Porous borders would save millions in terms of people smuggling
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While News Limited newspapers are busily running their stronger border protection campaign — the Herald Sun has the issue splashed across its front page this morning — it is also conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room. Increasing border protection leads to more people smuggling because it makes the latter enterprise more profitable. Whenever governments tighten border security they increase the risk factor for people who want to migrate to that country. So would-be migrants to countries such as Australia are prepared to pay for the services of someone with expertise in penetrating borders. The natural consequence of this is that people smugglers prices go up and those whom people smugglers employ — in the case of Indonesia, for example, poor fishermen — make more money for undertaking the journey to the destination. A natural by-product of a market in a product or service that is declared illegal by the state is organised crime and human rights abuses. The notorious and horrific stories of people trafficking in Europe are testament to this fact. This is, of course, simple economics. It applies in any case where governments seek to prohibit economic activity. Illicit drugs is the prime example. It would enhance Australia’s economy if people smuggling were made legal and properly regulated. Just as capital moves in and out of Australia legally but through regulatory mechanisms such as the Foreign Investment Review Board and financial transaction reporting laws, so should the supply of labour. A think tank in the US run by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, said much the same in an American context earlier this year. The Centre for American Progress argues in a report released in January that US government border tightening policies have led to an increase in the number of people smugglers being used and in the fees paid to people smugglers. The approach to migration taken by the ALP and the Liberal Party in Australia would do the old-style central planners of 1950s Moscow proud. It is a policy based on rigid assessments by bureaucrats of how many people Australia “should take” each year. It is also a policy based on the assumption that we should make it has hard as possible for people to enter the Australian labour market as possible. (I spoke to someone recently whom the Department of Immigration want to throw out because they did not complete the relevant skills assessment forms before taking a permanent job in the IT industry in Australia!) The result of this anti-market approach is that we have in Australia, and in other developed world countries, regular bouts of chronic skills shortages in key sectors of the economy as diverse as mining and medicine. This, of course, puts constraints on economic growth, and therefore the whole community suffers as a result of the missed economic opportunity. The solution to is to create more porous borders so that those millions of asylum seekers and other would be migrants who are stuck in the official migration system — which is a monopoly run by governments — have a greater opportunity of reaching countries such as Australia. This is where the people smuggling business comes into play. It is essentially a privatised form of migration, but because it is illegal it is unregulated. We should simply acknowledge that people smuggling will always be with us, and make this form of labour market movement legitimate. Why don’t we allow for a private people movement market that is fair, regulated to ensure compliance with health and safety standards and that, by virtue of being a legitimate business, is transparent? The Australian economy will be the winner and we can stop wasting billions of dollars on silly games such as Christmas Island. |
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8 Comments
I find it hard to believe that Crikey provides a forum for someone with such blinkered and frankly, insane ideas.
There is a debate to be had regarding the size of the migrant and refugee intakes, the criteria for acceptance of illegal entrants and claimants for refugee status, but to basically say lets make it open slather to anyone who can afford the trip, subject to some OH&S criteria, smacks of someone who either has taken leave of their senses or is trolling on Crikey’s dime.
Greg Barns, CEO of ‘People Smugglers Inc’ ?
Its an interesting angle to look at asylum seekers as mobile workers. What Greg forgets is that most of these people are fleeing persecution, repression, violence and trauma.
Many of them need intensive physical and psychological treatment and support on arrival into Australia and in many cases ongoing support for post-traumatic stress. They do not just rock up ready to work.
To disregard the suffering many asylum seekers have gone through and to regard them as just human pawns on the chessboard of the global economy is quite heartless. I would have expected a more nuanced understanding from someone who writes extensively on human rights .
What I also find disturbing is the notion that funny-speaking brown people from another country can be used to do all the crap jobs that nice white people don’t want to do. I don’t want Australia to become like the USA with mexican workers doing all its cleaning jobs, or like cruise ships where the country you come from dictates what job you do and how much you earn (eg shiny white people get customer service roles, hispanics get the housekeeping & kitchenhand jobs - the two categories of staff even have separate staff lounges). The whole idea is perpetuating racism, classism and the worst exploitation of vulnerable people that capitalism has to offer.
I agree we don’t handle the asylum seeker issue well in Australia (particularly the tabloid media) but reducing people to economic units is not the answer. We need more humanity, not less.
Provocative argument, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough:
Cut out the middle man entirely and auction off places to the highest bidders. This raises revenue, gets people here without taking dangerous boat trips in unseaworthy hulks, and is easily seen by all as economically based. (To hell with the humanitarian codswallop…we’ve already shown we don’t give a stuff about their humanity by shoving on Nauru for years, or that hell hole Baxter).
OK, just to appease the xenophobes, make sure they pass health and security tests. Look, if they’ve got money, they’ve probably got skills too, and isn’t that what we’re looking for? Forget about all that traumatised human flotsam, I mean, what good are they?
I can see some validity in this article. Potential migrants and the people assisting them should not be treated as criminals. However, there should be more acknowledgement of the humanitarian angle.
Look I hate the fear-mongering and associated bullshit about Asylum Seekers as well.
But this must be one of the most stupid and pointless articles written on the subject… and I’ve read some doozies from RWDB’s.
Dr Harvey m Tarvydas
JENNY
As a humanitarian I can not help but agree with you on everything you say.
Your easily agreed with (by any compassionate, intelligent and aware person apart from me) statements are just that, statements of the facts that we find ourselves hating to be living with.
In the end each one of us one, way or the other, is an ‘economic unit’ and that’s not ugly unless you automatically attach ugly concepts to the term.
It’s a neutralizing term used here by compassionate people making attention to helping these people more neutral of the need for compassion and therefore more universal in terms of simple sense rather than searching for noble compassion.
About
“To disregard the suffering many asylum seekers have gone through and to regard them as just human pawns on the chessboard of the global economy is quite heartless. I would have expected a more nuanced understanding from someone who writes extensively on human rights.”
May I say I believe Greg has a stosh of nuance to show us on this subject?
For all the people of compassion like you, me and Greg nothing much good is happening to the majority of these poor people because we deal with them in a socio-legal habit format.
Greg’s idea is first a rupture from the mostly unworkable HABIT and if well meaning intelligent people actually acted it though (not emotionally think and talk it through) we might be surprised at process and action that comes to mind and works on all the levels you’re worried about that we haven’t even thought of yet. Faith and trust are rare commodities.
There are a number of our very own worst social problems that we so often angst about the hopelessness of any achievement potential that would be better dealt with by rupturing these method habits (and) doing the reverse to what we usually do.
I have spent decades perfecting just such a process for one such problem and although rejected by out jerky leaders I’ve sat and watch society edge ever so slowly over the decades in my forecast direction. Too long a story for this page.
ChrisD - we tried the buy-a-passport system in the 80s with Hawkeating’s idiot idea of “tell us you’re bringing $500K into the country” without actually seeing the green stuff.
Lots of chinese, using the same putative half mill, swanned in, acquired their docs. and immediately went back to HK, secure in the knowledge that when the Brits bade good bye, they’d have somewhere more congenial to live.
Pity that a high proportion of such schammers were as crooked as their actions suggested in the first instance.