Tuesday 30 July 2013

Australia's Ultra-Generous Asylum Seekers Policy

As a 'numbers man' it's hard to call Australia unfair when it comes to Asylum Seekers.

Australia plans to take in around 20,000 refugees this year. That's about 4% of total refugees worldwide when we only make up about 0.4% of the world population. Proportionately, we take in a fair amount of refugees, not to mention the total of 200,000 immigrants we took in last year.

If there was a war happening nearby making everyone flock to Australia, you may have some compassion and responsibility. Instead, a huge portion of Asylum Seekers are from the Middle East. The majority of these are found to be genuine refugees, but how many countries could they 'seek asylum' in before they got to Australia? Jump on Google Maps, and see how many countries are closer to Afghanistan than Australia. There is a difference between seeking asylum, and picking your favourite country on a map and jumping the queue to get there.

What's best for Australia?

They estimate there's around 30,000 boat people headed for Australia this year. Each one costs us $70,000 a year to process/feed/house etc. If Rudd's plan costs less than $2b a year, it's actually a more economical solution than any on the table at the moment.

On the other hand, by 2050 there will be 2.5 working Australians for every retiree. Unless Australians start breeding, we don't really have a choice but to open our doors. Personally, I would prefer we had the pick of the bunch instead of whoever can pay a smuggler $7,000 to take them to Australia.