While News Limited newspapers are busily running their stronger border protection campaign — the Herald Sun has the issue splashed across its front page this morning — it is also conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room.

Increasing border protection leads to more people smuggling because it makes the latter enterprise more profitable.  Whenever governments tighten border security they increase the risk factor for people who want to migrate to that country.  So would-be migrants to countries such as  Australia are prepared to pay for the services of someone with expertise in penetrating borders. The natural consequence of this is that people smugglers prices go up and those whom people smugglers employ — in the case of Indonesia, for example, poor fishermen — make more money for undertaking the journey to the destination.

A natural by-product of a market in a product or service that is declared illegal by the state is organised crime and human rights abuses.  The notorious and horrific stories of people trafficking in Europe are testament to this fact.

This is, of course, simple economics.  It applies in any case where governments seek to prohibit economic activity.  Illicit drugs is the prime example.

It would enhance Australia’s economy if people smuggling were made legal and properly regulated.  Just as capital moves in and out of Australia legally but through regulatory mechanisms such as the Foreign Investment Review Board and financial transaction reporting laws, so should the supply of labour.  A think tank in the US run by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, said much the same in an American context earlier this year.

The Centre for American Progress argues in a report released in January that US government border tightening policies have led to an increase in the number of people smugglers being used and in the fees paid to people smugglers.

The approach to migration taken by the ALP and the Liberal Party in Australia would do the old-style central planners of 1950s Moscow proud. It is a policy based on rigid assessments by bureaucrats of how many people Australia “should take” each year.  It is also a policy based on the assumption that we should make it has hard as possible for people to enter the Australian labour market as possible.  (I spoke to someone recently whom the Department of Immigration want to throw out because they did not complete the relevant skills assessment forms before taking a permanent job in the IT industry in Australia!)

The result of this anti-market approach is that we have in Australia, and in other developed world countries, regular bouts of chronic skills shortages in key sectors of the economy as diverse as mining and medicine.  This, of course, puts constraints on economic growth, and therefore the whole community suffers as a result of the missed economic opportunity.

The solution to is to create more porous borders so that those millions of asylum seekers and other would be migrants who are stuck in the official migration system — which is a monopoly run by governments — have a greater opportunity of reaching countries such as Australia.

This is where the people smuggling business comes into play.  It is essentially a privatised form of migration, but because it is illegal it is unregulated.  We should simply acknowledge that people smuggling will always be with us, and make this form of labour market movement legitimate.  Why don’t we allow for a private people movement market that is fair, regulated to ensure compliance with health and safety standards and that, by virtue of being a legitimate business, is transparent?

The Australian economy will be the winner and we can stop wasting billions of dollars on silly games such as Christmas Island.