By Sean Healy
In a bitter irony, parliament has presented its new laws and regulations governing asylum seekers as part of a "solution" to the "refugee problem". They are nothing of the kind: the new regime will make it almost impossible for most of those driven by dire poverty, political oppression or wars to find refuge in Australia.
The Border Protection Act, passed by the Senate on November 25, extends the powers of authorities to turn back boats bringing asylum seekers to Australia's shores.
In addition, regulations signed in October and affirmed by parliament on November 24 remove the right of those who enter the country without documents to seek a permanent protection visa. Now they will be able to apply only for a three-year temporary visa, with drastically reduced access to welfare and health services and no right to bring in family members.
The government is seeking to redefine the "problem". No longer is the "problem" the existence of millions of refugees worldwide, or the conditions which have caused this human tragedy; no longer is it even how to provide protection to those affected.
No, now the "problem" is that a tiny proportion of these refugees are trying to settle here. The doors are being slammed shut, locked and bolted.
This has been done with the connivance of entire Australian political establishment. Labor's Barney Cooney stated in the Senate on November 25, "The opposition is happy to support [the Border Protection Act]. We only wish that, in the future, the minister would accept that we want a bipartisan policy on issues of immigration and refugees ..."
Labor's Chris Schacht protested about Coalition point-scoring: "There was no bipartisan approach on the three-year visa for refugees. The minister and the prime minister were not in favour of a bipartisan approach; they wanted to divide the Australian community. They wanted the Labor Party, the Democrats, the Greens, Senator Harradine — all those so-called 'bleeding hearts' — to be trapped into looking like they were soft on illegal immigrants."
Labor was too "smart", though, escaping the "trap" by voting for the temporary visa regulations and for the Border Protection Bill. Now, no-one can accuse it of being "soft" on "illegal" immigrants.
The Democrats criticised some of the government's plans and moved in the Senate to overturn the temporary visa regulations. But they too voted for the Border Protection Bill, Andrew Bartlett stating, "We are as willing as any other party to support measures that address movements of illegal migrants".
Only Brian Harradine and the Greens' Bob Brown voted against both the regulations and the bill. Brown described the three year temporary visa as "disgraceful".
A drop in the ocean
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, in 1998 there were 21 million people "of concern" — those seeking or already granted refugee status. This figure rises year upon year.
The majority of this 21 million are in the Third World: 64% of persons "of concern" and 70% of the refugees. Australia hosts 61,800 with official refugee status and 2300 asylum seekers: only 0.2% of the UNHCR's pool.
Australia has allotted 12,000 places in the 1999-2000 migration intake for its humanitarian program, the same number as in 1998-99, and pronounces itself extremely generous. But 12,000 is a tiny figure.
The numbers seeking "illegal" entry into Australia are increasing, particularly those arriving by boat.
Between November 1989 and September 1997, only 2913 asylum seekers arrived by boat, less than 5% of all asylum seekers who arrived during that period. In 1998-99, 926 people arrived by boat. Between July 1 and November 11, 1643 people arrived by boat, more than the total of "illegal" boat arrivals in the previous three years but still nothing in comparison to global refugee flows.
Outlawing migrants
That the number of "illegal" arrivals is increasing should come as no surprise. It is a direct result of government policy, which has placed more and higher hurdles in the way of legal migration.
Since March 1996, the Howard government has reduced and re-weighted Australia's immigration intake. In 1998-99, the government planned to allow 80,000 to settle, a reduction from 152,000 in 1988-89 and from 96,000 in 1995-96.
Within this figure, it has reduced the number who can qualify under the family migrants program, in favour of skilled migrants, who are generally the wealthier and better educated. The skilled stream increased from 22% of total intake in 1996-97 to 50% in the first quarter of 1997-98.
This, combined with withholding welfare from newly arrived migrants for the first two years and other measures, has drastically reduced the chances of legal, non-refugee migration for the Third World's worse off, forcing many who wish to migrate to seek classification as refugees.
