The strange virtue of people-smuggling.(Society)

And although Herr Schindler's merit is well documented, it is a feature of his ambiguity that he worked within or, at least, on the strength of, a corrupt and savage scheme; one which filled Europe with camps of varying but consistent inhumanity and created a submerged, unspoken-of nation of prisoners. The best thing, therefore, may be to begin with a tentative instance of Herr Schindler's strange virtue ...

--Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List

ALMOST EVERYONE is against people-smuggling. The refugee advocate excoriating the government for its mistreatment of asylum-seekers, no less than the departmental official bemoaning the numbers of boat people landing on Australian shores, feels well-justified in insisting that, somehow, something must be done to put an end to this "evil trade". On the scale of virtue, the people-smuggler appears barely a notch above (and for many, several notches below) the drug dealer, the child molester, or the gangster.

Yet a moment's reflection should tell us that there is something seriously wrong here. For what is it that people-smugglers do? In a nutshell, they smuggle people across borders, beyond the reach of oppressive rulers or political gangs, to safety. Of course, they do it for money and not out of the goodness of their hearts--though some smugglers have defended themselves as humanitarians. But if doing good for profit or reward is bad, we had better think again about the prices many of us charge for the good we do, whether as doctors or teachers or firefighters--or politicians. So why have people-smugglers fallen into such disrepute?

One very obvious answer is that they are acting illegally. But this is an exceptionally bad answer. For it is very hard to see what it is that people-smugglers are doing that is actually illegal.

The first thing that smugglers have to do is get people out. People-smugglers smuggle people beyond the reach of those threatening them. They get people across borders. Even those who want to get to refugee camps often need the help of smugglers, for even if they wish to reach a place from which they can make a bid to travel further to greater safety they need assistance. There is nothing illegal about charging people for helping them reach safety, any more than there is something illegal about fleeing for your life in the first place. And governments, including Australia's, implicitly recognise this when they set up or endorse refugee camps which people can only reach by fleeing unauthorised across borders.

The second thing people-smugglers do is help people reach places where they can make application for their cases for asylum to be heard. A good people-smuggler would take his customers where they can expect to be heard because the law proclaims that they have a right to be properly considered. He would take them, say, to Australia, since that country has declared, by signing an international treaty, that it will consider without prejudice any application for resettlement as a refugee made by any person arriving on its shores. A bad people-smuggler would be one who dumped his charges in a land whose laws and customs did not give them the opportunity to find safety It cannot be illegal to bring people before the law.