is at the cutting edge of effective policy and deep in the mainstream of national responses.

Boat turnbacks must always be carried out with primary concern for safety of life at sea. This has been the case with all of Australia’s operations, in contrast to operations in some Southeast Asian countries.

But first, an anecdote to illustrate the nature of the challenge and the ubiquity of the policy dilemmas. This week I caught a plane from Bangalore in southern India to New Delhi in the north, a distance that would cross many national borders in Europe or the Middle East.

The cost of the ticket was a little over $100. On the plane, I read a newspaper editorial about the ­Indian government’s attitude to illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The government was considering a law to make it easier for Hindus from Bangladesh to gain Indian citizenship.

Hindus have traditionally had a hard time in Bangladesh and, as the only big, majority Hindu nation, India is inclined to provide refuge to beleaguered Hindus. Yet it would be extremely difficult to maintain the proposition that merely being a Hindu in Bangladesh qualifies someone as a refugee. At the same time, New Delhi wants to take tougher actions to force illegal immigrants from Bangladesh — which means Muslims from Bangladesh — to go home.

India has a long land border with Bangladesh and is more prosperous than Bangladesh, so it ­attracts a lot of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Almost every country more prosperous than its neighbours faces some version of this dilemma. The hard policy choice is almost always binary. Either you surrender your borders and let virtually anyone who arrives stay, or you keep virtually everyone out who does not come by regular channels.

In truth, there is no middle road.

In some parts of the world, such as Syria, huge numbers are fleeing war and persecution, and must be given shelter. Yet the countries offering that shelter fervently hope it is temporary, that eventually Syria settles down and its people can go home.

Similarly, genuine refugees, people fleeing genuine persecution, must be given refuge. This can be temporary. If the persecution stops, people can go home. Nor do refugee applicants have a right to choose which country they find refuge in.

Affluent countries feel an obligation to offer permanent settlement to numbers of people who really cannot go home. On a per capita basis, Australia is one of the most generous countries in providing such places.

The obvious abuse of any system that rewards those who just show up is now creating such perverse incentives as to cost thousands of lives lost at sea, and to overwhelm nations’ capacities.

The EU’s response to sustained illegal immigration from North Africa and the Middle East has been a colossal failure, a failure of huge consequence. In its incompetence, it has been characteristic of much EU policy.

The EU has never had a rational policy debate on this, and has thus never had rational, much less effective, policy of any kind. This policy vacuum, combined with the general disorder in the Middle East and North Africa, has inevitably caused the latest crisis.

There are countless studies demonstrating how easy it is to scam Europe’s asylum-seeker assessment process — not that there is any real need to because even those whose asylum status is rejected get to stay permanently in Europe anyway. The EU’s contradictory behaviour — perhaps blind policy stupidity is a more precise term — on this was demonstrated this week when it proposed two simultaneous policy responses.

One, the people-smuggling industry must be smashed. Two, no one rescued at sea should be sent home against their will under any circumstances.

Proposition two guarantees the failure of proposition one, as is blindingly obvious to anyone but an EU official.

This week, the newly re-elected Cameron government in Britain declared independence from Brussels on these issues. British Home Secretary Theresa May wrote an opinion piece for The Times in which she was virtually channelling former immigration minister Scott Morrison.

Britain could have no part, she said, of an EU scheme to distribute asylum-seekers across EU nations on a voluntary basis targeting successful countries with low unemployment rates.

Such a scheme, she rightly ­argued, would massively encourage dangerous boat journeys.

Many boatpeople were simply seeking a better life.

She didn’t say this, but obviously that doesn’t mean they are bad ­people.

Nor does it entitle them to permanent residency in the ­European country of their choice. Finally, May argued, people-smuggling must be ended and non-refugees returned home.

Those Australian commentators now saying policies such as the Abbott government’s could never work for Europe are exactly the same people who said such policies could never work for ­Australia.

What would they know?

Nations, and not only Euro­pean nations, often implement contradictory policies on illegal immigrants. In the 1990s, some of the dynamism of the US economy rested on the low wages of Mexican immigrants.

These illegal immigrants provided an economically efficient ­labour market flexibility for agriculture and several other ­industries.

At the same time, the US was towing back boats of would-be asylum-seekers from Haiti.

Malaysia is an unwilling host to more than 100,000 refugees and asylum-seekers. It also hosts several hundred thousand illegal immigrants who are not claiming asylum but seeking work.

Traditionally, this illegal immigrant population comes from Indonesia, The Philippines, Bangladesh and a few other nations.

They have no rights, are often separated from their families and sometimes cause social problems, yet their cheap labour powers a lot of economic growth, especially in the building industry.

Every so often, the Malaysian government decides that the numbers are getting out of hand, or that local unemployment is too high, or that the social problems outweigh the economic benefits. Then it cracks down.

The whole of Southeast Asia is extremely twitchy about the Rohingyas from Myanmar right now, as there is a very big population of them just nearby.

If a reliable route to resettlement in richer Southeast Asian countries were established, many more would follow. And beyond that, there are millions of members of other ethnic minorities in Myanmar who might find this ­example attractive.

Indonesia faces a similar dilemma. And Singapore has always taken an extremely hard line against any illegal boat arrivals.

It is more difficult for Thailand, with its long, porous land borders, but this week has also confirmed what has long been an open secret — that quite a lot of people-­smuggling across Thai borders involves a ­degree of corrupt collusion from Thai military and police officials.

Australia has an exemplary record on immigration and refugee issues.

We run just about the lar­gest per capita immigration program in the world and it is completely ­racially non-discriminatory.

In the past 35 years, we have completely remade ourselves ethnically, and we have done so without any serious disturbance.

We also run, per capita, one of the largest permanent refugee resettlement programs in the world.

Our policy has remained coherent and effective. That has required some tough actions. That toughness enables the generosity and the coherence.

A lot of nations are now looking at Australia’s policy success.

Not before time.