(This post may contain disputed claims. We make no assertions as to the validity of the information presented by our Opinion Columnist. We are an opinion blog, not a traditional news outlet, and this post should be treated as such. Enjoy.)In an effort to expose the separation of families as inhumane, a progressive congressman headed to a detention center filled will illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. However, his priorities quickly changed when he was subjected to the same fate the detainees he came to visit.
In the U.S., illegal immigration and border control are hot button issues, deeply diving both the right and the left when it comes to how to deal with those who enter the country without going through the proper legal channels. However, America isn’t the only nation struggling to enforce its own immigration laws. In fact, nearly every sovereign nation in the West has been forced to take a look at how it treats detainees.
Thanks to the progressive heroes of the American left, the rest of the Western world has begun facing a backlash on the topic of immigration. With far-left activists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib referring to border holding centers as “concentration camps,” progressives in Australia have taken note. In a bid to condemn the border and immigration officials who enforce the laws they’ve passed, Aussie congressional are now politicizing detention centers for their own gain.
Seeing illegal immigration as an issue upon which he could capitalize, Australian Greens Senator Nick McKim headed to Papua New Guinea with the hopes of propagandizing an off-shore detention center. The leftist politician arrived on Manus Island and planned to enter the East Lorengau camp with asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, who agreed to help McKim obtain footage that would favor his political agenda. What he got instead certainly put a damper on his plans.
According to ABC News, Sen. McKim received a deportation notice after he attempted to enter the detention center and refused to leave the premises. After he tried to gain entrance to the camp, officials seized the politician’s passport and detained him, as they do with migrants attempting to enter the country illegally.
“The Papua New Guinea Immigration Department took my passport from me and refused to give my passport back and said that in my previous visits I had misreported what has been happening on Manus Island,” Senator McKim said.
McKim had traveled to PNG on a 12-month visa but only planned to stay in the country over the weekend with the sole purpose of his arrival being to expose the detention center’s alleged mistreatment of illegal aliens. Moments later, the officials told McKim “we are deporting you” back to Australia, he told The Guardian.
“There was one immigration official in that police vehicle and four heavily armed police officers in the vehicle,” McKim said. “They told me that I had to get in their vehicle. I asked them if they were arresting me and they said ‘no’ and I then said, ‘I’m not getting in the vehicle, I am free to walk down the public street on Manus Island.’ The immigration official then said to me it doesn’t matter what I do, he will be coming around to my hotel later today to issue me with an official deportation notice.”
McKim immediately returned to Australia without stepping foot in the detention center. However, that didn’t stop him from claiming that the camp is “worse than it has ever been.” Additionally, he ordained himself to speak for the migrants detained on Manus Island, claiming that “they’ve lost hope for the future.”
McKim claims that the official statement released by the PNG authorities is “riddled with inaccuracies.” He also said that he “formally asked permission to enter” but hasn’t been given a response by the chief migration officer.
“I’ve done nothing wrong here,” he said. “Again, this is about denying me, it’s about denying journalists or anyone else who wants to see the conditions for refugees.”
“But the issue is not me, the issue is these guys have been imprisoned illegally for so many years and treated so badly. And we have a prime minister who with a stroke of a pen could end this torture.”
By “stroke of a pen,” McKim is suggesting that the detainees be granted asylum. However, there is no guarantee that the migrants have been properly investigated or even can be properly investigated, as many arrive without any identification in an effort to hide their identities.
Although PNG is a nation independent of Australia, McKim is determined to shame the country into releasing its detainees, whether or not they are truly refugees. His elitist virtue-signaling compels him to pressure the less prosperous nation to adopt his own party’s political values and abandon their right to manage their borders as they see fit.
Despite returning to Australia as a failure in his endeavors, Sen. McKim is claiming a victory for the left. Without proof, he is able to signal that PNG is running a literal concentration camp filled with innocent refugees. As such, he can signal to his base while denouncing his political rivals as lacking compassion for rejecting blanket amnesty.
Fortunately, as the left slides even further left into the fringes of political extremism, more people are stepping away from such ideas and moving back toward what was once considered moderate. People are starting to realize that we as citizens reserve the right to unapologetically determine who gets to come into our country.
