Admit the boat people!
Historically, times of economic downturn in Australia have brought increased calls for reduced or racially based immigration, as demagogic political forces seek to deflect popular anger from the real causes of the crisis. The present recession is no exception. The arrival of 56 Chinese boat people in the Kimberley region has provided an opportunity for the latest outpouring of xenophobic sentiment.
"We can't afford it", is the main refrain of those who would like to find some way of running a racist campaign without offending the millions of first or second generation Australians who have helped to open this society up from the narrow, mainly Anglo-Irish outpost it was in the first half of this century.
For once, Paul Keating got close to the truth when he accused the Liberal Party of falling into this category. The Liberals have given every indication of looking for a way to make immigration an electoral issue, fully aware that this is the soft way of garnering the racist vote. Yet the economic arguments of the anti-immigrationists just don't stand up to examination. The objective economic evidence is that migration creates jobs, and that very few immigrants remain on the dole or other welfare benefits for long periods of time, and certainly not voluntarily. The recession is certainly not caused by immigrants.
On humanitarian grounds alone, the calls to deport the latest boat people are disgusting. Whatever the details of their voyage here, and whatever help they may have had along the way, they risked their lives and suffered great hardships to leave their former homes in search of a better life. No-one does such things without good reason. Whether they are political or economic refugees, Australia almost certainly can offer them better lives than the ones they left behind, and it should do so — without the preliminaries of imprisonment, solitary confinement and possibly years in detention.
Even if the latest boat people are eventually admitted, they won't be coming to a paradise. Capitalist Australia is a society of many injustices, and this is particularly the case for the latest immigrants. Whatever their qualifications, they will almost certainly begin their lives here as cheap labour in the dirtiest, most tedious jobs — as have most of the millions of immigrants who preceded them.
To their shame, some environmentalists also add their voices to the racist clamour against immigration. It is true that population growth is a problem that humanity must solve; but this is a global problem, and stopping immigration to Australia won't solve it. While we must work for environmental sustainability in Australia, we should be under no illusion that Australia can survive if the rest of the world destroys itself.
Meanwhile, environmentalists who align themselves with the forces of intolerance and fear which oppose immigration are actually making the environmental struggle more difficult. Forces such as the Liberal Party and the League of Rights actively oppose the complex mix of social justice and environmental policies that will enable humanity term.