We are all boat people

Others were not so fortunate. Who remembers the MS St Louis today? I recently retraced the infamous "Voyage of the Damned" during a visit to New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage. The story of the ship dispatched by the Nazis on 13 May 1939, carrying close to a thousand hopeful German Jewish refugees, only to be rejected first by Cuba and then by the US and Canada, remains seared in my memory.

After 40 days spent largely hovering off the coast of "the free world", all avenues in the endless rounds of complicated negotiations were seemingly exhausted, and the "ship of shame" returned to Europe. Hitler had apparently been right: people seemed largely indifferent to the fate of those "filthy parasites", despite the fact that they had paid the equivalent of thousands of dollars attempting to satisfy visa requirements. While several European countries were persuaded to provide the refugees with temporary shelter, close to a third would eventually perish in the Holocaust.

A memorial to the victims of the St Louis, erected last year in Halifax and known as the Wheel of Conscience, blames their rejection on hatred, racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. The passengers had been expected to "wait their turn" as the US, increasingly resentful of refugees, who were seen as competing for jobs made scarce during the Great Depression, did not even fill its restricted quotas – a fact only officially acknowledged 60 years later.

Sure, Nazism on the whole is dead and gone and those asylum seekers we reject today are not going to share the fate of those poor souls of yesteryear. But most of those who reach Australian waters are eventually found to be genuine refugees, even if they do not arrive with the appropriate documentation.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution". To deter those who, according to the 1951 UN Convention and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, have the right to seek protection from us and all other 147 signatories, is to ignore our obligations as a democratic nation. We would be returning people to a situation where they run the real risk of persecution, or transferring our responsibilities to a third country, usually among the world's poorest. Sadly, refugees have come to be seen as a "burden" rather than as people who can make a real contribution to their adopted home.

We do not choose our families or where we are born. As my own story shows, a quirk of fate can mean the difference between a life of freedom and the chance to acquire prosperity and a life of misery and subjugation. All we can do is to make the best of the cards we have been dealt. Human effort is the key to survival and improvement.

This point was brought home to me recently when my family celebrated Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, with a Ukrainian couple and their teenage son. Although they had managed to find a new home in Sydney 20 years ago, this was the first time they had participated in such a celebration. "The Soviet Government tried to make us like everyone else," the father told me. "They destroyed our synagogues. We did not have any Jewish libraries or books." He was born near Kiev, the same city as my paternal grandfather, who had escaped to Canada about a century ago. Had he not done so, my own life experience could have been very different.

As I write these words, I sit surrounded by more than a hundred children of diverse creeds and cultures – a microcosm of modern Australian society – attending a chess competition in an RSL hall in Lidcombe in Sydney's west. The room contains so many of the best elements of being Australian: Friendly rivals united by common interests, learning new skills and aspiring to improve. I cannot help but feel pride every time I come here.

Surely whether born here or only recently arrived by boat or by plane, we all share aspirational goals to make our way in this still relatively "lucky country", which has given our families such a precious opportunity. Let's not deny that opportunity to others.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that we should shoulder all the world's refugees on our own. Nor should those people smugglers and others, who take unscrupulous advantage of the vulnerable, escape prosecution.

But even now, with the onshore processing of asylum seekers, the "floodgates" have not opened, despite fears to the contrary. In 2010 – the year when the largest number of boat people reached our shores – there were around 6500 unauthorised arrivals. Last year saw a total of about 4500 boat people, roughly half after the Government announced onshore processing arrangements last October. So far this year, about 40 boats have arrived, carrying around 3000 passengers. Compare this to the vast numbers who arrive here by plane or who access Europe or the US by boat. Australia is just too far away or too hard to reach by boat other than by the truly determined and desperate.

What I am asking for is a little kindness and understanding for those less fortunate than ourselves. After all, there but for a quirk of fate go I… and you… and indeed, the majority of Australia. And if you were that desperate, wouldn't you want someone to extend a hand to you, as indeed was extended to your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents?