Y,

The international law of the sea has several exceptions where a ship can be interdicted in international waters, and one of them is people smuggling. So stopping and turning back people smugglers is entirely legal.

Just note the complete lack of action taken against Aus by the litigious greenies.

Y. You sound like an activist receiving secret commissions from organised crime, which is an accurate description of people smuggling!

Only made possible as an extremely lucrative operation by the sale of inordinately expensive false hope!

We have a right to stop and seize any vessel operating in our economic zone, if they flout our laws, some of which can be illegal fishing, the worst example being hunting and killing sharks, just for their fins!

Second has to be people smuggling and the forced illegal/immoral activities of the transportees to acquire the exorbitant fare.

When will these idiots realise their prospects of resettlement here are vastly better if they #1, retain their ID documentation and #2, apply for a tourist visa. And #3, arrive with the $ 15,000.00 Av., that otherwise would have simply swelled the coffers of criminals! And #4, once landed here, they could apply for asylum!

It beggars belief, with standard tourist visa entry as their, far safer fly in option, they have to a virtually generic man decided to destroy their documentation and try the illegal route and attempted illegal entry!? Never ever the actions of bona fide refugees!

WHY?

If they genuinely want to be resettled anywhere else but here! They need to comply with all lawful direction! Nothing else whatsoever, holds any prospect of a positive resettlement outcome!

Attempted moral blackmail can only have one regretful outcome! Forced repatriation! No ifs, buts or maybes!
Alan B.

Dear SM,

The "international law of the sea" is, as the name suggests, an agreement between so-called nations, not between real people. Just because individual pirate gangs claim to represent "nations" and created a criminal cartel ("united nations") to divvy up the world among them, doesn't give them any moral rights.

The Greenies? They are in love with that criminal cartel.

---

Dear Alan,

The real organised crime is the states and their governments.

Already they literally claim to own the whole world between them, already they assert an illegitimate "right" to control who may or may not enter and exit vast stretches of land which they claim as theirs, then to impose their laws over those who live there - and now even that's not enough for them as they claim the seas to be theirs as well, leaving no one at peace even if they escape out to sea. Now, go figure, these immoral gangsters also claim a "right" to impose their idea of morality on others and persecute those who do not agree with them.

What gives them a "right" to do all that evil? Nothing but their guns!

Talking of sharks...

Meanwhile the illegal immigrants continue to arrive by the plane load and outstay their visas, without a public word from those responsible.

David

//Meanwhile the illegal immigrants continue to arrive by the plane load and outstay their visas//

I think the government are OK with those illegal immigrants because aviation is extremely safe - certainly a good deal safer than taking to the sea in unseaworthy vessels - and thus there aren't alarming rates of drowning during the passage. And because rounding all those extra illegals up and packing them off to some offshore processing facility would cost a packet, and might cause the tide of public opinion to turn against the government.

Non-Anglo-Saxons who don't speak our language are the 'other': it's easier to obtain support for inhumane policies when they're only being directed against the 'other' thanks to people's innate tendencies to xenophobia. But a lot of the fly-in, don't fly-out illegals are Poms: they look like us, they speak our language, we even have the same Queen. They are not the 'other', and bunging them up for years on end in some prison camp would cause public outrage... can't imagine Britain would be too impressed either.

Y,

All laws are based on agreements, and as interdicting people smugglers on the open seas is not illegal, your previous post is essentially pointless.

Toni,

Most visa over stayers leave when approached by immigration, and no poms that claim asylum. Of those over stayers that do claim asylum, most are shipped back pretty quickly as their documentation makes it impossible to make up a BS sob story.