Cause and Effects

Times are difficult for those who seek to demonstrate their moral superiority over other Australians by trumpeting their support for Aboriginal causes.  The shortcomings of the simplistic view in which Aborigines are solely the victims of a "racist" society which is indifferent to their plight have become increasingly apparent.

Things are clearly changing when ABC TV's Four Corners program devotes a whole program to Aboriginal domestic violence -- as it did earlier this month -- without constantly blaming the wider society, and by airing suggestions that some recommendations of the once sacrosanct Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody may have been counterproductive.

In addition, people with impeccable credentials such as Noel Pearson have detailed the debilitating effects of the progressive consensus on Aborigines.  And most ordinary Australians now readily admit that Aborigines suffered great injustices in the past.

All this means that those who wish to distance themselves from their prejudiced fellow countrymen have had to find a new cause to display their virtue.  Thankfully, a marvellous differentiator has recently become available -- the claims of illegal immigrants, or to use the sanitised term preferred by their vocal supporters, "asylum seekers".

The issue of asylum seekers currently offers greater moral potential than that of Aboriginal disadvantage.  Most Australians are genuinely concerned about indigenous poverty and poor health, and the arguments are mainly about the best means of addressing these problems.  But with asylum seekers there is a much clearer divide -- between those who see them as genuine refugees to be greeted with open arms, and those who see them as manipulative queue jumpers who are breaking our laws.

Even better, those who welcome the asylum seekers are a minority.  These individuals must have been delighted to learn of the recent poll showing that 77 per cent of Australians disagreed with them and supported the government's policies to deter illegal immigrants from arriving.  For the righteous, this means that at least three out of every four people they encounter in the street can be contemptuously dismissed as "lacking in compassion", or fearful of "the other", or just plain "racist".

Of course, like the moral campaigns of the past, certain facts have to be suppressed or distorted in order to maintain the impression that those who don't support the clients of people smugglers are wicked.  So we are told that the government is breaching Australia's obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and other international agreements.  What is not mentioned is that by travelling to Australia through other countries where they could have requested protection, nearly all the illegal arrivals fail to meet the convention's criterion which requires them to have come directly from the country which they say they are fleeing.

Nor do the unfavourable comparisons with supposedly more humane nations present the true situation in these places.  We are often urged to follow the "Swedish model", in which unauthorised entrants who have sought asylum are detained only briefly, and then released into the wider community until their status is determined.

But Sweden can afford to do this because it requires all residents to carry an identity card, which makes it much easier to keep track of individuals whose requests for refugee status have been rejected and who might be tempted to vanish rather than be deported.  In fact, unlike the current situation in Australia, most of those who seek asylum in Sweden are unsuccessful, their rights of appeal are very limited, and they are quickly removed from the country.

The virtuous defenders of the illegal arrivals are rarely forced to trouble themselves with the implications of their position, which ultimately involves a virtual "open door" policy.  With over 22 million refugees or "people of concern", and perhaps five times that number of individuals in the Third World seeking to relocate to more prosperous countries, the potential demand for entry far outweighs the numbers that Australia could ever realistically manage.

Nevertheless, advocates for the asylum seekers pretend that softening the policies designed to deter illegal entry would have little effect on the attractiveness of Australia as a long-term target for people smugglers.  Such strange logic is forced on at least some of these advocates such as the Greens, because they also claim that Australia's present population levels are too high to be environmentally sustainable.

Certainly, it is likely that some of those who support tough measures against would-be refugees are simply mistrustful of foreigners, particularly those from Muslim countries.  Rightly or wrongly, this week's barbarism in the United States will only increase their antipathy.

Some of this suspicion might be dissipated if Australians were more confident that new arrivals would be strongly encouraged to identify first and foremost with our nation, and to respect and accommodate themselves to our ways.  This was the case in the past, and is arguably one of the main reasons why Australia has been so successful in integrating a large and diverse immigrant population.

But there is another reason for public suspicion towards the current influx of boat people, and it has little to do with xenophobia.  Individuals who learn that they will ultimately be rewarded by breaking our immigration laws, rorting our generous provisions for new arrivals, and threatening violence or suicide unless their demands are met are unlikely to make good future citizens.

Surely this is one public concern that the virtuous should understand.  After all, they are always keen to tell us that they are such model citizens themselves.

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