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October 18, 2009
Like Joshua Gans I surprisingly find myself in agreement with Chris Berg's position on refugees outlined in the Sunday Age. Berg, a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and editor of the IPA Review, writes:
The sanest case for strict borders is a paternalistic argument that refugees need to be deterred from making the dangerous journey by boat to Australia. But it's not convincing. Isn't the danger of the journey a pretty significant deterrent itself? Refugees risk their lives and permanent separation from their families - a decision normally made under pain of imminent death. So exactly what are we trying to deter? Refugees aren't just going to quit being refugees. It's not clear whether deterrence even works. Australian refugee volumes correspond to global and regional refugee trends. That this recent surge of refugees is mostly Sri Lankan is because of the war there, not because of the Migration Amendment Bill 2009 (which hasn't even been passed in Parliament).
Berg adds that Rudd seems eager to depict his Government as tough on refugees. The idea that we should punish those who do make it to Australia alive, to dissuade others from trying, quickly descends into outright cruelty.
I concur. My quibble is that Rudd's toughness rhetoric on refugees is directed at boat people, not at those who arrive by plane, and that this governmental rationality has nothing to do with the “reason of economy” --ie., the expansion of the market. It hints of authoritarianism.
Berg's overall position on the wider issue of immigration is a libertarian one in that libertarians generally consider that governments should not have any authority on deciding who can migrate where. He says:
Obviously we're a long way from the liberal ideal of global free movement of people to complement global free trade.....But individual liberty stands implacably opposed to the sort of nationalistic state sovereignty which has been the foundation of our immigration and refugee policies. Those who place liberty at the front of their politics should be against harsh border measures, not for them.
Berg is being consistent here. However, in the world of nations we do not have as much freedom of movement for people as there is for capital, as sovereign nation states control for immigration everywhere. Instead of a state under the supervision of the market we have a market supervised by the state’.
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"My quibble is that Rudd's toughness rhetoric on refugees is directed at boat people, not at those who arrive by plane..."
Then there's the cynical view:
Rudd's toughness rhetoric on refugees is directed ALMOST ENTIRELY at Australian TV viewers. Seriously! Why do we assume that even a FRACTION of this posturing and chest-thumping makes it to the ears of the refugees????