Today in Australia the government finally took away the punitive measure of actually charging asylum seekers for the pleasure of being detained in mandatory detention as covered here in The Age, in abolishing asylum seeker debt.
This measure was never about recouping the cost of detention, it was about making sure that people that tried to escape horrible places that were sent home would never be able return. You see, having a debt to the Commonwealth makes it impossible to apply for a visa. So imagine your kids got accepted as legitimate refugees but you got knocked back, then you got sent home with a quarter of a million dollar debt and could never return to see them.
That wasn't an accident - that was the entire aim of the plan.
It was evil and we are a better country with it gone.
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