By Iggy Kim
At first glance, the recent federal budget looks rosy for refugees. The provisions for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) have extended the Asylum Seeker Assistance (ASA) scheme to "a limited number of people in urgent need of assistance during review of their failed protection visa applications". A closer look reveals the hollowness of this gesture, since asylum seekers who arrive illegally (the majority) are denied the chance to apply for a protection visa.
In the second half of 1994, DIMA officials at the Port Hedland detention centre (where almost all "illegals" are sent) adopted a screening process so stringent that if asylum seekers fail to use certain words that "engage Australia's protection obligations", they are not given legal assistance, notified of their legal rights or given the opportunity to apply for asylum.
According to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), this has resulted in less than 6.1% of arrivals at Port Hedland being recognised as refugees. Since the start of 1995, no Chinese asylum seeker who has arrived by boat has been granted refuge status.
Many of the few who do succeed in applying and have their request rejected, are deterred from appealing to the Refugee Review Tribunal by the $1000 fee they must pay if their review is unsuccessful. If an asylum seeker wishes to go further and appeal to the Federal Court, he or she is denied access to the ASA scheme.
The budget allocates an extra $5 million to the government's "Living in Harmony" project launched last August. The project is a series of grants, organisational partnerships and media campaigns to promote "community harmony", "tolerance" and the celebration of "diversity".
Deterrence and exclusion
The talk of harmony and tolerance is hypocritical in the face of the racist scare campaign against "boat people" being whipped up by the capitalist media and Canberra's drive to seal the coastline against "people smugglers".
There is huge inequality between the predominantly European First World and the Third World countries it exploits. Racism is used to justify privileged countries' erection of a fortress to keep out the impoverished majority of humanity.
It has become harder for Third World people to migrate to Australia due to the exorbitant fees, narrow eligibility criteria and restrictions on social security for those who do make it in.
Since September 1994, all "unlawful non-citizens" — illegal arrivals and visa over-stayers — have been subject to mandatory detention at one of four detention centres: Villawood in Sydney, Maribyrnong in Melbourne, Perth airport and Port Hedland in north-west WA. Courts have power over this form of detention.
Before May 1992, only those who arrived by sea faced mandatory detention. The removal of this specific targeting of "boat people" in 1994 was accompanied by a series of indirect, but equally harsh, attacks on them.
The Port Hedland detention centre segregates new arrivals in an internal compound, sometimes for months. Since 1995, this compound has been separated from the rest of the centre by fences topped with razor wire. It has been alleged that segregated detainees are locked indoors, with only three half-hour breaks, and denied access to TV, radio and newspapers.
On a visit to the Port Hedland detention centre last December, Gabrielle Cullen of the National Council of Churches questioned DIMA officials about the conditions and number of segregated detainees. Officials flatly refused to provide any information or allow access to the detainees.
A preliminary interview process has been established by the DIMA to undermine new detainees' right to asylum. A single DIMA official applies a strictly literal interpretation of the Migration Act. Unless the "right" terminology is uttered, the asylum seeker is denied the opportunity to apply for asylum.
In the interview, the DIMA official withholds legal assistance and information about the right to such assistance, unless it is directly requested.
Section 256 of the Migration Act states that legal assistance will be provided "at the request of the person in immigration detention". It also states that "each detainee should be informed ... of their entitlement to seek legal advice, except those detainees referred to in section 193(1)". Section 193(1) refers to illegal boat arrivals.
DIMA has even prevented third parties from providing legal advice to detainees, on the basis that no such advice had been requested.
In early 1996, a refugee advocacy group lodged a complaint over this practice with the HREOC. The HREOC subsequently sent a letter to the detainees via the Port Hedland detention centre manager, requesting that it be delivered unopened. The manager refused because he was concerned that the letter might alert the detainees to their right to request a lawyer.
After failing to resolve the dispute, the HREOC took action in the federal court and won in June 1996.
The federal government immediately introduced legislation to amend the Migration Act to prevent the HREOC and the commonwealth ombudsman from initiating communications with detained boat people. With the support of the Labor opposition, this amendment was passed in the lower house but delayed in the Senate by the winter recess. During the recess, the DIMA and HREOC agreed on a protocol and the bill was put to rest.
Now, even when requests for legal help have been made by detainees, there are often long delays and lawyers' access to detainees is obstructed.
This preliminary interview process has led to soaring numbers of arbitrary deportations. Even so, there is still a family of four at the Port Hedland detention centre which has been there since November 1994. The two young sons have spent all or most of their lives inside.
'Overrun' by a trickle
The current anti-boat people hysteria is revealed to be racist paranoia by the tiny numbers involved. Total arrivals by boat between 1989 and May 12 have been 3472 (and 77 children born here during that time). A mere 723 have been allowed to stay. The point of departure of these arrivals included China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Turkey, West Papua, Kurdistan, Poland and Rumania.
Compare this to the number of people who illegally overstay their visas, predominantly from Britain and the US. At the end of 1997, the DIMA estimated that 51,000 over-stayers are living in Australia.
Where are the howls of indignation from the capitalist media about the "over-stayer invasion"? Is the silence because the vast majority are white Europeans? Of course, we should not be worried by anyone living here "illegally", since this country can afford to accommodate many more people, but the double standard shows the racism that drives the media onslaught.
Compare the number of illegal arrivals in Australia to that in other parts of the world: Germany intercepted 35,000 last year but still took in just under 150,000 asylum seekers, this in spite of the mass anti-immigrant hysteria there.
More than 750,000 Liberians entered the Ivory Coast and Guinea without papers in the first half of this decade and were granted refuge. These countries are massively exploited Third World countries with a minute fraction of Australia's wealth.
The utter absurdity of the fortress mentality becomes even clearer when we compare Australia's economic output per capita to those of the countries that most "boat people" leave. Australia's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is much greater than the combined per capita GDPs of China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Turkey, Poland and Rumania.
This is the nub of the issue. The deterrence and exclusion of immigrants is ultimately about protecting the First World ruling class's ill-gotten loot, justified on the racist pretext that masses of "disease-ridden", "lazy" immigrants from the exploited countries are threatening to overrun "our" borders and bludge off "our" hard-earned wealth.