Politics Opinion

Refugees aren’t illegal — No one is 'illegal'

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(Image by Ahmed Akacha | Pexels)

Taking in refugees should be a fundamental part of being a responsible citizen nation of the world, not a policy rooted in a 'successful' cost-benefit analysis, writes Tom Tanuki.

THE ORGANISED Left battles as a matter of core principle and practice against the tightening of national borders and locally stands against the brutality, indefinite detention and deportation dealt out to refugees. 

Such refugees are often fleeing here from situations that governments like ours are complicit in creating. There will be more refugees as mounting environmental catastrophes – which we are also complicit in – create new waves of climate refugees. 

We will have to fling open doors evermore as a fundament of exercising responsible global citizenship. But we are far from ready to do that. Because we are a nation that has agreed on a bipartisan approach to "boat people" and "illegals", that is essentially fascist.

Studied fascists agree that our border policy is fascist, so I’m not interested in convincing centrists and normies that my terminology is dramatic. We are way off the deep end and have learned to accept fascist policy as the norm in Australia. 

It’s "normal" sensible-centre policy to lock "illegals" up in offshore internment camps. Our offshore system is still on standby after over a decade of cruelty, ready to be fired up by the next hard-ass to take the top job. Seems we don’t accept the value of international human life — we weigh it up for its potential economic returns.

Not dedicated Left activists, mind you, who have fought – sometimes successfully – for relief for refugees held in brutal indefinite detainment by our government. But that’s the organised Left — and it’s best to be honest when our attitudes run so contrary to the brutal and inhumane mindset which has assumed the mantle of "normal" over decades.

On the Left, we say "no one is illegal" — a phrase widely credited to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in response to dehumanising terminology casting refugees as "illegal" "aliens". 

His slogan was popularised in an American campaign demanding support for Salvadoran refugees in 1988.

The campaign printed a flyer which also contained the phrase:

“Yesterday he escaped death... Today he leaves the detention center.”

Source: Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG)

The slogan is a matter of core principle and practice. Anybody, Left or Right, seeking to rejuvenate a discussion on people’s "illegality" in these terms should be viewed with suspicion. It’s a basic corrective to dehumanising anti-immigration rhetoric, for one. But beyond that it aims at the anti-human worldview driving associated anti-immigration policy.

To the average Australian – taught to stomach fascism for "boat people" as a rule over decades – these basic fundamental principles must be articulated again and again. So much ground has been ceded. This must be done loudly, clearly and in a way that others understand.

For Peter Dutton, Gazans in need of shelter from genocide are just another front in a wider anti-immigration campaign he’s establishing as the central pillar of his next election campaign. 

We are, of late, being led to believe that migration is the cause of the housing crisis that has initiated the latest round of mainstream political "debate" of economic costs versus benefits of refugees. 

The Right explains that we’re struggling to find new houses, make ends meet or be safe on the streets due to immigrants; the centre-left responds by explaining why we’ve actually got lots of homes on the way or how refugees are very good for the economy. We conduct a running bipartisan cost-benefit analysis of the value of foreign life in peril. Those are the terms of such "debate".

Mike Burgess, head of ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), is currently being flung about to make Palestinian refugees’ lives harder. Burgess said a month ago that simply "rhetorical" support for Hamas would not preclude someone from being able to enter Australia. Then the Libs took issue with this, with Dutton saying that no Palestinians fleeing the genocide of their people should be granted entry to Australia.

Burgess is being used as the ball in a wider anti-immigration game of political football, with both Albanese and Dutton insisting the other is using the ASIO boss to make his point while both competing to praise him the most.

Hamas is a Palestinian nationalist movement with a military wing fighting against the occupation of Palestinian territories. Seven October 2024 is almost a year – and hundreds of thousands of lost civilian Palestinian lives – ago now. 

The brutalities carried out by Hamas internment camp escapees on Israeli citizens on that day are not, in fact, relevant to considerations of whether the average Palestinian citizen might be expected to feel sympathy for the notion of defending his or her homeland against displacement and, now, retaliatory genocide.

Perhaps this is what Burgess was implying in his initial comments about "rhetorical" support not being a "dealbreaker". There is ample distinction between having been an armed member of the Al Qassam Brigades and having simply committed the "thought crime" of not wanting your Palestinian home taken away from you by an armed coloniser or a bulldozer. 

But, then, Burgess was made to correct himself — if a Sky News leak of a private meeting is to be believed. Now, liking Hamas too much is grounds for concern.

Nowhere in this bipartisan football game do I see the simple point made in the mainstream sphere that as all Palestinians are victims of the worst genocide of our generation, carried out before the eyes of the world, it is our responsibility to take them in. 

No more Palestinians can currently get out with the closure of the Rafah border, but of those who already tried, it’s said that only a third were approved. 

It’s not enough. As a nation-state, we have been permissive of this genocide. Therefore we are complicit in the death of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Now, we are obliged to offer refuge to the victims of our complicity.

To be very clear: I do not want to entertain a discussion of the economic advantages of letting immigrants in any more than I want to kick off a renewed cost-benefit analysis of slavery. 

Right-wing politicians, think tanks and their attendant media outlets will all continue to redistribute successive moral panics about refugees stealing homes and jobs and that this must be responded to. But I will never accept that taking in refugees is a policy rooted in a successful cost-benefit analysis. 

It’s a fundament of being a responsible citizen nation of the world. Refugees aren’t illegal. Nobody is illegal. These basics must be said loudly, time and again.

Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist. Tom does weekly videos on YouTube commenting on the Australian political fringe. You can follow Tom on Twitter @tom_tanuki.

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