Winning such a classification has also been made more difficult. Of the 12,000, most must satisfy strict UN criteria: they have to be in a country other than their country of origin and be able to prove that they themselves have directly suffered (or will suffer, on their return) from one of five designated forms of oppression.
Those able to qualify for the least stringent category, the special assistance category, have fallen from 3375 in 1996-97 to 1834 in 1998-99, and are planned to fall to 900 in 1999-2000.
Changes to the way that this 12,000 is calculated have encouraged people to try their luck entering "illegally" rather than waiting overseas for entry into the Offshore Humanitarian Resettlement Program.
The Refugee Council of Australia says it warned the government in 1996 that counting those granted refugee status onshore as part of the offshore program would "create a significant 'pull' factor ... by reducing the numbers of places available for offshore refugees" and that "The 'problem' is of the government's making".
Further, the government's definition rules out so-called "economic refugees", those fleeing dire poverty rather than direct political oppression. Of the 6200 people who arrived illegally by boat since 1989, only 15.6% have been granted entry, 37% are still in detention and 47.3% have been deported. Since the start of 1995, not a single person arriving by boat from China has been granted official refugee status.
Since late 1994, officials at Port Hedland Detention Centre have also applied a particularly stringent criterion for asylum. If a precise set of words is not used, then the asylum process cannot be accessed; legal advice is routinely denied to those incarcerated. As a result, only 6.1% of arrivals at Port Hedland have been recognised as refugees.
All of these hurdles are not high enough for the federal government, however. The bulk of the new "illegal" arrivals are from Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving camps in Iran before their scheduled expulsion in March 2000.
That they have no travel documents is understandable — they would have had to apply to the governments of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban to get them. There is also little doubt that they fit even the rigid refugee definition enforced by Australian immigration law: by June 1999, 97% of Iraqi and 92% of Afghan arrivals had met the criteria.
Thus, having successfully denied entry to the majority of those who are fleeing the Third World, the government's new laws seek to slam the door even on those who fit its rigid definitions.
Less attractive
The minister for justice and customs, Amanda Vanstone, stated on November 9 that the government's aim is to "make Australia a less attractive destination for illegal immigrants". No doubt the new detention camp in the middle of the South Australian desert will help, especially in summer with no airconditioning.
Why does it have this aim? Immigration minister Philip Ruddock's two most often stated reasons are to reduce the resources spent on the new arrivals and to end the "people smuggling" trade.
However, the $68 million increase in projected cost for 1999-2000 is largely caused by the government's mandatory detention policy, and could be drastically reduced by allowing "illegal" refugees into the community rather than locking them up.
There can be few effective measures against "people smugglers" — the only ones who will be caught are the poor Indonesian fishermen who sail the boats. As long as people are desperate to enter a country, there will always be those willing to profit from helping them.
A more powerful motivation for the government is winning back those who voted One Nation at the last election, by appealing to, and leading, racist, anti-refugee sentiment. One Nation NSW MLC David Oldfield has complained that the Coalition has stolen his party's refugee policy: "When I see Mr Ruddock talking on television about this issue he looks and sounds like somebody from One Nation".
Beyond that, though, is the uniform response by all Western governments to the world's refugee crisis: "let it happen elsewhere". While their representatives parrot the joys of open borders to capital at the World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle, Western governments are closing their borders to people.
Widespread popular sympathy still exists in Western countries for those suffering in the Third World — as evidenced by high support here for the Kosovar and East Timorese refugees. Overturning this sympathy is the primary motivation for the government's new measures.
One after another, different groups are cordoned off, labelled and illegitimised —"illegals", "queue-jumpers", "forum shoppers" — so that, soon, the only ones deemed "genuine" will be the ones who never arrive.
The government has seized the chance to argue against internationalism, to argue that "we", the "nation", need to stick together, to defend "our" way of life against outsiders. The government hopes to enlist us in its dirty little war to defend privilege and leave the rest of the world to its fate.
The choice is simple. Support shutting the door, and maybe dither about how many locks should be bolted. Or call for opening the door, so that all those who, quite justifiably, seek a better life can be helped to do so.