The Refugee Action Coalition held a public forum on June 3 titled: “Bridging Visas, Community Detention: what rights do asylum seekers in the community have?”
About 12,000 asylum seekers who have arrived since August 13 last year are living in the community on “bridging visas”. August 13 was when the government introduced the “no advantage” policy and ceased processing refugee applications.
Refugees on bridging visas receive less than the paltry Newstart allowance with little support. They could be sent to detention on Nauru or Manus Island at any time.
The forum heard from speakers who worked with these refugees and asylum seekers on bridging visas.
NSW Asylum Seekers Centre CEO Melanie Noden said about half of the refugees on bridging visas her centre supported had arrived in Australia by boat. The centre recently received an influx of 500 new clients.
She said the government’s policy toward these asylum seekers made life difficult for them.
“For boat arrivals, 57% of them are denied work rights. We know that those with work rights are healthier, more productive, less sick, have better mental health and need less help.”
One-third have no access to Medicare, she said. About 400 of Noden’s clients were living without welfare support and were seeking help from available charities that were already stretched. Emergency housing support was also running low and due to run out in eight weeks if the trend continued.
“We are failing asylum seekers,” she said.
Nikki Anai from the Hazara Youth Perspectives Organisation said the mostly 20- and 21-year-olds she worked with faced abject poverty and no work rights, but were mostly confused by the inequality in entitlements.
Anai said the “no right to work” policy is especially abominable because it is a source of inhumane suffering, keeping them in a cycle of poverty, homelessness, depression and even mental illness.
She said many of the men she helped had been expecting to arrive in Australia to find work to send money back to their familes. “Women and children may be dying overseas while men wait to be processed in detention centres. Whole families have to be saved, not just those arriving by boat.”
Reverend Dr John Jegasothy from the Vaucluse Uniting Church was a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka. He visits Sydney’s Villawood detention centre each fortnight and helps newly settled Tamil refugees in the community.
He said Australia’s process of “enhanced screenings” discriminates against refugees arriving by boat. Almost as soon as they come onshore after a long, uncertain journey in which they are not sure they will survive the trip, they are interrogated and interviewed in an “enhanced screening”.
People on the boats are traumatised, have been beaten or torture, Jegasothy said. They are not in a state to stand up to questioning. Yet their claims to asylum can be rejected based on how they answer questions posed to them. Most of them do not know that they have the right to a lawyer, so they do not know how to represent themselves properly and may not be able to demonstrate their protection claims.
Former immigration department official Greg Lake told the ABC’s 7.30 that genuine refugees may have been rejected and sent back to danger. He resigned from immigration and said: "We might have another prime ministerial apology on this kind of thing [in 20 or 30 years]."