I don't think they are remotely similar, immigration and people seeking asylum has been used as a political tool in this country for 20 years, we now have people interned indefinitely for exercising their human rights according to UN conventions we have signed. (The UN also being a body Australian law makers were instrumental in forming) These are internment camps where people are held without trial, indefinitely, are set up in remote isolated south pacific islands, where detainees are beaten and at least one has been murdered, most likely by the guards employed to keep him in custody.
These policies have been implemented and maintained by right and left political parties. They are an abject betrayal of what our country has stood for since the war, of our historical legacy as good international citizens, by acting in this manner we make it harder to insist that other countries respect human rights, international conventions around say conservation or nuclear non-proliferation and so on. It becomes the race to the bottom, a lawless Hobbesian international system based solely upon the idea of might is right.
Using exclusion and degeneration as political tools only leads to increased instability both internally and externally, it makes us all less safe.
I don't think identity politics has ever led to a gulag.