Not all asylum seekers are genuine, not all our rules are effective and not all our interrogation methods are thorough. And? Is this going to bring Australia to its knees?

People smuggling is a profitable industry adept at exploiting weak spots. It will always be a factor with every boat arrival but there is a humanitarian aspect to international agreements Australia can easily afford to uphold. How a community treats its weakest, or some such. It’s a principle of our Civilised Western Christian Heritage, a heritage some like to wear on their sleeve until it requires consideration for the genuinely less fortunate, which many arrivals are. Some are not, but since the politicisiation of immigration around the time of SIEVx it seems widely assumed we’re not up to the task of finding out ourselves. Maybe it’s true, I don’t know. (Franklin you’ve been saving up that link for six years! Do you have another?)

So-called bleeding hearts don’t expect a new life be handed to anyone who makes it to shore. Detention, health and character assessment, verifying the circumstances that brought them here, deportation as ordered, it all makes sense. As for the lawyers, if the law isn’t working it can be changed. Meantime it’s generally assumed the government is bound by it. Ranting about it here says more about the poster than the issue.

There’s a lot unknown about SIEVx and other would-be arrivals. The article tries to restore a little interest in a period when the Howard government misled us on many things – joining the Iraq war, kids overboard, AWAB, Hicks of course - and unsurprisingly not everyone trusts that the official account of SIEVx is complete. The article outlines lots of damning evidence and none of it has been addressed so far.

Some are having a grand time of it though. Seems they’ve spotted the words ‘asylum seeker’ in the index, thought “whacko”, and gone hell for leather with other like-minded sods putting the collective boot in to them “scum of the earth”.

Forrest

"To then claim that it would only cost a matter of "a few hundred dollars [per head per day?] to detain them on the Australian mainland" is therefore misleading."

No, Forrest, this is not at all 'misleading'. I was making the point that it would have cost far less for Australia to detain asylum seekers on Australian soil than to build and maintain the prison monstrosity on Christmas Island, which has already cost Australian taxpayers near half a billion dollars and will continue to drain the public purse of many millions of dollars every year. And for most of the time this impressively secure facility remains empty, and on current trends will continue to do so. This is a legitimate argument and I can't see who or what it is meant to 'mislead'.

"..representing these non-citizen illegal immigrants at taxpayers expense.."

Asylum seekers are not 'illegal immigrants'. Seeking asylum is not illegal. Ever since the WW2 travesty where boatloads of Jewish refugees were rejected from country after country, seeking asylum has been sanctioned under international law. As a writer who is usually very attentive to detail, you should at least have your terminology correct.

"..with as much compensation for their detention as possible.."

Very few asylum seekers are being paid compensation, despite the ongoing mental health problems suffered as a result of their indefinite incarceration. A considerable number of refugees who have been granted protection however, are now being charged for the costs of their detention. And those who were kept in solitary confinement are being charged more! No, this is not some black comedy. This is the reality in a country that, as Bennie reminded us, likes to wear its Civilised Western Christian Heritage on its sleeve.

Great post by the way, Bennie. Pity I can't say the same this time of my good friend Forrest!

Bronwyn,

I now understand the point you were making in regard to the Christmas Island detention facility: you were wanting to go back to before the facility was built, and see a different decision made that would have seen detainees held on the mainland. I think we are in agreement there, at least so far as costs are concerned. The cost of that facility is obscene. I, on the other hand, had taken you to be comparing ongoing costs of detention as from the present. In effect I was writing off the establishment costs of the Christmas Island facility, where you were not. Resolved.

"Asylum seekers are not 'illegal immigrants'."

I knew I was getting the adjective 'illegal' from somewhere. Its from the title of the Article, from the acronym SIEV. Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel. Genuine asylum seekers may well not be illegal immigrants. It is evidently recognised as a very important terminological distinction upon which your argument depends.

franklin nails the inconsistency in your case with his revelation of the very low acceptance rates among secondary movement asylum claimants when intercepted after leaving their first country of refuge, but before having destroyed the documentation that got them asylum in that first country in the first case. The criteria applied are those of the UNHCR, the instrumentality administering the international law with which you claim Australia must comply with respect to asylum seekers. In the case quoted only 6% qualified for asylum. Yet when similar boatloads arrive in Australian waters having destroyed their documentation, much higher acceptance rates are experienced.

You don't need to be Einstein to work out what happens as a consequence.

