> In the chat room log from last night, I found a conversation between Lindra, Ellmyruh, and Grishny that caught my attention. The conversation was a debate about the story in the article linked to below. Ellmyruh's side of the debate was that it is inhumane for Australia to turn back these refugees, since the alternative is very likely that they will die. Lindra's side is that there is simply no room in Australia to house them, and because of that impossibility, there is nothing to be done but keep the borders closed to them.
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> I say the debate "caught my attention," but actually it raised my ire. When people's lives are at stake, you *make* room.
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> Australia has 19.4 million people in a country the size of the United States, which houses 285 million people and still has a population density less than that of Europe. Granted, a lot of Australia is uninhabitable without a lot of stamina and survival skills, but it is folly to suggest that Australia cannot sustain double, triple, even quadruple its current population, let alone an increase of just 450, especially when people's lives depend on it.
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> "No room," indeed. Shameful.

Maybe it's not the main reason, but one of the reasons countries have borders is to make it easy to discriminate.
Howard