Not half as disgusting as allowing thousands of people to drown by inviting queue-jumping immigrants to sail illegally to our country.
It's not illegal to seek asylum and if people are desperate enough
they will choose to risk their lives for a chance of a better life. I'd guess it's easy for some Aussies to demonise others around the world when we're fortunately born into and living in a first world nation and can turn a blind eye to 90% of the rest of the world that isn't
. Hate the people smugglers by all means that peddle lies and false promises to these people for $$$ but it's laughable a lot of Aussies blame, hate and are afraid of desperate people, often families, on rickety barely-seaworthy fishing boats who make up up to around just 7% of our total immigration intake (even when they are "flooding" in). It's so much about "border security" that our pollies on both sides waited years before trying to stop thousands of boat people arrivals until conveniently doing so just prior to an election when they were well behind in polls and needed a political circuit breaker
. It's also so much about "border security" that the vast majority of these boat people have been eventually allowed into Australia as opposed to say arrivals via plane where the majority are found to be illegals. If there wasn't any political mileage from the boat people issue, the pollies wouldn't care. In time, future generations will look back on this period in Australian history with shame.
The great irony is cutting back significantly on foreign aid is more likely a genuine border security issue, at least in the mid-to-long-term, as one of major purposes of foreign aid is to help create and preserve stability and promote progress and development in third world nations so they don't regress into lawless rogue states that would pose a real direct threat to Australia and our interests.
