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>> >> "The flood of illegal immigrants which looked like getting out of control
>> >> three years ago has been reduced to a trickle by the hard-line Liberal
>> >> government. Carting off a few boaties to Papua New Guinea and Nauru worked a
>> >> treat, not to mention the freak drowning of some 350 illegal wannabes off the
>> >> coast of Indonesia." >> The flood of illegal immigrants didn't stop because we locked them up or sent
>> them to the Pacific, it stopped because the Indonesian government shut down the
>> smugglers (with assistance from the AFP). Indonesian assistance helped the situation, but ultimately the decision to come
to Australia is based on expected outcome. Expected outcome changed from a
lifetime of dole money to a long stay in Nauru - and the demand for the services
of 'unlicenced travel agents' changed accordingly. >> Somehow I don't think some poor arse in Pakistan is reading The Sydney Morning
>> Herald about the abject conditions in detention centres before embarking on an
>> arduous journey through SE Asia. If these guys had cash and education, they'd
>> fly in on Qantas like the vast majority of illegal immigrants in Oz. Get real. The asylum seekers were very well informed about the
expectations. Successful applicants were making money selling video tapes of
the evaluation interviews to learn what to say. Do you really think that these
people were investing 10,000 on a ticket without doing any research? >> "The issue is not that an Australian citizen was mistakenly deported by an
>> incompetent public servant, but that immigration officials may have tried to
>> cover up the mistake after it had happened." >> >> I think both are the point. You can't honestly say that deporting or detaining
>> >> mentally ill Australians and Australian residents is excusable because we
>> >> expect incompetence from public servants? I never said it was excusable. Reread what I have written. Public service
incompetence is, however, inevitable. Faced with a choice of having 30
person-days mistaken detention per year, or an open-border policy, the
Australian electorate will choose the former. And frankly so will I. And if there is a third way - putting processes in place to reduce the damage
from public service incompetence, then I will choose that too.
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