Asia Times: Oceania


	June 1, 2002	atimes.com

Oceania

Australia's asylum policy holds course
By Alexander Casella

SYDNEY - The decision of the Australian government not to reduce its standing annual intake of 12,000 refugees for the 2002-03 financial year comes at a time when practically all industrialized democracies are reviewing their asylum policies with a view of drastically cutting down their intake of refugees.

In a parallel development, Australia has also announced a major expansion of its immigration program, which has been set at a planning level of some 110,000 places for 2002-03. While the migration program will mostly apply to highly skilled immigrants with a high potential to contribute to Australia's economy, it will also include a larger number of demand-driven categories, such as spouses, fiancees and children, and thus fulfill the requirements of family reunions, especially among the country's most recent arrivals.

There is little doubt that one of the reasons, if not the main reason, why Australia has been able to preserve its current intake quota of refugees is due to the fact that it is today probably the only major industrialized country that still exercises a substantive degree of control over its borders, and hence over its migration and refugee policies. While other industrialized democracies, facing continuing uncontrolled population influxes that are severely straining their security and social infrastructures, are coming under increased internal public pressure to take action, albeit drastic and often haphazard, Australia can afford to continue to implement a coherent asylum/migration policy.

Managing migration is today one of the greatest challenges faced by the industrialized world. Ease of transportation, the global revolution in communications which has brought satellite TV even to the remotest villages, the enduring economic crisis of the Third World and protracted internal conflicts and social upheavals which have further fueled the lingering sense of hopelessness in the underdeveloped have led to a globalization of population displacement.

The end result is that a combined mass of illegal migrants, refugees and asylum seekers has been converging on the industrialized world in the search of an economic "Eldorado". Distinguishing "refugees" from illegal migrants within this mass movement is an increasingly daunting task for the industrialized countries on which they converge. According to the 1951 Conventions, refugees are people fleeing persecution, be it for political, religious or ethnic reasons.

Conversely, migrants, albeit illegal ones, are people in search of better economic opportunities. Most refugees still seek safety within their own geographic and cultural environment with the ultimate purpose of returning home when conditions permit. Thus most African refugees seek asylum in neighboring African countries and the majority of Afghan refugees sought shelter in neighboring Iran and Pakistan. However, an ever-increasing number of refugees, after having found asylum, become part of the on-going mass movement of illegal migrants. Thus their primary movement, which had been motivated by the imperative need to find safety, is followed by a secondary motivation which is in no way related to a flight from persecution and becomes of a migratory nature.

Based on the 1951 Conventions, the internal legislations of the industrialized democracies provide that every person who enters their territory requesting refugee status must be able to present his case and thus undergo a "refugee determination procedure". With literally every illegal immigrant arriving in an industrialized country now presenting a claim for refugee status, the reception and processing structures of the industrialized countries on which the arrivals converge have been swamped.

In 1983, the total number of asylum requests in Western Europe was a manageable 73,700. In 1992, it reached 692,000. Altogether some 2.4 million asylum requests were filed in Western Europe between 1991 and 1995. This number of course does not include the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who simply chose to go underground. As the number of refugee claims increased, so did processing costs. It is estimated that from 1990 to1998, those European countries spent between US$40 billion and $45 billion managing their asylum systems. In 2001 the cost was projected at some $10 billion.

While the exercise is staggeringly costly by any standard, it is even more so for two reasons. First, at best only 10 percent of the asylum seekers processed were found to have a genuine claim to refugee status. Second, even among those recognized as refuges, a sizable number were "secondary movers" - refugees who already had asylum but wished to further emigrate for reasons unrelated to persecution.

Ultimately, what the industrialized countries were confronted with were not so much refugees in desperate need for asylum but either refugees who already had asylum and were seeking to emigrate or illegal immigrants trying to pass themselves off as refugees. Granted, some segments of the European economies were not averse to the phenomenon. London's restaurant industry would probably collapse were it not for the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who accept work for 2 pounds ($2.93) an hour. Italy's agricultural crop is also mostly harvested by underpaid illegals.

