By Jennifer Thompson
On June 13, immigration minister Philip Ruddock announced a series of new requirements for around 8000 people, temporarily resident in Australia on humanitarian grounds, to either obtain permanent residency after a 10-year wait, or leave. He also revealed that he had cancelled the visas of two people jailed for criminal offences, after they had successfully appealed against deportation orders. Ruddock admitted that the decision had been partly influenced by racist MP Pauline Hanson's demand that convicted criminals be deported.
Just as this news was breaking, on June 13 a boat carrying 139 people from China was apprehended in the Torres Strait. This produced claims by the media, "government sources" and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer of a migration "racket" bringing "illegal immigrants" to breach Australia's unprotected borders.
It was left to Amnesty International to point out that arrival by boat without visas and wearing good clothes didn't automatically mean the arrivals were illegal immigrants.
"Irrespective of how well dressed they were, or the condition of their boat, they may have fled human rights violations. This is precisely why we have a system to determine the veracity of their claims", said Paul Tavatgis, AI's Queensland regional coordinator. They had a right to leave their own country by any way they could, he said, and Australia has an obligation under the 1957 Refugee Convention to hear their claims fairly.
AI also urged the government — in light of a recent UN Human Rights Commission decision condemning Australia's compulsory detention of asylum seekers — not to detain the arrivals at Port Hedland.
Nevertheless, the government has moved the people to Port Hedland, and Ruddock indicated their cases would be examined with a view to removing those with invalid claims "as quickly as possible" to ensure that the people "organising these sorts of illegal, clandestine operations" would be undone. In other words, Ruddock had already decided that the boat people were not refugees.
Family reunion cut
In May the government announced a cut of 5000 places within the preferential family reunion category for parents of current residents — from 6000 to 1000 — for the 1997-98 non-humanitarian migrant intake. At the same time, 8000 points-tested concessional family migrants' places were transferred from the family migration program to the skills section, and the weighting of English-language skills was increased.
The changes, on top of a net 8500 cut last year, which reduced the family migration and humanitarian programs in favour of an increased skilled migrant intake, will disproportionately hurt non-English speaking migrants, especially Asian migrants. Asian communities are the main users of preferential family migration.
The two-year wait for social security by new permanent residents has put some new arrivals into "absolutely dire hardship", according to Welfare Rights Centre director Michael Raper. Special benefit payments — designed to address individually assessed cases of severe hardship — for newly arrived migrants are described by the centre as so tight as to be unworkable.
Ruddock now plans to toughen the conditions for around 8000 people granted temporary residence on particular humanitarian grounds to become permanent residents.
Those people — mostly from China and Sri Lanka, but also Kuwait, Iran, Lebanon or the former Yugoslavia — will have to lodge a special application after October 1, and pay $2000 for a new visa which will last for 10 years from the date of their arrival, when they will be able to apply for permanent residency. In that time, they will be entitled to work and therefore receive Medicare benefits, but will be ineligible for social security, including government-run English language classes.
Frank Elvey, coordinator of the Asylum Seekers Centre, told Â鶹ӳ» Weekly that while the $2000 bond may be an obstacle for some of those affected, the long wait for social security would be a bigger problem. Some people in this category may have arrived up to November 30, 1993, leaving them up to a further six years of waiting — and then would not become eligible for social security for a further two years.
These people would be ineligible to attend government, including TAFE-run, English classes, leaving them dependent on the small number run by centres such as Elvey's or the private sector.
The small exception, said Elvey, would be those who had lodged applications for refugee status, entitling them to some financial assistance — means-tested, less than other government benefits, and only beginning six months after the application was lodged — under the Asylum Seekers Assistance Scheme.
The implication for these people — given the higher unemployment rates suffered by newer migrants, especially those from non-English speaking countries — said Elvey, was that those forced to survive may have to do so in the cash economy, with its accompanying illegality, highly exploitative nature and lack of access to occupational health and safety or workers compensation.
Further changes
While these changes would affect a relatively small number of people, said Elvey, they will be accompanied by other changes expected to take effect from July 1, making it far more difficult for asylum seekers to survive while their case is pending and to satisfy changes in the way refugee status decisions are made. Asylum seekers would find it more difficult to get permission to work, he said.
Those applying for refugee status must lodge their original application within 14 days if they want permission to work and therefore have access to Medicare health services. All required documents must be lodged with the application, often difficult for people newly arrived from disastrous humanitarian situations, who may also require counselling for trauma or torture and psychological assessments, Elvey explained.
Those applying should have legal advice before lodging their applications, he said, and it was often difficult even to obtain an appointment within the 14 days, especially for free legal advice.
Those who were unsuccessful could appeal to the independent Refugee Review Tribunal, but from July 1 will have to appeal within 14 days. Before appealing, applicants also will have to take into account the $1000 fee payable if their appeal is unsuccessful. The fee had not been presented by Ruddock as a way of recouping the cost of the tribunal, said Elvey, but as a deterrent to appealing.
The problem, he said, is that many people with very strong humanitarian cases do not know if they meet the stringent definition of a refugee and need to apply and then appeal to the RRT to find out.
The changes wouldn't stop organised abuse, Elvey said, which by its nature would be informed. Rather, they would affect genuine applicants, especially sufferers of trauma and torture.
While the government had been openly cutting the family migration program, less obvious cuts to the refugee and other humanitarian programs had also been implemented, said Elvey.
The 12,000 places reserved for the humanitarian program remain, but a quota of 2000 places for onshore applicants, previously part of other categories, is now coming from the 12,000. If the 2000 is exceeded, then the offshore humanitarian intake is reduced accordingly.
The families of refugees being sponsored are also now being drawn from the limited number of refugee and other humanitarian places; previously they were part of the family migration program.
Economics above all
Both changes reduce Australia's refugee intake, Elvey said. The government's approach marks a narrowly "economic rationalist" way of looking at immigration.
The Coalition has been able to do this by cynically exploiting community concern over high levels of unemployment (caused primarily by its and the previous Labor government's program of economic restructuring based on increasing productivity at the cost of jobs) and the racist anti-Asian scapegoating expressed by Hanson. They have denied the well-documented beneficial effect on the economy of immigration, as well as the social benefits.
The changes are part of the general trend, begun under the Labor government, of manipulating the migration program in favour of skilled migrants — weighted toward the English-speaking, with an obvious bias against Asian and other ethnic minorities — and business migrants. This is what big business has been calling for, and Ruddock has been crowing about his decisions to "rebalance" immigration away from the humanitarian program and family migration.
Skilled migrants are favoured by big business for purely selfish reasons. Rather than training or retraining the unemployed, including many recent migrants, to fill job vacancies, business has used skilled migration to fill short-run labour imbalances, cutting its costs at the expense of the unemployed and potential humanitarian and family migrants. Business also welcomes the $354 million — estimated by Ruddock's department — that business migrants brought into the country in 1994-95.
But migration is about far more than economic rationalism, especially if the benefits are manipulated to favour a greedy corporate class. It may not be possible to make a watertight "economic" case for refugee immigration, but its humanitarian, social and political importance especially in a time of record numbers of refugees worldwide, leave narrow, ruling-class economic and political interests for dead.