Curmudgeonous thoughts: Borders and Control
According to the AES, in various election years the proportion of voters who thought levels of immigration had gone too far or much too far was:
1990: 58%
1993: 70%
1996: 63%
1998: 44%
2001: 34%
2004: 31%
This is a major shift in public opinion, reversing popular hostility to the levels of migration which goes back about 30 years. But it certainly has not come from either (1) a decline the number of migrants or (2) migrants becoming more homogeneous with the existing population. On the contrary, we currently have a high immigration policy which, under the Howard government, has shifted further away from Europe and more towards Oceania, Asia and Africa. Particularly the refugee program.
Indeed, with the high number of Somalis and other East Africans in the humanitarian intake, the Howard Govt. has imported several thousand of the most ethno-culturally distant group to enter Australia in numbers (black, Muslim, nomad-based culture). And it has done so without notable social stress. (Partly because the Somalis have generally been cooperative immigrants: Daffyd, who teaches quite a few, summarises their community leaders’ attitude as this is a nice country, they do not shoot at us, you will not make trouble.)
Policy has moved away from family re-union and more to skilled workers. (To be crass, it is apparently the policy of the Howard government to prefer a Chinese Malay professional or a Somali refugee to yet another Mediterranean peasant.) So, it is obviously not true that the Howard Govt. is hostile to migrants or running a racist migration policy.
What has changed is the collapse of the previous "bipartisanship" on migration policy. Howard was the first major PM candidate to offer the electorate a choice on migration policy since Whitlam in 1972 (who campaigned on lower migration levels). From 1975 to 1996, "bipartisanship" paraded ordinary voters’ lack of say on migration policy. Migration policy was typically justified in terms which reinforced that lack of say as "improving" Australia rather than in terms of broad national interest or as reflecting the attractiveness of Australia as a destination. Unemployment has also declined. With we will decide who will come here and improved economic conditions, migration policy moved from lack of say and lack of control to an explicit policy of border control. It is elementary psycho-dynamics that people tend to be more relaxed about things when they feel they have a say and their views are being respected.
Now, the standard progressivist line is that it is all about racism. Which is simply obviously not true and moreover parades the contempt for the concerns of fellow Australians which gave Howard such a political goldmine in the first place.
Rights and refugees
Around the world at the moment there are about 17 million refugees.
How many have a right to come to Australia?
There seems to be two competing answers as to the proper limit:
(1) only the ones we invite;
(2) also the ones who reach here on a boat.
Answer (1) has strong majority public support. Answer (2) is apparently regarded by much of the intelligentsia as the only morally legitimate answer.
So, either a majority of Australians are moral retards or things are a bit more complicated than much of the intelligentsia likes to pretend.
Australia has never run an open-borders policy. Indeed, Australia has not even always run a pro-immigration policy - the level of immigration to Australia in the period between the World Wars, for example, was quite low. A policy of generosity to those who arrive by boat is effectively an open borders policy - because, obviously, a generous policy will attract a lot more boat-arrivals. (It also creates obvious problems for quarantine policy.)
The Govt. has been very firm against people smuggling, such smuggling being something it is quite clear most of the public detest - that toleration of such smuggling involves the abandonment of a sense of popular say or control being obvious, but there is also the question of Australia being a place where the laws count: one set of rules for everyone being a strong Australian value. Australia is such a desirable destination because it is prosperous, stable, democratic with rule of law. Many migrants are firmly in favour of strict border control because of the implication of the alternative that, if you did the right thing and followed the rules, you were mug.
By being very firm against people smuggling, migration has been largely defused as a political issue. Given the migration tensions which are building up in Europe, the Howard Govt. has done quite remarkably.
