Gee: Trump’s war on migrants has echoes of Australia’s past

Interesting comparison:

…In both cases – 18th-century England, 21st-century America – the aim is to demonize, dehumanize and finally to expel these agents of disorder. The Trump administration deports migrants to Honduras, El Salvador and Africa. England’s rulers dispatched prisoners to Australia.

As Mr. Hughes puts it, transportation was an attempt to uproot “an enemy class from the British social fabric.” Sending the convicts away “conveyed evil to another world.” 

But it never worked. England’s crime wave rolled on. The early 19th-century was a time of protest and upheaval. Nor did the exiled convicts prove to be the irredeemable human detritus they were often said to be. 

Many earned their freedom – their “ticket of leave” – for hard work and good behaviour. Together with the free settlers who began arriving in time, they and their children built thriving colonies in this vast and distant continent. Out of those colonies sprang a thriving, stubbornly democratic nation: Australia.

Source: Trump’s war on migrants has echoes of Australia’s past