Everyone has ideas to stop the boats, but there are very few ideas that work.
Pegasus however, can only think of abuse for someone who makes a suggestion.
Abuse is the resort of someone without answers.
As far as the money goes, do you believe that it is an invention of the media ?
Do you really think they sacrifice the boat and the crews do it out of
the goodness of their heart ?

Really ? And you call me an idiot !
It appears that you and others are unaware of what happened in Europe.
Illegal immigrants turned up in Italy in small freighters with a
couple thousand standing on the decks.
How long before we see that here ?

Franklin, with comments like

'Refugee advocates see themselves as kind, compassionate and caring people, whose compassion is shown in their fanatical support of the asylum seekers arriving on Christmas Island, who they unfailingly and unquestioningly view as desperate refugees bravely fleeing persecution and torture,'

how can anyone take you seriously? Very few advocates would call for people to be accepted without a process and most agree on sending back people who are not refugees.

As for the people on boats not being deserving take the example of a young woman held in Woomera for a year with her mother, baby and sister after arriving by boat. When her father died and her husband taken by the Taliban in Afghanistan they lived in their storeroom until they could escape over the border. They ended up on the streets in Malaysia and another country after fleeing then from Pakistan when relatives of her dead husband wanted to take the baby, as was their legal right. You just seem to have a stereotypical image of people arriving on boats.

As a so called refugee advocate I don't see myself as compassionate and caring, although I try to be (why try for the alternative?) and I don't know anyone with that self view. Refugee advocates are not a homogenous group of people, some are more radical than others, moderates get squashed in the middle, some are not involved with refugees and just have loud opinions, most support refugees in all situations, not just boat arrivals, and I can assure you that some can be greatly lacking in compassion and caring. Like others on that 'side' of the debate you seem to take on a victim status, when someone on the advocacy side expresses their belief you take it as a personal attack.

I am interested to know why you spend so many hours posting on a subject you feel very negatively about? I am asking that question with genuine interest - I find it hard to understand a person devoting so much time to being 'anti' particular human beings.

"These despotic dictatorships take our Aid, they abuse or slaughter our NGO and agency volunteers, they terrorize their own people, they terrorize neighboring nations and they terrorize us. To add insult to injury, where the west has intervened to try to improve the lives of these hapless peoples, our own “appeasement industries” howl at us from within."

Yep that's a pretty emotional response.

"As I said, this is the hypocrisy and schizophrenia."

No kidding.

I'd back CJ response and I'd echo Susan's reply to Franklin. As Susan said, Why spend so much time on something you feel so negatively about?

Why Rahim is fleeing Pakistan

I got to hear of Rahim through this Australian newspaper report : http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/afghan-refugees-in-no-mood-for-turning/story-e6frg6n6-1225852510283
(You’ll have to excuse the journalist , she does her best to plaster us with the you’ve-got-to-help-me-my-life-is-at-stake PC refugee narrative, but fortunately the truth does shine through the cracks.)

We are told Rahim was born in Pakistan after his mother fled Russian bombing –and we can only take this on trust.

Rahim has not experienced the Russians, he has not experienced the Taliban, and he has not even experienced the idiosyncrasies of the current regime. He lives in what the journalist refers to as the Afghan refugee community, a “squalid” refugee camp.
[Explanatory note 1: the term “Afghan refugee community” is misleading, you need to ditch Australian perceptions. “Afghan” covers a potpourri of ethnic groups, few of whom are restricted to Pakistan or Afghanistan. They overlap and overflow borders, and have for a long time moved with seasons back and forth, have sourced marriage partners from either side of the border, and usually feel closer affinity to a clan or language group than any concept of nation.]
[ Explanatory note 2: The term “squalid refugee camp” is misleading, as the poorer suburbs of most of the subcontinents cities are not materially much better off –in the main it’s are an artificial division to help UN & Pakistan play funding games: “the higher the number of refugees in a country that is reported, the higher the requests for aid-money can be”– Ed Giles ].

Since 2001 “Three million Afghans have returned home” (and though the journalist repeats the advocates apologia that this involved many in “ violent struggles over land and resources” , the fact that few have backtracked speaks volumes –they can’t all be at bottom of wells!). On his part Rahim, despite his relative untroubled history, has not the slightest inclination to return to Afghanistan , and why should he, for as pointed out above many of his ethnic group have traditionally resided in Pakistan . However, Rahim isn’t inclined to stay in Pakistan either. He aspires to translocated to OZ.

When interviewed, Rahim & his colleagues don’t raise any persecution issues. Some mention the war, sure, but as one later declares “There’s peace in Kabul and other big cities but all the people here come from villages and rural area” .
Their main concerns seem elsewhere :
1) “no money to bring up [their] children” ( despite which , at the age of 25 Rahim already has four kids, and even stranger , only eight months after losing his seed capital in a failed people smuggling venture he’s confidently talking of having money for a further attempt --clearly his case is not one of those life-long-savings-efforts, we keep getting told about!), &
2) Rahim ( especially) is “not prepared to sit around and wait for his country of birth to push him back to a country he has never known”
Which seems rather incongruous , given – he is prepared to travel to Oz, a country “he has never known”, whose language he doesn’t know, and whose culture is alien.

An Inspector Frost or Barnaby and maybe even a Chief Wiggum would see through the concoction & pull the alibi to pieces --- but not so an Australian reporter.

But rest assured , by the time Rahim gets to Indonesia, and gets the opportunity to tell his story to some overly trusting refugee advocate or UN official , he will (with the help of the people smugglers coaching college, and tips passed on to him by kin in OZ) by that time, likely have compiled a saga of horrible experiences in Afghanistan to recount: he will have remembered relatives (he never previously knew he had) who were murdered or who mysteriously vanished; he will have tormenting nightmares of his village being torched by the Taliban; and he might even have changed his religion and identify –making himself a more marketable, Hazara

Yea, I might not feel inclined to tell (Brennans) Ali to return home to join the queue, but hey, I sure as hell feel inclined to tell Rahim to ram it .
But guess what! our namby-pamby processes are likely to pass BOTH for settlement in OZ –because they can’t discern the difference! ( and our namby-pambyitis is likely to get a lot worse if we get a Bill Of Rights)

Frank Brennan has made much of various Australian govts narrowing of their interpretation of “coming directly”.
What he didn’t show was refugee advocates & claimants stretching of the UN definition of refugee.

Previously the presence of unrest somewhere in ones country of origin didn’t necessarily entitle one for refugee status --especially when that unrest was largely confined to one portion of the country .But nowadays we’re seeing that merely originating from a country that has a region of unrest almost assures ones acceptance as a bona fide refugee, in Oz.

And, we are increasingly seeing such excuses as the “struggle to educate or feed [your] kids”, or “squalid living conditions” or heavy levels of crime , or rising/falling, water levels being held up by advocates as sound and fair reason for seeking asylum, anywhere