And, on people smuggling, the Govt. has been more generous than public opinion. The majority public support was for turning all boats back. The Govt. has instead detained and processed. Most have been accepted as refugees and allowed to settle (this despite coming half way around the globe to claim asylum is fairly clearly not kosher within the original meaning of asylum-seeking: someone fleeing an embassy or consulate is an asylum-seeker in the conventional sense; going half way around the globe past many other jurisdictions because Australia is a desirable destination is something rather different). The comparatively few remaining detainees have been assessed and their applications rejected but refuse to leave - which they can do at any time, as long as they agree to go somewhere else. Now, it may be they have nowhere else to go, but that is not Australia’s problem: they have attempted to make it Australia’s problem, but Australia is under no obligation to accept their problem as its own.
It is quite clear that a majority of the Australian public simply will not accept any claim that foreigners have an automatic right to settle here, or anything which smacks of that. And, well, it's their country. If people do not have an automatic right to enter and settle, and yet pay to come here on the presumption that they effectively do so, then detention and processing is going to be the outcome. The steady development of mandatory detention under both Labor and Coalition governments has been a process of discovery - what level of sanction and difficulty is required to minimise the black market in maritime-entry to Australia? (Australia is such an attractive place to live compared to much of the world, there will always be some black market in entry. Obviously also, there is plenty of room to argue over effects and scruples about particular measures.)
Generosity is not a simple alternative: exactly how many people would have such a right? If people who turn up in boats can simply stay, exactly how large is how migration intake going to become? And what level of contempt for the beliefs of the majority of the existing citizenry is going to be engaged in, with what effects? Open borders of the "we should let them stay" form suggested simply makes immigration policy (and quarantine policy) pointless, a situation of no popular say with highly attenuated border sovereignty. At the extreme, there is the risk that Australia would cease to be Australia as we understand it. (It would never come to that, because a government would be elected which would implement popular demands long before then.)
Competing senses of control
Typically, progressivist commentators put the choice as one between the moral and the immoral, between compassion and generosity on one hand and racism, selfishness and xenophobia on the other. In fact, it is a matter of two competing senses of control.
There is the popular sense of control - the residents collectively decide the rules; Australia has a collective existence such that we have obligations to each other as Australians which we don’t have to non-Australians; Australia is not simply an open treaty zone; democratic processes operate to gain consent to policy. And if voters generally feel more threatened (for example, by rising unemployment), they want entry more restricted.
Then there is the knowledge class’s typical sense of control - that of virtuous knowing. Policy is not a matter of gaining consent, of considering people’s aspirations and concerns. Policy is matter of working out the virtuous policy and implementing it. It comes from the intellect and moral vision of the knowledgeable and virtuous. In other words, from the knowledge of the knowledge class: it is an exercise and attribute of intellectual capital. And such understanding is a moral asset, a sign of status, to be displayed. Control is sought to be exercised by de-legitimising alternatives - hence deriding the we will decide who will come here alternative as racist.
Mass politics and mass commerce both have the same obvious difficulties for virtuous knowing: they undermine the knowledge class’s sense of control and sense of status. Leave things up to the vagaries of the market and the vagaries of popular election, and who knows what might happen. The politics of gaining consent (either commercial or political) puts everyone on the same status level and provides no guarantees. The politics of virtuous knowing is about deciding what everyone ought to agree to and seeking to exert control by de-legitimising alternatives - for error has no rights. (A mode of power that the late Imperial-cum-medieval Church developed to a high art and whose religious form the religious right is reviving for contemporary conditions.) It is not about dealing with other people’s aspirations, it about telling them what they should think and want. Migration "bipartisanship" both insulted most voters and rubbed their noses in their lack of power - a point emphasised by the progressivist outrage when policy swung the other way so it actually reflected popular preferences. (I suspect the Howard Govt. likes demonstrations against its mandatory detention policy, because it reminds voters that it is opposed by folk who regard ordinary Australians as a bunch of racists who should have no say in such matters - unless, of course, they agree with their moral and intellectual betters.)
