Got news for you, Maralyn Shepherd, every western country on Earth is fed up of illegal immigrants barging their way into their countries, and there are now anti immigration movements everywhere. Even the neo Nazis are polling well in Germany and screaming "Auslander, raus!" If you refuse to recognise that people do have a right to protect their own territories, what else do you expect?

Europe has finally figured out that it is broke and can no longer aford to allow people barge into their societies in order to loot their social welfare systems and fill their jails. Comapassion and tolerence is wonderful if you can afford to indulge your vanities. But if the wealth you have is the result of living on your credit card, then you had better reasses your priorities, protect your own, and demand that the rest of the world to get their population increases under control.

I would just love to see the elected leaders of the world go and tell the Catholic Church's leaders that their policies against birth control equate to insanity.

LEGO, we don't have illegal immigrants in this country, we have some people who don't have visas and there is no offence involved in not having a visa.

To get a visa people have to be able to have passports, if the person or country or government won't allow them to get passports because they would rather kill them we do not get to punish people because their own government persecutes them.

And Europe is not us, they in fact have millions of illegal workers crossing borders every year while we are whining endlessly about 12 people a day.

Marilyn,

Have you ever heard of dealing with a small problem before it becomes a big problem? Read Christopher Caldwell's book "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" on how asylum seeking snowballed there. There were half a million asylum claims in the UK between 1997 and 2004, not counting dependants who arrived later. Only 23% of claims were found to be genuine, including after appeal. Another 14% were given exceptional leave to remain, sometimes for humanitarian reasons, but often because of the practical impossibility of deporting them. All the rest of these people, the vast majority, were failed asylum seekers, and only 75,000 of them (24%) were removed.

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/108

"The UNHCR has acknowledged that by the early 1990s the vast majority of asylum seekers in Western countries were economic migrants."

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/cib/1999-2000/2000cib13.htm

It can be practically impossible to deport people when they have destroyed their travel documents and we can't establish where they are from. Even if we can, their home country can always refuse to take them back. As the Immigration Minister has said, this is a constant problem with Iran. The whole point of Syd Hickman's article is that it can happen here too, and the problem is likely to escalate due to global overpopulation and environmental damage. We are concerned about writing a blank cheque, when we have no idea of the possible numbers, even of genuine refugees, and even more so, if we are going to be stuck with any economic migrants who falsely claim to be refugees.

The distinction between boat and plane arrivals is that the airline is held financially responsible if they transport people without valid travel documents. Passengers with proper documents can still claim asylum here, but can be sent back if their claims are rejected.

How do they get into Indonesia without passport, Maralyn?