Deportation of asylum seekers

[N Tasker <pia03nt@sheffield.ac.uk>]

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There seems to be something missing in the current media furore concerning the
non-deportation of criminal asylum seekers...that is, nowhere, not once did I
hear, read, or see in the mainstream media any discussion of the question
'SHOULD these people have been deported?'.

Now, I don't have a particular position on whether they should have been
deported. I just think that there is no obvious, non-trivial, uncontestable
answer to which all thoughtful people would agree. And yet there has been no
public debate. The media skipped that important stage, assumed that these
people should have been deported, and started calling for the blood of
politicians. Real problems like the presence of criminals on our streets and
real theoretical problems like the rights and wrongs of punishment and
deportation were pushed to one side as the media stir up yet another political
mud slinging match in the run up to the recent election.

Perhaps we don't need a debate on this issue? Well, I think we do. There are
plenty of chronic re-offenders, born and bred in Britain, and yet the days of
sending them off to Australia are gone. Still less would we consider packing
them off to a country which may be racked by war and rife with civil rights
abuses. I recognise that there is a difference in the case of asylum seekers,
(they weren't born on the same patch of land as we were) but what exactly is
the difference which is so great to justify returning them to a country where
they might face suffering beyond what they deserve for their crimes? 

British nationals who break the law are either freed when they have served their
sentence, or in an ideal world, given rehabilitative care. But if British
criminals deserve humane treatment, then that's because they're human, not
because they're British. Wouldn't we do better to try rehabilitating criminal
asylum seekers, giving them the same humane treatment which we offer our own
citizens - which is after all, only what a human being deserves - rather than
sending them off to a fate which, if we only had to observe it on our
television screens, we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies?

   


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