Fictional Refugee Fictional Policy

Alistair Young

Oct 3, 2015 — 1 min read

Man, y’all do love to ask me questions touching on real-world issues. Seriously, I’m not writing allegory, here. But, anyway, someone anonymous picked up on a past reference to the Conclave’s rejection of the Accord on Refuge-Seeking Sophonts, and wants to know just what the Imperial policy is on refugees, anyway.

Let me express this for you in the form of a conversation that has happened somewhere in the back halls of the Conclave of Galactic Polities approximately a shitload of times to date:

“We don’t have a refugee policy. A polity whose entire immigration stance can be summarized as ‘Yeah, just turn up and don’t be a dick.’ doesn’t need a refugee policy.”

“But… then why don’t you admit more refugees?”

“Because being on the losing side of your special conflict is no guarantee that you aren’t, in point of fact, a dick.”

(The discussion is then tabled briefly while the argument shifts to the much older and equally fruitless discussion of why the Empire persists in having such unreasonably high standards for its citizen-shareholders, and whether or not it could take this particular stick out of its ass for a good cause [spoiler: legally speaking, no].)

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