Killing the chicken to scare the monkeys

As Australia forcibly transferred the detainees, they were not responsible for their own unlawful entry to PNG. Therefore, no constitutional exception could permit their legal detention.

Causing someone to suffer as a means of deterring others, as the Chinese proverb advocates, is a method often invoked by proponents of punitive action, particularly by those in favour of the death penalty.  But to what extent this corresponds to reality is a matter of conjecture. 

A report released in 2012, by the prestigious National Research Council of the National Academies in Washington DC in the United States, based on a review of more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty were fundamentally flawed.  It indicates: “The committee concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates”.

Criminologist Daniel Nagin of Carnegie Mellon, who chaired the panel of experts, said, “We recognize this conclusion will be controversial to some, but nobody is well served by unfounded claims about the death penalty. Nothing is known about how potential murderers actually perceive their risk of punishment.”

That raises the question as to how potential immigrants to Australia actually perceive the risk of punishment too and whether we are right in thinking that they are as scared as the proverbial Chinese monkeys when somebody kills chickens – or if they are simply deterred by the failure rate of all those migrants having sought permanent residence in the past.  In other words, is it the inhumane treatment in the detention centres that deters them, or is it simply the very poor success rate of migrants being allowed to stay in Australia?

In the absence of any empirical evidence on the subject, I am inclined to think that it is the latter, but I am willing to be proven wrong.  I base my opinion on the fact that so many migrants are willing to risk their lives to get here.  In my books, that is proof of their solid determination to succeed and the fact that they are brave and courageous people. 

They are worth their salt so far as I am concerned.  Probably more so than some of those fair dinkum Aussies I know who are mostly bludgers.

If we could be assured of not opening the flood gates, Australia would probably be better off taking in some of those illegal migrants and their families and getting rid of many of the home-grown rouseabouts that hang about, apparently with nothing better to do.  That would be justice.

As Joseph Carens puts it, “Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent to feudal privilege—an inherited status that greatly enhances one's life chances. Like feudal birthrights privileges, restrictive citizenship is hard to justify when one thinks about it closely.” (Carens 1987: 252)  In other words, egalitarians regard open borders as the requisite response to the enormous economic inequalities which currently exist between countries. (cited by C.H. Wellman, “Immigration”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015)  

But another interesting suggestion is that “wealthy liberal democratic states must be allowed to exclude foreigners (for the time being, at least) so as to be better able (and more willing) to build the international institutions which are most likely to put the world's poor in a better position to live minimally decent lives." (Christiano, 2008)