UK Edition
There are always people who are desperate to live in free and prosperous countries like Britain and Australia. Who can blame them; especially if they’re currently living in Africa or the Middle East? And why wouldn’t those who’ve made it to safety in France or Indonesia want to push on, to where they can maximise their economic opportunity? But not even decent and generous countries like Britain and Australia can give a new home to all who would like one.
There has to be a limit to the number of newcomers that any country can accept: first, because large numbers of semi-skilled and semi-literate people either disappear into the black economy or become a burden on taxpayers; and second, because large influxes of very different newcomers, if sustained, change a country’s character. Some might argue that change is for the better. But that’s for a country’s citizens to decide; rather than have it forced upon them by foreigners who simply turn up and refuse to leave.
The risk with the trickle of people-smuggling boats now making their way across the English Channel is that it might quickly become a flood. That’s what happened in 2015 when more than a million people crossed the Aegean or the Mediterranean, or pushed across borders into the Balkans, insisting on a new home, regardless of the rights of the people of Europe to control their own destiny. Even now, despite literally thousands of deaths at sea, yet-more-thousands are still pouring across the Med, because they know that if they can get to Europe they can stay there. As long as “to arrive is to remain”, people smugglers will have a business model and those countries that lack the will to say “no” are at risk of peaceful invasion. This is the prospect that faces Britain, if swift action is not taken to stop people coming illegally by boat.
This is the prospect that faced Australia when I became prime minister in 2013. Our sea border had become porous because my predecessor had dismantled earlier arrangements that denied illegal arrivals permanent residency. From just a few hundred illegal boat people in 2009, by July 2013 almost 5000 had arrived in a single month. Under the people smuggling rackets then operating, people would fly to Jakarta, board a repurposed fishing boat, get picked up by our navy, claim to be refugees, and swiftly gain welfare benefits in Australia. Between 2009 and 2013, more than a thousand are thought to have drowned; but more than 50,000 bought a new life for themselves in Australia at the cost of about ten thousand dollars each.
To save lives, it had to stop; as well as to regain control of our borders and to keep our self-respect as a country. So instead of rescuing people who had no right to come here, and bringing them to Australia, my government instructed the navy to intercept boats, to escort them to the edge of Indonesian waters, and to leave them with just enough fuel to return from whence they’d come. And when the people smugglers scuttled their boats, we had unsinkable orange life rafts to put them on board for the trip back to Java. Sometimes, would-be migrants had to be kept on Australian ships till it was safe to send them back. The Indonesians didn’t like it but it was, after all, their inability or unwillingness to stamp out people smuggling that had allowed this humanitarian disaster to develop. When refugee advocates claimed that what we were doing was illegal, we simply obtained different and better legal advice. And besides, how can it be wrong to save lives at sea by denying the people smugglers a product to sell?
This is the fundamental truth that policy makers in Britain need to understand. To stop people from setting out for Britain in unseaworthy boats, you have to ensure that they never arrive; or that if they do arrive they are swiftly sent back. Especially if people setting out for Britain in overloaded dinghies are going to be rescued and taken where they want to go, the boats will keep coming; even though no one has a right to set sail from France to demand a new life in Britain; and even though the French have no right to wave-on their problems to Britain just because they are unwilling or unable to control their own borders.
Plainly, this will require a degree of determination and planning on Britain’s part. The French may not like to hear “they shall not pass” from Britons, even though “ils ne passeront pas” is a resonant phrase from their history. Still, in the long run, this is for France’s good too; as the only way to clear the camps in Calais is to ensure that none of their occupants can ever get across the Channel and stay.
Tony Abbott is a former prime minister of Australia
Channel crossings will continue as long as illegal migrants are allowed to stay in Britain
The business model for people smugglers depends on countries' unwillingness to turn would-be migrants away