I'm afraid, after re-reading bennie's post again following your accolade, that I can't see it as being so great. I thought he took a rather cheap shot at franklin with his jibe that franklin's link was 'saved up for six years' and by inference not current. This article relates to events of seven years ago. That link was contemporarily very relevant to this issue.

Yeah, investigate franklin's other SIEV.

franklin's claim that from $5,000 to $10,000 was paid by each boat-person asylum seeker for a place in a boat is either true or false.

Let's assume it's true.

Franklin's claim is that that money is obtained by borrowing: a borrowing presumably effected BEFORE departure from the country of origin. What security can there be for the lender with the borrower departing, presumably permanently (needing asylum, right?), for another jurisdiction?

Let's accept the loan to be unsecured in the normal sense of the term. How can the lender, regardless of what may be being charged by way of interest, expect to be repaid by the asylum seeker?

It seems to me that, unless the lender has a collection agency in the country of destination, the lender is dependant upon the boat-person asylum seeker first being able to earn sufficient income to repay the loan and interest and then be honourable enough to actually do so. There are so many different countries where the asylum seeker could end up. They'd need collectors everywhere.

Also, franklin observes that average annual incomes in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time were around $400. If the asylum seeker arrived in a country in which average incomes were similar, and obtained employment there, it would take from 12 to 25 years of income to retire the debt. Upon what would the asylum obtainer live while doing that? It would seem utterly impossible, unless employment was obtained in a country where average earnings are much higher. Where could that be?

If there was such a country where secondary-movement asylum seekers could obtain entry AND earn high incomes, it would certainly narrow down the number of places where the lenders would need to run debt collection agencies, wouldn't it?

If only, from the lenders' perspective, there was some relatively sure-fire way of the asylum obtainers being able to generate enough income to both live and repay the loans. What if the lenders also ran labour-intensive businesses in this Utopia?

The cycle would be closed.

HI Forrest Gump

I can't not respond to your speculation as its so off the mark for the asylum seekers around 2000. You're talking about trafficking people which is different, and characterised by, in part, the trafficked persons being indentured to the traffickers after the journey finishes.

This is how journeys were financed. And not all paid amounts of $5000, some paid one or two thousand for their passage. Amongst the Afghans, many told a similar story. The young men of the extended family were being killed off by the Taliban or the generalised violence. Whole villages pooled money, families sold their homes so at least one of their young men would survive. That is why their was a relatively high proportion of unaccompanied minors - under 18 years old - amongst the Afghan asylum seekers.

Iraqis, the next largest group of asylum seekers in that period, generally came from middle class backgrounds and could raise the money. Its not unusual to come across doctors and engineers amongst Iraqi asylum seekers.

These are generalised statements of course and don't account for all individual circumstances but are broadly true.

Finally, staying in countries like Indonesia was never a viable option. Intercepted asylum seekers were locked up for years in Indonesian immiagrtion centres. Some have been stranded there since 2000. They are not allowed to work. Australia pays an agency based in Indonesia to provide accommodation, medical and general living expenses.

I know I have not appeared to have been addressing the point that only Bronwyn has brought out, that the people aboard the SIEV X were in large proportion family members of asylum claimants already, whether under detention as suspected illegal immigrants, or the recipients of TPVs, in Australia. In truth, however, I think I have addressed it. The key to understanding how I have done so lies, IMO, in identifying the real drivers of boat-person asylum seeking; the borrowers, or the lenders.

For all that there may be widespread desire among many in disrupted societies to escape to where it is imagined life will be better, I reckon its the lenders who are the real drivers behind the use of illegal entry vessels.

The lenders lend to the breadwinners, and in Afghanistan and bordering areas of Pakistan, that ain't the women and children.

The borrowers borrow for the escape of their families, not just themselves. They would be needing to hear about a package deal that included their family in negotiations with any lender for such relatively enormous borrowings, equal to from 12 to 25 years average earnings in the country of origin. Repayment of those loans cannot commence until the borrowers are earning income in a relatively prosperous and well-ordered country.

It can thus be seen that there existed a motive for the lenders in the people-smuggling business to have attempted to force the pace in getting breadwinners through the detention process applying in Australia.

One solution may have been to ship the families of borrowers currently under detention, then arrange to deliberately sink the ship in an area under relatively intense surveillance. Viewing the lenders as the drivers of this form of migration, it is not hard to see them thinking that upping the ante in this way might force the pace of release of breadwinners from detention.

Released from detention, the lenders may well have had what amounted to an indentured labour force. Some of such may have been wanted in a vertically integrated Afghan export business having a market in Australia.