On economic issues, the divide between status and control through being a protected member (i.e. buttressed against uncertainty by government regulation, services and income transfers) or being an empowered agent (a propertied doer who benefits from cheaper, easier and wider choice) is both fairly even and very mixed (i.e. people display significant elements of both) - noting that government services and incomes are justified as empowering but rarely qualify as a genuine property right.
The divide on broad cultural issues between control and status through attachment to an ordered society (patriotic parochialism) versus control and status through seeking to control the parameters of legitimate debate via critiquing said society (virtuous knowing cosmopolitanism) is both much more uneven and much more distinct (that is, one tends to be strongly one or the other, not some mixture of both).
If only one basic view is acceptable, and contrary views are immoral, then the experiences of the adversely affected are immediately massively discounted, since they are likely to express such adverse effects in ways which are contrary to the views of virtue. Thus, the crippled epistemology inherent in the politics of virtuous knowing operates to eliminate popular concerns, no matter how genuine, from legitimate consideration. It puts control firmly in the hands of those with intellectual capital, particularly if they can form a "cartel", a club where only the virtuous need apply, which will set the terms of public debate (or, at least, seek to).
Migration policy is particularly ripe for such games, since the costs of migration are so unevenly distributed. Large-scale migration puts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on the value of land and capital (including intellectual capital). Net crowding costs are greatest among the lower-income and less educated. Any concerns they express can simply be construed to increase the knowledge class’s sense of higher status, particularly through use of shifting goal posts on acceptable opinion and acceptable language. As Thomas Sowell has written: If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
Do people have the right to argue for an open-border policy? Of course. Is it proper or clever to do so by deriding any alternative view as automatically morally corrupt and intellectually deficient? No and no. Is it mendacious to claim that the alternative to mandatory detention is not a form of open-border policy? Yes. Is some form of border control here to stay? Yes. Does that provide opportunity for cheap status points without any risk of responsibility for actual consequences or complexities? Yes.
[Kipling] does possess one thing which "enlightened" people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility …
He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality. The ruling power is always faced with the question, "In such and such circumstances, what would you do?", whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly. George Orwell, 1942.
1990: 58%
1993: 70%
1996: 63%
1998: 44%
2001: 34%
2004: 31%
This is a major shift in public opinion, reversing popular hostility to the levels of migration which goes back about 30 years. But it certainly has not come from either (1) a decline the number of migrants or (2) migrants becoming more homogeneous with the existing population. On the contrary, we currently have a high immigration policy which, under the Howard government, has shifted further away from Europe and more towards Oceania, Asia and Africa. Particularly the refugee program.
Indeed, with the high number of Somalis and other East Africans in the humanitarian intake, the Howard Govt. has imported several thousand of the most ethno-culturally distant group to enter Australia in numbers (black, Muslim, nomad-based culture). And it has done so without notable social stress. (Partly because the Somalis have generally been cooperative immigrants: Daffyd, who teaches quite a few, summarises their community leaders’ attitude as this is a nice country, they do not shoot at us, you will not make trouble.)
Policy has moved away from family re-union and more to skilled workers. (To be crass, it is apparently the policy of the Howard government to prefer a Chinese Malay professional or a Somali refugee to yet another Mediterranean peasant.) So, it is obviously not true that the Howard Govt. is hostile to migrants or running a racist migration policy.
What has changed is the collapse of the previous "bipartisanship" on migration policy. Howard was the first major PM candidate to offer the electorate a choice on migration policy since Whitlam in 1972 (who campaigned on lower migration levels). From 1975 to 1996, "bipartisanship" paraded ordinary voters’ lack of say on migration policy. Migration policy was typically justified in terms which reinforced that lack of say as "improving" Australia rather than in terms of broad national interest or as reflecting the attractiveness of Australia as a destination. Unemployment has also declined. With we will decide who will come here and improved economic conditions, migration policy moved from lack of say and lack of control to an explicit policy of border control. It is elementary psycho-dynamics that people tend to be more relaxed about things when they feel they have a say and their views are being respected.
