Please note, the views and opinions expressed in this scholarship entry (and all other scholarship entries) are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Global Mobility Immigration Lawyers.
Immigration lawyers acting for asylum seekers are “unAustralian“
If you are a right wing nationalist you probably look at immigrants with despise, but if you are a left wing humanitarian and socialist, immigrants are then just a people in need of help. If you are an immigration lawyer you are then just doing your job – you are doing it for money.
In the ancient Greece Plato didn’t charged for his lectures because he thought that was unethical. People who did were sophist – he despised them. Eventually he was sentenced to death because, for among other things, his behavior to them.
From the ethical point of view the lawyers doing seems most unethical and more egoistic than of the all three examples mentioned before. Are they then “unAustralian”? On the list that you are asking yourself when you are taking a job probably the first one is the money – your paycheck. In today materialistic world somewhere on the list stands a loyalty to your nation – for majority of lawyer that is probably on the bottom part of their list. Calling them “unAustralian” seems fair and just.
We can make an analogy with immigration lawyers and immigration smugglers. Yes, the difference is that the first one is legal and the other is not, but from the ethical point of view they both are helping immigrants and they take the money for doing it. They are both humanitarians. Of course, we cannot judge everyone this way and there are immigration lawyers who act so they could help these people, they feel for them – they are not “unAustralian”.
Unfortunately, today you can’t live by helping others. People, in these case immigrants have become just a means to an end – a number, a salary a one step further in lawyer’s career. For those type of lawyers “unAustralian” is twelve letter word written and pronounced without an intrinsic meaning. The only intrinsic meaning that they understand is the documentation that they have and where is stated that they have an Australian citizenship.
They say that “money makes the world go around” and in this case money makes Australian immigration lawyer an “unAustralian”. Most of them are indifferent to their country and saying that they help immigrants because they want to ruin it would be wrong. Demonstrations against immigration in the whole world have become a normal thing, but one thing should be kept in mind – if those protestors were in the shoes of immigration lawyers they would probably to the same thing they do now, because the money makes…
