Australia’s Boat People
The Aussies aren’t racist.

September 4, 2001 3:45 p.m.

n a trailer for the countless forthcoming dramas about Third World asylum-seekers being denied "room at the inn" by the heartless West, the Australian government today finds itself in the dock, charged with racism and inhumanity. The crime: Refusing to allow the landing of a Norwegian container ship that contains, in addition to its regular cargo, 434 "boat people" from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

In the last few days, Canberra has been subjected to enormous international diplomatic and media pressure to admit the refugees. In America, some conservative commentators — anxious not to appear uncompassionate, mean-spirited, or nativist — have sung nervously from the same hymnbook. Even London's Daily Telegraph, usually hard-headed on international migration issues, described Australia as suffering from a "siege mentality" and of being "tarnished" by its unwelcoming attitude to asylum-seekers. This criticism, moreover, was leveled not in its editorial commentary but in its reporting: Respectable opinion is apparently so unanimous on this issue that moral opinions are treated as though they are facts.

And in general, to quote Dr. Johnson, there have been ten thousand stout fellows in the embassies and on the op-ed pages ready to fight to the death against xenophobia "though they know not whether it be a man or a horse."

It is quite possible, therefore, that the Aussies will eventually be swept away by this torrent of cant. After all, they have the usual complement of "human rights lawyers" and Non-Governmental Organizations, who were quick to ask the courts to override the government's decision not to admit the refugees. And though the court has decided, for the moment, not to obstruct the diplomatic compromise (which will send most of them to New Zealand instead), it has reserved the right to change its mind as long as the refugees are on the high seas.

But there are good reasons, of both humanity and justice, for rejecting not only this particular boatload of refugees, but the entire scenario of Third World entitlement and guilty Western obligation it embodies.

Let us take, first, the facts of this particular case.

After their own boat sank, the "boat people" were rescued by a Norwegian ship that, in accordance with international law, set out for the nearest port in Indonesia to land them there. But the refugees had other ideas, invaded the ship's bridge, and demanded to be set down in Australia instead.

Acceding to their threats and moral coercion, the captain lost his nerve and turned course. The Tampa would eventually have arrived in Australia if John Howard's government, showing an unfashionable firmness, had not put troops on board to prevent it. A stalemate then reigned — with the Aussies refusing entry, the Norwegian government demanding it, the diplomats haggling about it in Geneva, and the Australian courts wondering whether to intervene — until the current fragile compromise was hammered out.

Even from these modest facts, we can draw some obvious conclusions:

1. The "boat people" are not asylum-seekers journeying to any refuge from persecution; they are migrants seeking the particular destination of Australia.

2. Whatever their status beforehand, they ceased to be either asylum-seekers or migrants when they invaded the ship's bridge. They then became hijackers and pirates.

3. If there is a legal or moral obligation on any state to take them in at this point, it is either Indonesia (the country nearest to the point where their boat sank) or Norway (the country on whose maritime territory they now reside).

There cannot be an obligation on Australia to accept them, since that would mean that migrants could bypass the immigration laws of any nation by the simple expedient of seizing a ship and forcing the crew to go there. An international law that facilitated such actions would be empowering piracy, rather than rescuing people from persecution. And if we fail to distinguish genuine refugees from economic migrants, we will encourage an uncontrollable outflow of people from poor to rich countries — and effectively abolish national borders.

Indeed, such an outflow is already happening. The Tampa incident is not an isolated one, but only the latest and most dramatic example of the "invasion of the boat people." Thus:

In 1993, the Golden Venture — holding 300 Chinese migrants who had paid $20,000-35,000 to criminal smugglers for their passage — was beached off Queens, N.Y. It was the 24th such ship known to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to have reached the U.S. in this way.

This February, the East Sea, a Cambodian-registered freighter, ran aground just off St. Tropez on the French Riviera. When police and medical teams arrived at the vessel, they found 900 people cooped up in the hold. Mainly Iraqi Kurds, they had paid gangs $4,500 per adult, and $2,000 per child, to be smuggled into Western Europe.

In 1999, at least three ships deposited Chinese migrants on the west coast of Canada.

None of those on the Golden Venture have returned home; none of those on the East Sea or in Canada will do so; all will reach some haven in the West. Those who live in their home villages will conclude that they too should save up money to pay smuggling gangs to spirit them into the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc. And if the Australian government is forced to accept immigrants — through the force majeure of the refugees, ratified by a court — the last uncertainty will be removed, and boats will set off for the First World in larger and larger fleets.

Two prescient works of fiction predicted this astonishing development: from a right-wing perspective, Jean Raspail's 1972 novel Camp of the Saints, and from a left-wing one, the 1990 BBC movie, The March. Both tendered the same explanation: that the apparently powerless refugees making their painful way to the First World wielded the one weapon against which an otherwise omnipotent West was defenseless — its own humanitarianism.

But that humanitarianism, unrestrained by common sense, is a false one overriding other, equally important moral considerations: notably, the rights of nations to determine who will enter their borders and become part of their national community. If we yield to it, it will damage not only the West but also the migrants tempted towards our world. For some will be cheated; some will perish on the journey; some will be forced into prostitution and near-slavery to pay off their debts to the criminal gangs. And all will live precariously outside the law of their new nations.

If Australia's John Howard persists in his refusal to be morally bullied by this false humanitarianism, he will deserve the gratitude of all — refugees and the West alike. Of course, he won't get it.