There are currently more than 15 million recognised refugees sitting in various camps throughout the world. These people are sitting in camps because they have no money, and no means of leaving those camps unless some country, somewhere, takes them in.

And yet there still seems an obsession with those who can afford to fly from where they live to Indonesia, or somewhere similar, then pay a people smuggler to get onto a boat headed for Australia. These people then deliberately sink their boats to force us to “rescue” them. They often destroy their passports as well to make it harder to disprove their claims.

We have clearly got it wrong.

Recently I spoke with an extraordinary Brisbane woman, Leila Abukar, who was saved from a refugee camp in Kenya in 1997.  Her story was horrific, but inspiring at the same time.

Her family fled their home in Mogadishu in the middle of the night. Her mother did not tell the children, as they escaped through the back door, that their father had just been shot in front of their house.

After abandoning their car to save their lives, they walked through the bush for seven days and nights until they found shelter in a refugee camp on the Kenyan border. They were penniless, and without anything but the clothes on their backs.

Leila was just 12 at the time, and spent the next eight years living in six different refugee camps before she was offered a safe haven in Australia. In all that time they had no safety, no security, and no money.

Now, it is important to understand exactly who is a refugee. They must be from a recognised group, be subject to organised persecution, and someone who would be in justifiable fear for their safety if returned.

Just as importantly, a refugee is effectively someone who would not qualify to migrate to Australia as a skilled migrant, nor under any other visa class. If they could, they wouldn’t need to apply as refugees.

That means when we give someone refugee entry to Australia, we are doing it as an act of grace, because they have nothing to recommend them but their desperation.

I most certainly believe we should have a generous refugee campaign, but I believe it should be a help for the helpless.

We should grant refugee status to the most desperate people we can find, the people who have been living in squalor for years without any hope.

We should not be giving refugee visas to those who have the money to help themselves, and in the process jump the 15 million confirmed refugees already in the queue ahead of them.

Australia is third only to the US and Canada in terms of the number of refugees resettled each year. We take over three times the number of refugees as the next country, Sweden.

Leila Abukar is critical of the boat arrivals. “If they are genuine refugees, they wouldn’t be destroying their documents,” she says.

As for her own experiences, she is philosophical: “Having nothing for so long made me strong.”

Since arriving she has served on the Council for Multicultural Australia, and the Refugee Resettlement Advisory Council, as well as being a respected campaigner against female genital mutilation.

Give me refugees from the camps, like her, any day of the week.