Thus, at least until September 11, closing one's eyes to illegal immigration was more the rule than the exception among the Western European states. The two downsides of the approach were that minimum wage policies were undermined and that crime levels among the illegals were difficult to control. The problem was further compounded by the criminalization of the patterns of movements. Well-organized mafias with worldwide networks were netting billions of dollars in profits by capitalizing on the market for illegal migrants.

As a prosperous industrialized society, Australia was confronted by the same challenge as the Western Europeans and the Americans, namely how to retain control of its borders. While geography could not be discounted, it played a diminishing role. In an age of sophisticated mafias of people smugglers, organizing shiploads of illegal migrants from China or Indonesia to Australia is not substantively more difficult than planning similar shiploads of Kurds or Sri Lankans from the Eastern Mediterranean to Italy.

What did distinguish Australia from its industrialized counterparts was the political will to retain control over who enters the country. On this basis, Australia's asylum policy was based on three principals. First, of the intake quota of 12,000, 6,000 places would be attributed to refugees in particular need selected from abroad. Thus a refugee anywhere in the world could present an application for resettlement in Australia and did not have to be physically on Australian soil to do so. This was the same pattern adopted in the case of the Vietnamese boat people who were selected from holding centers in Southeast Asia and did not find their own way to the countries of resettlement.

The second 2,000 places would be allocated to "onshore" needs. According to Australian legislation, a foreigner who enters Australia legally and who makes an asylum request during the validity of his visa is given a special visa extension and will see his case processed. If recognized, he will be given asylum and if not qualified, he will have to leave the country.

The final contingent of 4,000 is for "offshore" cases. All illegal immigrants who arrive in Australia as part of a people-smuggling operation are arrested on arrival. The cause of detention is not, however, the asylum application but illegal entry. This group is still being accepted for processing for refugee status but is held in soft detention during the procedure, albeit only for security reasons. When identified before reaching land, these caseloads, which are all made up of "secondary" movers, are intercepted and moved to off-shore processing centers, namely Nauru, Manus and soon Christmas Island.

Ultimately, the Australian asylum system raises the fundamental question of who is in control? Is it the democratically-elected government of a state who decides who will enter its territory, or is it the individual asylum seeker/irregular migrant. Granted, the illegal crossing of a border is considered legitimate for a refugee in personal danger. But it is not legitimate for a refugee who already benefits from asylum and even less so for an illegal immigrant.

While Australia has been the first country in recent history to put illegal arrivals in soft detention pending their classification as "refugees", it is not the only one. Cuban boat people heading for the US are now intercepted on the high seas by the US Coast Guard and forced on board. Those who are presumed not to be refugees land back in Havana within 12 hours. Those who are presumed to be refugees go to Guantanamo, where they are placed in detention while they are being screened. If not recognized as refugees they are returned to Cuba and if they are recognized, they are given asylum in a third country excluding the US. In parallel, Washington has a yearly regular emigration program from Cuba. The US procedure is perfectly consonant with the 1951 Convention because it does ensure that a refugee is not returned to a country where he is persecuted. So the refugee does receive asylum, albeit not necessarily in his country of choice, with the provision that he cannot impose his presence on a preferred country of resettlement.

The concept of a "holding center", for which Australia was much maligned, is now looked upon by many industrialized countries as one of the solutions of the future, be it in the Pacific, the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. It would permit governments to identify refugees in need of asylum, cut down on expenses and, above all ensure that the principal of asylum not be abused by illegal migrants in order to either emigrate or stave off deportation.

While the concept is now increasingly actively pursued through on-going international negotiations, Australia stands out, after Canada, as proportionately the world's most generous country in granting resettlement to refugees. In 2000, Australia had 342 refugees per million inhabitants, Norway 333, the US 258, Sweden 166 and Japan less than one.

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