While Captain Abbott and First Mate Morrison have been playing pirates on the high seas, spending millions of dollars hauling a boat load of asylum seekers around the Indian Ocean, thousands of illegal immigrants have been streaming in through our airports.
While it is important to have a strong boarder protection policy, tempered with compassion and humanity, something this government’s policy lacks, it is also important to apply that policy across the whole range of entry points, again something this government has failed to do. While the ‘Usual Suspects’ on the forum prattle on long and hard about the “boat people”, they make no mention of the “plane people”. Something which is now exposing the incompetence of the Abbott Government on immigration.
Leaked documents reveal that national security is being compromised by wide-scale visa roughing and migration rackets, with possible links to terrorism. While the government has pursued the boats with vigor for political reasons, they have totally failed to check the thousands of illegal arrivals by air. Is this another Abbott Government failure? I am afraid it is

No Paul, it is a long term Rudd & Gillard failure.

Well after stopping the boats that could not be stopped and repealing the idiotic tax that could not be repealed its time to fix another Labour/Green failure.

It is fascinating that the instant response from the class warriors here is "it was the other lot".

>>... the incompetence of the Abbott Government on immigration.<<

>>... it is a long term Rudd & Gillard failure<<

You can go on pointing the finger as long as you like, but it won't alter the fact that this latest revelation on the porous nature of our airports has nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with bureaucratic and organizational incompetence.

Making Rudd, Gillard or Abbott responsible for everything ignores the day-to-day work of the Immigration Department and the raft of public servants to whom we pay vast sums of our tax money, who have been signally failing to do their jobs properly. These people do not change, nor does their job description change, each time we have a change of government.

The practice is easily solved.

When someone applies for a Visa they must sign a declaration that they will not claim asylum once they reach Australia.

On the Customs Declaration they receive on the Aircraft before they arrive in Australia everyone must tick a box declaring they are not going to claim Asylum once they are on Australian soil.

If, once they arrive or any time after, they do claim Asylum, they have made a false declaration. They can then be deported.

Jayb,

<<When someone applies for a Visa they must sign a declaration that they will not claim asylum once they reach Australia>>

I'm afraid I dont share your confidence. Even if the immigrants scammers had signed a stack of declarations/undertakings I reckon a plague of human right lawyers and advocates would fudge that they were forced to do it,or they fear for their lives sooooooooooo much they just had to lie.

People like Paul need to wake up --its not about *focusing on this rather than that* -- ALL scams need to be addressed. I have met a lot of people who came to OZ under some special much needed skills arrangement but never had the slightest intention of ever working for any length of time in that field.