Let me be the bastard who states the obvious: there’s no refugee crisis in the West. There’s an economic refugee crisis. And it’s not the same thing. A refugee is defined by the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention as someone who, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.’

That applies to virtually none of the people pouring into Eastern Europe. Have a look at the countries bordering Syria: Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iraq. Only Iraq is also experiencing serious tumult, and if anyone’s dumb enough to travel through Iraq to escape the Syrian Civil War, they have to pass through Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait to get anywhere else. No, these aren’t exactly prime tourist destinations, and it’s understandable that some people don’t want to settle there permanently. But, by definition, when a refugee enters any one of the above countries, they’re no longer a refugee, because they have refuge. If they push on to Europe, America, or Australia, they do so for secondary concerns, all of which qualify them as economic refugees.

The Left’s compassionistas, when pressed, will admit this, yet nevertheless insist that we have the duty to take in all the migrants we can, as they have done since the Prime Minister initiated Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB). Maybe that’s true for the moment. I doubt a one-off intake of 12,000 will do much harm. But we should be clear: there’s no way this will actually be a one-off intake. The stream of refugees-turned-economic migrants isn’t going to end until (a) the war is over, or (b) there are no unaligned Syrians left in the country. It could take decades to restore order to Syria and Iraq even if we declared all-out, boots-on-the-ground war with Isis tomorrow, and the Left is going to be barracking for more and more one-off intakes for the duration. About one million refugees have left Syria every year since the beginning of the war; there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell the West can accommodate another million every year for five or ten years.

Clearly we need a more sustainable strategy, namely ending the war altogether. So why not help Syrians help Syria? According to the UN only about 30 per cent of ‘refugees’ are women and children; a sizable majority of the remainder are men fit for military service. Give them thorough infantry training and send them back to serve in the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Let a crack fighting-force be our gift to the Syrian people, which will serve them far more than draining them of their brightest and ablest young men at a time when they’re needed most.

That sounds harsh, but bear in mind two things. One, as we’ve said, these aren’t refugees—they’re migrants. They’re not escaping persecution, they’re looking for milder socio-economic climes. We have the right to tell them ‘No’; indeed, OSB was initiated because Australia doesn’t have the means to support any more economic migrants. So, when fighting-age young men are deciding where to immigrate after they escape the war, let them know Australia’s the place to go if they want to train in a top-notch boot camp far away from the conflict, with the intention of returning to liberate their country from the dual tyrannies of the Assad government and the Islamic State. That’s a pretty good deal. Two, we’ve basically decided the FSA are the good guys in the Syrian Civil War. Offering them training and material support isn’t unprecedented: it’s what we’re doing with the Iraqi Army. The only difference would be training them on Aussie soil rather than Mid-Eastern.

What Twitter’s veteran garment-renders don’t understand is that the toughest option is often the most compassionate. That was true when OSB began and it’s still true. The only way good will triumph over evil in Syria is if Syrians fight for it; we can’t do that for them. We’ve tried nation-building in that region often enough to know what a disaster it ends up being. All we can do is give them the means to take control of their own fate. In crises as advanced as Syria’s, that means serving one’s country, not abandoning it. And that goes especially for those fit and intelligent enough, not only to slip out of Syria, but to stage an English-language protest in Hungary demanding admission to Germany. These people aren’t helpless: they have all the requisite skills to take an Arts degree at the University of Sydney.

Which I’m sure is where the Twitterati would like to see them. They’d take a few thousand people deeply grateful just to be here and stick them in a major university, where they’ll learn that, in fact, Australia is an evil empire bent on the eradication of Islam, Arabs, and halal-certified yeast by-products. Maybe stick them in one of those ‘Literature of 9/11’ classes we’ve been hearing so much about, and instead of exams have them write little haikus about how Allah glories in the death of Zionists and their dupes in Canberra. Then watch them flood back to Syria anyway and join up with Isis.

Those are the values of the 250 plus Aussies who’ve done so already—who’ve followed the left-wing, post-colonial, anti-Australian line to the logical extreme: any self-respecting Muslim would give their life to defeat the Great Satan.

That’s one option. The other is sharing Australian values with them, imbuing them with the spirit of the Anzacs: that love of country demands precious sacrifice. In times of trial, every nation needs Anzacs of their own, who are willing to fight and perhaps die for their people. Rather than bombing them to smithereens and scooping up their best and brightest, let this be our legacy in Syria. Let’s be friends, allies, brothers at arms—not conquerors.