There is a wealth of precedence. For the last twenty years there has been a network of people smugglers in south east asia who fire up whenever the Australian government takes its eye off the ball.

I am currently in Malta and have had several conversations with hire car drivers who are living in difficult circumstances because they came here on boats as part of a plan to get to the UK and got stuck. There has been a significant controversy in the last month in the UK about that government’s attempts to dissuade unauthorised entries.

It is an ongoing project for European governments to manage fallout from the syrian civil war. Some of these people need to be monitored for terrorist tendencies, adding pressure to law enforcement.

In the US there is an ongoing project to ensure appropriate controls on its southern border.

These thing are happening right now, across the western world. Large investments from western governments trying to stay in control of their immigration arrangements.