The Forum > Article Comments > Human cargo > Comments
Human cargo : Comments
By Philippe Legrain, published 2/5/2007Deterring people who dare to cross the world in search of a better life from heading Down Under is everything.
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15 or even 20 thousand is OK, but I have a lot less faith in our natural barriers than you do. New Zealand and Iceland can afford to take the high moral ground, but asylum seekers have made it to Australia from Irian Jaya in dugout canoes. If Indonesia decided to be less of a good neighbour and there were no mandatory detention, I suspect that numbers would quickly escalate. There is a lot of poverty and other misery in the world.
If you look at the various environmental footprint sites you will see that it would take about 3 Earths to give everyone a modest European standard of living, even if the resources were equally distributed. That is now; the global population has a 53 year doubling time at present rates. Resource shortages are behind most refugee crises. If sufficient numbers flood in, the effect on our quality of life, our culture, and our personal freedoms will be exactly the same as if they got here through a military invasion.
Yes, we could accommodate a larger population. Just herd the bulk of the people into tiny high rise flats that are freezing cold in the winter and stifling sweatboxes in the summer. Gardens, pets, detached houses, and private cars are strictly for the elite. The people in the flats will have plenty of togetherness, since they will be able to hear all about their neighbours' arguments, sex lives, childrearing problems, and tastes in music (or the lack thereof) through thin walls and open windows. For further savings, ordinary people will be restricted to a joyless, limited vegetarian diet and one shower and change of clothes a week, with everything rationed. To keep the lid on, we will need plenty of secret police and neighbourhood monitors to ensure that no one does, says, or thinks anything remotely subversive.
It is better for the third world people to do something about overpopulation and mismanagement, with us giving them a hand up where we can, than to turn the whole world into one vast slum.