Now, the standard progressivist line is that it is all about racism. Which is simply obviously not true and moreover parades the contempt for the concerns of fellow Australians which gave Howard such a political goldmine in the first place.
Rights and refugees
Around the world at the moment there are about 17 million refugees.
How many have a right to come to Australia?
There seems to be two competing answers as to the proper limit:
(1) only the ones we invite;
(2) also the ones who reach here on a boat.
Answer (1) has strong majority public support. Answer (2) is apparently regarded by much of the intelligentsia as the only morally legitimate answer.
So, either a majority of Australians are moral retards or things are a bit more complicated than much of the intelligentsia likes to pretend.
Australia has never run an open-borders policy. Indeed, Australia has not even always run a pro-immigration policy - the level of immigration to Australia in the period between the World Wars, for example, was quite low. A policy of generosity to those who arrive by boat is effectively an open borders policy - because, obviously, a generous policy will attract a lot more boat-arrivals. (It also creates obvious problems for quarantine policy.)
The Govt. has been very firm against people smuggling, such smuggling being something it is quite clear most of the public detest - that toleration of such smuggling involves the abandonment of a sense of popular say or control being obvious, but there is also the question of Australia being a place where the laws count: one set of rules for everyone being a strong Australian value. Australia is such a desirable destination because it is prosperous, stable, democratic with rule of law. Many migrants are firmly in favour of strict border control because of the implication of the alternative that, if you did the right thing and followed the rules, you were mug.
By being very firm against people smuggling, migration has been largely defused as a political issue. Given the migration tensions which are building up in Europe, the Howard Govt. has done quite remarkably.
And, on people smuggling, the Govt. has been more generous than public opinion. The majority public support was for turning all boats back. The Govt. has instead detained and processed. Most have been accepted as refugees and allowed to settle (this despite coming half way around the globe to claim asylum is fairly clearly not kosher within the original meaning of asylum-seeking: someone fleeing an embassy or consulate is an asylum-seeker in the conventional sense; going half way around the globe past many other jurisdictions because Australia is a desirable destination is something rather different). The comparatively few remaining detainees have been assessed and their applications rejected but refuse to leave - which they can do at any time, as long as they agree to go somewhere else. Now, it may be they have nowhere else to go, but that is not Australia’s problem: they have attempted to make it Australia’s problem, but Australia is under no obligation to accept their problem as its own.
It is quite clear that a majority of the Australian public simply will not accept any claim that foreigners have an automatic right to settle here, or anything which smacks of that. And, well, it's their country. If people do not have an automatic right to enter and settle, and yet pay to come here on the presumption that they effectively do so, then detention and processing is going to be the outcome. The steady development of mandatory detention under both Labor and Coalition governments has been a process of discovery - what level of sanction and difficulty is required to minimise the black market in maritime-entry to Australia? (Australia is such an attractive place to live compared to much of the world, there will always be some black market in entry. Obviously also, there is plenty of room to argue over effects and scruples about particular measures.)
Generosity is not a simple alternative: exactly how many people would have such a right? If people who turn up in boats can simply stay, exactly how large is how migration intake going to become? And what level of contempt for the beliefs of the majority of the existing citizenry is going to be engaged in, with what effects? Open borders of the "we should let them stay" form suggested simply makes immigration policy (and quarantine policy) pointless, a situation of no popular say with highly attenuated border sovereignty. At the extreme, there is the risk that Australia would cease to be Australia as we understand it. (It would never come to that, because a government would be elected which would implement popular demands long before then.)
Competing senses of control
Typically, progressivist commentators put the choice as one between the moral and the immoral, between compassion and generosity on one hand and racism, selfishness and xenophobia on the other. In fact, it is a matter of two competing senses of control.
