[LINK] End of the filter? Better off without a Stalinist, censorious, Labor government.

[Philip Argy]

I may be wrong, but I am not aware of any boat people having sailed all the
way from Sri Lanka or Afghanistan.  Isn't the argument that they flee those
places to a safe haven in Indonesia and THEN they seek to improve their
position by trying to come to Australia by boat instead of lodging an
immigration claim with the Australian Embassy in Indonesia.  The people
smugglers assure them that they can get them to Australian waters after
which they are guaranteed being landed on Australian soil.   

Now there are a few more intricacies than this simplification provides, but
the gist of what I understand to underlie the offshore processing rationale
is that it prevents the people smugglers being able to give the assurance,
and makes it more likely than not that a conventional application will be
processed in the same time that an asylum claim will be processed offshore,
the end result being that legitimate claimants will get to Australia at
about the same time whichever route they choose, thus depriving the people
smugglers of a market for their services.. 

Philip

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kim Holburn" <kim at holburn.net>

> On 2010/Aug/08, at 3:52 PM, Robin Whittle wrote:
...

>>  In practical terms, their asylum seeker policies don't seem to
>>  be producing a better outcome than the Coalition's.  The
>>  people smugglers are back in business because there is, or was,
>>  again a benefit in turning up unannounced in Australian
>>  territories.
>
> I find this vacuous.  The Australian government has not and has never
> caused boat people to come or not.  In the current case it is wars in
> Sri Lanka and two wars we are involved in that have disrupted other
> countries enough to make people want to come to Australia enough to
> risk a boat journey