Australia | Asylum seekers and refugees MYTHS AND FACTS + - TopicsExpress

Australia | Asylum seekers and refugees MYTHS AND FACTS + SOLUTIONS MYTH 1 Asylum seekers are ‘illegal immigrants. * Asylum seekers are not immigrants. Immigrants leave by choice and are able to return home at any time. Asylum seekers leave because they are forced to for fear of persecution and cannot return due to that fear. MYTH 2 People who arrive by boat are not ‘genuine refugees. * There is no such thing as a ‘genuine’ or ‘non-genuine’ refugee. Either you are a refugee with the legal right of protection or you are not a refugee at all. In any case, the allegation that boat arrivals are not genuine in their appeals for protection from persecution is untrue. In any one year since the late 1990s, between 70 and 97 per cent of asylum seekers arriving by boat have been found to be refugees and granted protection. The average in recent years is closer to 90 per cent. MYTH 3 Asylum seekers have only themselves to blame for lengthy detention because they lodge endless appeals. * Given that a negative decision can literally be a life and death matter for an asylum seeker, an independent review process is essential for ensuring the correct assessment is made. This is all the more important given that the initial assessment of asylum claims is undertaken by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) which is susceptible to political interference and the ills of the bureaucracy. MYTH 4 When asylum seekers destroy their documentation they are cheating the system. * It is recognised by both the Refugee Convention and the Australian Government that asylum seekers are not to be punished for their ‘illegal’ entry or irregular travel because they have good cause (see Myth 1). This is because asylum seekers will often have to flee quickly and are unable to obtain the necessary documentation before leaving; especially if that requires approaching their home government who may be the source of their persecution. At other times, asylum seekers will destroy their documentation because they fear being sent back home or are forced to do so by people smugglers who want to ensure there is no paper trail that might lead authorities to their eventual arrest. MYTH 5 Boat arrivals might be terrorists or pose other security risks * No terrorist has ever gained entry into Australia by boat. Boat arrivals are subject to the most scrutinised security checks of all arrivals. The very act of arriving without documentation alerts authorities to undertake rigorous security checks. As counter-terrorism expert Dr Michael McKinley has previously stated, the chance of terrorists arriving by boat is “infinitesimally small. MYTH 6 Boat people are queue jumpers; they take the place of refugees patiently waiting in overseas camps * There is no just and orderly queue. Only a tiny fraction of the world’s refugees have access to resettlement options. In any case, over the last five years the number of places allocated in our migration intake to refugees overseas awaiting resettlement does not reduce when visas are granted to refugees who arrive in Australia by boat or plane. The Australian government sets the number of refugees to be resettled from overseas each year (in 2012/13 there are 12,000 places38), and this number has remained constant despite increased numbers of boat arrivals. MYTH 7 Asylum seekers don’t use the proper channels — they come via ‘the back door. * Those who seek asylum onshore in Australia are in fact applying via the ‘front door.’ By definition, you cannot be a refugee unless you are outside of your home country.52 That means all asylum seekers must cross an international border to seek asylum. You cannot apply for refugee status if you are inside your own country. Applying for asylum after you have entered another country - not lining up in a ‘queue’ to be resettled elsewhere - is the standard way to seek asylum. It is how the vast majority of the world’s asylum seekers find protection. SOLUTIONS: SOLUTION 1 End mandatory detention. SOLUTION 2 Adopt community processing as the norm. SOLUTION 3 Equitably share the international refugee burden . SOLUTION 4 Invest in a serious regional protection framework. SOLUTION 5 Provide alternative legal pathways to seek asylum. The full report can be read in the pdf link below. content/uploads/2013/07/MythBusterJuly2013FINAL.pdf