There have been numerous legal responses to asylum seekers in Australia, all of which have been ineffective in achieving fair outcomes for both Australian citizens and refugees seeking asylum in Australia. The basis for all legislation regarding refugees in Australia is the Migration Act 1958, which outlines powers such as being able to cap the number of refugees accepted into Australia each year, and defines a refugee as somebody “being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”, which is written according to the United Nation’s definition.
Since then a number of amendments and additions have been made to this act, including the Migration Amendment Act 1992, Pacific Solution, Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Act 2009 and the Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA) Australia and Papua New Guinea. All of these legal responses to the issue of asylum seekers in Australia have proven ineffective as they fail to achieve fair outcomes for either those seeking asylum in Australia or the present citizens of Australia. Migration Amendment Act 1992
In 1992 the Keating Government introduced the Migration Amendment Act 1992 which enforced the mandatory detention of anybody who attempted to enter Australia without a valid visa. This was introduced as a means to deal with the rising numbers of unauthorized Indochinese boat arrivals in Australian waters. The Migration Amendment Act 1992 originally had a 273 day detention limit, which was shortly after removed with the Migration Reform Act 1992. This allowed for asylum seekers whose applications for refugee status in Australia were rejected to be detained indefinitely.
The Term Paper on Asylum Seekers – a Contemporary Social Issues in Australian Society
The Oxford English Dictionary defines asylum as the shelter afforded by a country to someone who has had to leave their country of origin due to danger from political or other reasons (Oxford English Dictionary 2012). Structuralism, according to Babbie (2006), is a theory supporting the establishment of communities of different cultures. This paper will discuss the concept of asylum seekers in ...
These amendments have failed to achieve fair outcomes for the asylum seekers as the detention camps which asylum seekers were placed were known to have caused some psychological harm. 4 Shayan Badraie, a five year-old Iranian boy whose family sought asylum in Australia in March, 2000, was detained for almost two years in Woomera detention centre in South Australia. 5 While held in the detention centre he was exposed to and witnessed ‘riots, protests and acts of self-harm.
Badraie, his mother and his sister were released in January, 2002, while the rest of his family was released the following August. Five years later he was still suffering post-traumatic stress from his experiences in the detention centre. Shayan Badraie’s father says that he won’t “drink water or eat” and “just sits in a corner not speaking. The psychological effects on Shayan and his family led him to sue the Federal Government and the Australasian Correctional Management for $70,000 in compensation for his suffering, as well as the costs for ongoing counselling.
Through Shayan Badraie’s legal case against the Federal Government and the Australasian Correctional Management we can see that fair outcomes were not achieved for Badraie and his family, which demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the Migration Amendment Act 1992 as a legal approach to asylum seekers in Australia. Pacific Solution At the centre of the Howard Government’s political campaign in 2001 was the Pacific Solution, a set of amendments to the Migration Act 1958.
This legal response to asylum seekers was provoked by the Tampa Affair in which a boat carrying 438 asylum seekers was refused entry to Australia and instead redirected to Nauru. The response introduced offshore processing centres, a system of temporary protection visas and a policy of turning back boats where possible. 10 The Pacific Solution was not effective for either the Australian citizens or the asylum seekers as no fair outcomes were achieved in its establishment.
The Essay on Asylum Seekers Australia Refugee Refugees
Refugees are people who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership to a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former ...
The Pacific Solution is estimated to have cost in excess of $500 million to process asylum seekers offshore, which came directly from tax payers’ pockets. The money spent on this project could have alternatively been used to settle three times as many asylum seekers in Australia. 11 Not only was this process expensive, but it also would have cost double that of processing the asylum seekers on Australian soil. 12 The politics behind this response to asylum seekers was also damaging to Australia’s reputation, drawing international criticism about the harsh actions taken against those seeking refugee status in our country.
