What can I do about asylum seekers?

Greg Lake (former Director of Nauru Regional Processing Centre) recently gave a presentation at City Bible Forum on asylum seekers. He expands on this presentation here.

Whenever I speak to people about issues to do with Asylum Seekers, I am always asked the question ‘what should we be doing?’ People who feel strongly about this issue often feel that their response should be action - they want to contribute, to work towards reversing the terrible things that happen. Evidence of this more broadly is that the Australian people have made it abundantly clear that they are not satisfied with what is considered inaction on the Government’s part. People consider it to be so great a problem that they want governments to come up with solutions (like the Pacific Solution, the Malaysia Solution, etc).

The thing is, there aren’t too many Australians who can stand on remote coastlines in Indonesia and try and talk a person out of getting on a boat. And even if there were people doing that, they probably wouldn’t be successful in many cases. And they probably couldn’t cover the whole coastline. And if they did, chances are the people smugglers would find a new place to launch the boat from.

There is very little that Australians can do in response to this issue. In this way, they rely on Governments to do things on their behalf - which tends to bring us back to the biggest issue in all of this - if we don’t like what the government or the alternative government are proposing, what can we do?

People are valuable

In my recent talk at a City Bible Forum event in Melbourne, I begin to explore what I consider to be a foundational principle in developing public policy in this area. (Actually, I believe it should be a foundational principle in the development of any public policy, but that’s an aside.) I think the Christian worldview leads us to see all people as being made in God’s image and that this reality, coupled with the knowledge that God loves the world, means that people matter. People are valuable.

And I’m not talking about a type of person. I’m saying that all people, individually, are valuable. They are important. They’re worth caring about.

Governments have to break up the population into groups of similar people. They have to administer government programs that are available to people in certain situations. By putting eligibility criteria on things - like visas to come to the country, welfare payments, the taxation system - governments can attempt to tailor programs to the needs of ‘types’ of people in a country. But the best government policies, according to the Christian worldview, are those that manage to administer government programs in a way that minimises the generic treatment of people and facilitates the provision of services to individuals based on their genuine and unique needs.

Of course, in my talk, I also acknowledged that this position - the idea that people are valuable - can be arrived at by other means and through other worldviews. In fact, humanists also arrive at a similar conclusion. For me, I find that I (and others) arrive at it faster, more convincingly and more sustainably through the Christian worldview, but that’s not the point of this post.

Political changes

If ‘people are valuable’ is the groundwork, the foundation on which policy should be developed, what sorts of asylum seeker policy does that produce?

Well, firstly, the Australian Government need to reconsider the policy of mandatory detention. There is no evidence to suggest that criminality occurs at a higher rate among people who arrive by boat than the average Australian. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the average Australian is over 40 times more likely to commit a crime than the average asylum seeker. I know that I have just grouped people together and made a judgement about them as a collective, rather than as an individual, but the moment someone works out how to ethically and effectively predict criminality, that can be the policy. Locking everyone up in the meantime is a bit dumb.

If we don’t have mandatory detention, do we need Christmas Island? Well, yes. But as a humanitarian centre where people who do make the trip by boat end up being cared for properly. But hopefully the need for that would also reduce over time.

To ‘stop the boats’ all that would really be needed was for all the wars and persecution to stop. For that to happen, governments everywhere would need to adopt ‘people are valuable’ policies, which I honestly can’t see happening. So the next best way would be for a radical increase in the number of asylum seekers accepted by countries like Australia. That is, increase Australia’s intake of asylum seekers to 100,000. Spend the money that’s been spent on detention and offshore processing on building low-cost housing (which has long-term social and short term stimulatory benefits as a spin-off) and send teams of public servants to source countries (like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) to make assessments and grant humanitarian visas to lots of people. (This would also alleviate some of the fears that those Australians who are worried about the effect of all these policies on refugees in Africa and other places - a larger number of refugees from those places could also be accepted).

It is radical, I know. And we all know it’s probably not going to happen.

Why not? Because the Australian people will never accept it. We’re too patriotic. We’re too committed to the wellbeing of our families over others. We care more about ourselves than about those in need. And until that condition of the human heart changes, there will always be people who are opposed to this proposal.

But something like it might, one day, be possible. It would require a massive change in the public discussion of this issue and in government policy. To achieve that, we need people out there lobbying governments. We need people out there raising the issues. We need people out there trying to shape and guide the debate towards that outcome. At the moment, those people are struggling in an uphill battle. They need all the support and encouragement they can get.

What can I do?

Not all of us are called to be public commentators on this issue. Most of us don’t have the time to gather all the information needed and travel to Canberra to lobby politicians.

So what are some of the very practical things that people can do?

Firstly, get involved. Get informed about the issues as much as you can (through blogs, information provided by Government, advocacy agencies etc).

Meet refugees. Go to your local Red Cross office, visit multicultural service agencies, ask the local council for the names of organisations who work with refugees in your local area. Find out how you can get involved in providing services to refugees. It could be as little as taking newly arrived migrants to the local shops and helping them navigate Woolworths. It might be as much as providing emergency housing for people who have no-where else to go - how involved you get is up to you.

Another way is to speak to your local member. Ask them what they think the answer is and then challenge them to think differently about it (if their answer does not reflect a ‘people are valuable’ worldview).

For Christians, pray. Asking God for wisdom and understanding of the issue, opportunities to serve and love refugees and resources that are appropriate will be effective, I promise.

The reality is, while people may not know it, there are a lot of people in our communities (wherever we are) who could use our love and support. If we truly believe that people matter, that they’re valuable and that they deserve to be cared about, then seeking to serve and encourage those who we can have a real, human-to-human relationship with is a great way of ‘doing something’.