Runner,
People smugglers are gangsters, are the pro boaties so naive as to think that these criminals don't run brothels, stand over rackets, pimp children, sell drugs or engage in the full gamut of Indonesian organised crime activities?
Indonesia is horribly corrupt as it is, our open borders make it worse, what do the pro boaties think these gangsters spend their millions on? Could they countenance the idea that these "queue jumpers" are by their actions funding sexual slavery rackets or further corrupting the justice system in Third World countries?
If the boat people were White Europeans you can bet the same people would be screaming the house down about how they were corrupting Indonesia.

we should have compassion for those today who find themselves similarly placed.
Jeremy Lawrence,
You'll find most people do have the compassion. Where this compassion rightfully ends is at the non-genuine who come into Australia purely on an agenda.

Ah, Rabsi, you avoided my question as I knew you would.

Let's face it, Palestinians according to Israel, are subhuman.

Anyone who knows anything about the Palestinian people since 1947 knows which group is subhuman.

You crying crocodile tears for refugees is a red herring!

People seeking asylum has nothing to do with smuggling, smuggling under the law is the forced movement of MIGRANTS across borders for exploitation.

Refugee applicants simply pay for transport one way and that is their legal right and who they pay is nothing to do with anything.

@Marilyn,

<<First we have to stop all the lies>>

Talking of lying, it seems that someone is telling big ones. See the below ABC AM report:

“One [of the smugglers] … says he was attracted into helping by the promise of just $300…Mr X's lawyer Lisa Hiariej says he had no choice but to go through with it…: Mr X tell me that a lot of passenger want to kill him, tell him you have to go to this islands,… So almost all the people there, the illegal people want to kill them…Things were made worse, when another boat arrived to take the captain away and two asylum seekers forced Mr X to keep driving the boat.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3543208.htm

Marilyn tells us: it’s a perfectly legit operation and all we are dealing with are *harmless* "asylum seekers" & their helpers.

But.

The smugglers tells us: The passengers “forced” me to do it

The illegals tells us: the smugglers tricked us to it

Someone has got to be lying –most likely, it's ALL of the above.

Marilyn, you are far too narrowly focussed.

What about our offshore refugee programs?

You seem to pay them no regard whatsoever.

Can you not agree that those people are deserving of refugee status more so than onshore asylum seekers or at least to the same extent, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with onshore asylum seekers displacing them?

Don’t you think Australian aid workers or Australians in conjunction with UN personnel do a good job of selecting the neediest of refugees to come to this country?

I’d say they do, and that therefore offshore asylum seekers are those most in urgent need of resettlement and onshore asylum seekers would have to be deemed considerably less deserving than the offshore asylum seekers they displace or push further back in the queue.

Even if all onshore asylum seekers were genuine refugees, with no economic opportunism associated with the whole deal, it would still be far better to work towards shutting down onshore asylum seeking and concentrating on our offshore programs, wouldn’t it?

Wouldn’t any holistically thinking humanitarian concur with that?

Hey, defending this terrible onshore asylum seeking business is just crackers. No matter which way you look at it, it would be FAR better to decisively shut it down.

I’ve said all of this to you before multiple times. You don’t respond to it. You won’t let anything get in the way of your very blinkered view on this subject.

So I implore you to shift your wonderful humanitarian focus to supporting refugees that are brought here through our formal refugee programs….. please.