Australia was accused by Norway of denying the human right of seeking refugee status. 14 These accusations were based on the United Nation’s 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees’ description of a refugee being somebody who is in “fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”, of which the asylum seekers in the Tampa Affair filled the criteria of.
A study in published in 2004 found that children detained in the detention centres were deprived of multiple human rights. 16 The Pacific Solution was an ineffective response to asylum seekers in Australia as it delivered unsatisfactory results to both asylum seekers and Australian citizens. The solution blatantly wasted tax payers’ money which resulted in a loss to those seeking asylum in the country, failed to deliver human rights to asylum seekers and was damaging to Australia’s reputation on an international level.
Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Act 2009 With the election of Rudd Government in 2008, the Pacific Solution was overturned as it was felt that “the Pacific Solution was also ineffective and wasteful”, and aimed to replace it with a more forbearing policy. The following year the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Act 2009 was passed, which abolished the need for asylum seekers to pay for the costs of their detention.
While aiming to bring justice to the asylum seekers being detained, the legislation is proven ineffective as it is followed with a sudden influx of asylum seeking boats which begin to reappear in the Australian waters. 19 To combat the rise in asylum seekers, Kevin Rudd announced a timed period of suspension on accepting new asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, which also included detaining any arrivals from those countries until the time period elapsed.
The Essay on Asylum Seekers
A topic that’s been constantly debated over the last few years in Australia is the treatment of Asylum seekers. The opinion piece and the cartoon share a similar stance on the issue. ‘Australia’s ugly secret: we still warehouse asylum seekers’ by Julian Burnside and a cartoon by Andrew Dyson, both from the Age newspaper share the idea of cruel treatment by Australian official to the in need ...
This legal response taken by the Rudd Government failed to achieve fair outcomes for asylum seekers as those seeking refuge from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan were unjustly detained for set periods of time and their applications for asylum were put on the backlog. It also fails to achieve fair outcomes for Australian citizens as the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Act 2009 fails to prove itself as a viable replacement for the Pacific Solution due to the fact that the number of asylum seekers once again begins to rise despite promises otherwise.
Because of these factors, we can that this legal response to asylum seekers was ineffective in achieving fair outcomes for the Australian citizens and the asylum seekers. Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA) Australia and Papua New Guinea With the re-establishment of the Rudd Government in 2013, Kevin Rudd has created a policy known as the Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA) Australia and Papua New Guinea (also known as the PNG Solution).
The agreement states that all future asylum seekers headed to Australia will be redirected to Papua New Guinea where they will be processed.
If they are found as a genuine refugee they will be settled in Papua New Guinea, otherwise they will be deported to their country of origin or another country other than Australia. This policy prevents asylum seekers from ever being settled in Australia. As a signatory of the United Nations’ Refugee Convention, Australia is violating the human rights of asylum seekers being able to arrive by boat. According to international lawyers, this is one of the many legal implications which Australia will struggle in dealing with.
Not only will the PNG Solution face many legal implications through the process, but it is also estimated that the arrangement will cost Australian tax payers almost $500 million dollars each year to keep them in Papua New Guinea. This legal approach to dealing with refugees seeking asylum in Australia is not only ineffective in supplying the human rights of asylum seekers who may never be able to be settled in Australia due to the policy, but it also fails to give fair outcomes to Australian citizens as it is costing Australia an increased budget to maintain the asylum seekers in a foreign country.
The Essay on Asylum seeker
Only a person who can claim that they have a well-founded fear of persecution can claim asylum. The majority of asylum seekers come to the UK from four main countries. These are Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Sri Lanka. Different people see the asylum seekers in different situations. Some see them and immediately give them sympathy and say that they would do the same if they were in the same ...
The legal responses to asylum seekers in Australia in terms of achieving fair outcomes for both Australian citizens and the asylums seekers have thus far proven themselves ineffective. The asylum seekers have suffered psychological harm, loss of rights and unjust treatment, while Australian citizens are suffering a damaged international reputation and unnecessarily wasted tax dollars.
