John S wrote on Jan 10^th, 2014 at 8:18am:


They aren't, for the most part, genuine asylum seekers. They're economic migrants. They can join the queue of people who want to move here simply for a more comfortable life. Clearly they have the money to do so, or else they could not afford to pay people smugglers. They take up places set aside for genuine asylum seekers who are waiting in line in some hell hole UN camp in a volatile country like Sudan and live from day to day hoping their camp will not be attacked, hoping they will not contract some disease that sweeps through those camps. For every one person we take from those boats, REAL asylum seekers are pushed back one place in the queue.