1. Human Rights

According to International law, basic human rights should be protected in any circumstances. Refugees from less developed countries are moving to western developed countries to seek protection, but the recent crises suggest that it is not always easy for everyone to be guaranteed the necessary extent of help.

Human rights are closely related to social issues. There is a possible risk of abrupt change in preexisting social system after refugees are settled. Without the consent of local citizens, the receiving countries cannot freely give economic support or political protection to the refugees. Some citizens, however, insist that refugees are taking away their jobs, thus advocating for stricter border control and deportation. Clearly, the refugee deportation issue has to handle the conflict of interest of both domestic and international society.

For the past several centuries, European nations have dominated, colonized, and populated the rest of the world. After 1945, western European states signed numerous UN treaties based on humanitarian and liberal values, yet receiving countries are limited to fulfill them due to problems related to their domestic security and financial burden.

2. Domestic Security

The acceptance of refugees is based on humanitarianism value. Nevertheless, receiving countries and their citizens often take a conservative stance and are uneasy about domestic security issues that might be stirred up by a large influx of refugees.

Some legislators and citizens argue that the influx of refugees may lead to an increase in domestic crime rate. Some of the citizens perceive that domestic security is threatened by the refugees, since neither do these people have jobs or properties, nor do they speak receiving countries’ language.

For the past few decades, Australia has implemented relatively generous refugee and immigration policy. For example, it has accepted refugees from the Vietnam War and Lebanese Civil War. Nonetheless, Australia has started to strengthen its border control and deport refugees recently in light of the security concerns, the reasons being gradual increase crime rate after it has started receiving refugees and drug abuse and organized crime that was largely partaken by the refugees.

For instance, the crime rate in open camps among Vietnamese refugees taken by Australia was as much as 10 times that of the general population. Due to such reasons, refugees who have arrived after 1982 have been placed in tightly supervised camps. Secretary of Security Geoffrey Barnes cautioned that the figures could be misleading because:

1. A group of less than 3,000 was being compared with a population of 5.6 million.

2. A large proportion of this group of refugees were single men aged 16-30, the same age group in the general population with the highest crime rate.

3. The crimes involved were not serious felonies, but small thefts and the like.¹

3. Financial burden

Those countries that accept refugees need to build and run refugee camps, providing them with food and medical treatment. Furthermore, receiving countries eventually have to provide refugees with proper identifications, social protection, and opportunities to work.

Due to lack of financial sources, however, UN agencies sometimes fail to effectively deal with refugee crises. The Guardian reported on a quote from a UN senior officials that UN’s humanitarian agencies are on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to meet the basic needs of millions of refugees because of the burgeoning size of the refugee crisis in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

According to a UN official, the number of people displaced by conflict each day had risen to 31,000 over the course of four years, placing a greater pressure on the agencies’ budgetary and supply resources. Due to the global economic crisis in the recent years, UN’s budget in 2015 has decreased 10% since 2014. The global humanitarian community is more effective than ever before, but financially under duress. According to UN, the current budget for global humanitarian efforts only amounts to 19.52 billion dollars.² Due to global and domestic economic pressure on the governments and UN agencies, the nations have to choice but to carry out refugee deportation.

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3. Bloc Positions