How many Australian politicians can dance on the head of a pin?

So Canberra's plans to do a refugee swap with Malaysia have been thrown out by the courts and a glimmer of hope has emerged that after 10 years the country might at last abandon the cruel charade of offshore processing.

The ruling bans offshore processing of refugees--the cobbled-together Pacific Solution that won John Howard the 2011 election on a wave of post-9/11 xenophobia. But the opposition have for once dropped their policy of relentless obstruction by offering to join the government on a bill to overturn this, thus continuing to immiserate refugees so as to cause splits in the Labor vote.

The modern Labor party being a worthless shower of clueless machine politicians, I think it's odds-on likely that they'll gratefully accept this terrible deal. But I'm freshly amazed at how hermetically divorced from the reality of migration this whole issue is. It's like those old mediaeval theological debates about how many angels can dance on a pinhead: it's not really about migration policy, but rather about a morality play populated by gullible bleeding hearts, uncouth queue-jumping refugees, ruthless people-smugglers, bold sailors, xenophobes acting in the foreigners' best interests...

Of course, there are several facts that can't be mentioned in this debate, such as:

*The details of Australia's immigration policy make no difference to the number of refugees wanting to come to Australia by boat

*The frequency of people coming by boat relates more to Indonesian law enforcement and weather factors than to anything else

*Running detention centres, both on- and off-shore, is a lavishly wasteful and expensive way of processing refugees

*So is preventing them from working

*The vast majority of people in Australian detention centres, both onshore and offshore, are eventually granted residency

*The vast majority of illegal migrants in Australia are visa overstayers from Europe and North America

*The vast majority of refugees who claim asylum on arrival in Australia come by plane

*Australia actually needs migrants, and most refugees who make it here come from precisely the skilled classes of society the country needs most

*Successive waves of migrants have made Australia a vastly more pleasant, interesting society than it would have been if it had maintained the British-Irish stodge of the mid-20th century White Australia policy

*The sorts of people who would uproot themselves and cross the world in this manner are showing precisely the initiative and smarts that would make them good workers and taxpayers in future

*The uncertainty and powerlessness of being incarcerated in detention centres causes mental health problems in detainees which will make them a burden on local health services once they're released.

I'm leaving out the myriad humanitarian arguments and sticking to pure self-interest here, since Australian public life seems entirely immune to humanitarianism when confronted with people in boats. But clearly the driving force behind all of this is that this country has vast wealth to share, and the least we could do for people fleeing oppression and warfare is extend a welcoming hand.

Politicians may feel this is all just elaborate theatre which they need to play out for the sake of some posited wedge of racist voters, but it has real-world consequences. These people deserve our help.