There is the popular sense of control - the residents collectively decide the rules; Australia has a collective existence such that we have obligations to each other as Australians which we don’t have to non-Australians; Australia is not simply an open treaty zone; democratic processes operate to gain consent to policy. And if voters generally feel more threatened (for example, by rising unemployment), they want entry more restricted.
Then there is the knowledge class’s typical sense of control - that of virtuous knowing. Policy is not a matter of gaining consent, of considering people’s aspirations and concerns. Policy is matter of working out the virtuous policy and implementing it. It comes from the intellect and moral vision of the knowledgeable and virtuous. In other words, from the knowledge of the knowledge class: it is an exercise and attribute of intellectual capital. And such understanding is a moral asset, a sign of status, to be displayed. Control is sought to be exercised by de-legitimising alternatives - hence deriding the we will decide who will come here alternative as racist.
Mass politics and mass commerce both have the same obvious difficulties for virtuous knowing: they undermine the knowledge class’s sense of control and sense of status. Leave things up to the vagaries of the market and the vagaries of popular election, and who knows what might happen. The politics of gaining consent (either commercial or political) puts everyone on the same status level and provides no guarantees. The politics of virtuous knowing is about deciding what everyone ought to agree to and seeking to exert control by de-legitimising alternatives - for error has no rights. (A mode of power that the late Imperial-cum-medieval Church developed to a high art and whose religious form the religious right is reviving for contemporary conditions.) It is not about dealing with other people’s aspirations, it about telling them what they should think and want. Migration "bipartisanship" both insulted most voters and rubbed their noses in their lack of power - a point emphasised by the progressivist outrage when policy swung the other way so it actually reflected popular preferences. (I suspect the Howard Govt. likes demonstrations against its mandatory detention policy, because it reminds voters that it is opposed by folk who regard ordinary Australians as a bunch of racists who should have no say in such matters - unless, of course, they agree with their moral and intellectual betters.)
On economic issues, the divide between status and control through being a protected member (i.e. buttressed against uncertainty by government regulation, services and income transfers) or being an empowered agent (a propertied doer who benefits from cheaper, easier and wider choice) is both fairly even and very mixed (i.e. people display significant elements of both) - noting that government services and incomes are justified as empowering but rarely qualify as a genuine property right.
The divide on broad cultural issues between control and status through attachment to an ordered society (patriotic parochialism) versus control and status through seeking to control the parameters of legitimate debate via critiquing said society (virtuous knowing cosmopolitanism) is both much more uneven and much more distinct (that is, one tends to be strongly one or the other, not some mixture of both).
If only one basic view is acceptable, and contrary views are immoral, then the experiences of the adversely affected are immediately massively discounted, since they are likely to express such adverse effects in ways which are contrary to the views of virtue. Thus, the crippled epistemology inherent in the politics of virtuous knowing operates to eliminate popular concerns, no matter how genuine, from legitimate consideration. It puts control firmly in the hands of those with intellectual capital, particularly if they can form a "cartel", a club where only the virtuous need apply, which will set the terms of public debate (or, at least, seek to).
Migration policy is particularly ripe for such games, since the costs of migration are so unevenly distributed. Large-scale migration puts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on the value of land and capital (including intellectual capital). Net crowding costs are greatest among the lower-income and less educated. Any concerns they express can simply be construed to increase the knowledge class’s sense of higher status, particularly through use of shifting goal posts on acceptable opinion and acceptable language. As Thomas Sowell has written: If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
Do people have the right to argue for an open-border policy? Of course. Is it proper or clever to do so by deriding any alternative view as automatically morally corrupt and intellectually deficient? No and no. Is it mendacious to claim that the alternative to mandatory detention is not a form of open-border policy? Yes. Is some form of border control here to stay? Yes. Does that provide opportunity for cheap status points without any risk of responsibility for actual consequences or complexities? Yes.
[Kipling] does possess one thing which "enlightened" people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility …
He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality. The ruling power is always faced with the question, "In such and such circumstances, what would you do?", whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly. George Orwell, 1942.