This whole "illegal" mantra has been on my mind (obviously)
I've just been out to dinner with some academics, and it was explained to me like this: (I'll try and communicate coherently, but I'm still getting my head around it all, so it may come out a bit disjointed)
The term illegal is an overarching one. It is understood that not all those seeking assylum are illegal, however, just like in any entity there are people who do take advantage of the loopholes.
By this I mean that there are people who are genuinely and quite literally fleeing for their lives. It is these people who are the genuine assylum seekers, regardless of how they get here. But then you have other people who take advantage of that and whilst their lives may not be ideal, they are not in mortal danger per se, but to find a better life than what they have, they immitate the conditions of a true assylum seeker to gain access to Australia.
It is this breed of "assylum seeker" to whom the term illegal refers. ie, they are not genuinely in danger, but they pretend to be,
I never understood that distinction before today.
Unfortunately, it is a case of a few "bad people" make it necessary to remove the benefits for all, even the genuine ones (as it is otherwise difficult to work out the genuine from the pretenders.)
So, to stop the pretenders, it is necessary to prevent everyone from benefiting.
Assylum is for those who are genuinely in need of safety. Assylum is not for those living in safe, but substandard living conditions in say a refugee camp or an otherwise oppressive environment. Assylum is not intended for those who just want a better life.
Whilstever these people with less than honest motives are able to gain access to Australia, they will come. To stop these people, the real illegals, it is necessary to stop everyone from coming. It is necessary to let them know, that if they turn up here, they will not be allowed in, they will not be able to avail themselves to appeal after appeal on the government's dollar whilst marking time until they get the key to their new life.
If they are genuinely seeking assylum, their interest is solely safety, so they don't care where they are as long as they are safe. Therefore, by stopping the boats and sending them elsewhere and limiting their legal access, in theory only those truly in a desperate life threatening situation will come by that method.
If there are fewer people coming, it frees up resources to make more indepth investigations into their circumstances and should remove the need for appeals as the right decision should be reached the first time. Of course, there will be some errors, but unfortunately, that is one of the chances that people will have to take simply because a few bad seeds have ruined it for those in genuine need.
We do not have the resources to help everybody. That is unfortunate, but we can help some, and that is better than none, eh? Yes we signed Treaties and International Coinventions, but we did not do so committing to help every person, nor did we do so if the committment was to the detriment of our own society.
It's just like when we donate to Charities. There are so many Charities, so many worthy causes, so many people that need help. But we only have so much money, so we just donate to those charities that we can.
Anyways, hopefully over the next few days that will all settle in my brain so I can join the dots a little better, at least for myself.
Some people can go their whole lives and never really live for a single minute.
