BY SEAN HEALY
Refugee advocates have condemned as "a policy to manufacture xenophobia" federal government withholding of welfare services to refugees released from the Woomera detention centre in South Australia.
Ninety percent of the 1300 held at Woomera qualify for refugee status; most come from Iraq and Afghanistan. Under new laws introduced in December, however, refugees who arrive without papers can only qualify for a three-year temporary protection visa, which makes them ineligible for unemployment benefits, temporary subsidised housing, and assistance with learning English and finding employment.
The first group released from Woomera with temporary protection visas, 27 Afghans, were bussed to Adelaide and dumped there with nothing more than $239 each.
The government plans to bus the 1000 Woomera detainees expected to receive such visas in the next few months to Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, and has sought to bar them from Melbourne or Sydney, where the largest Iraqi and Afghan communities live.
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock has also written to welfare agencies, including the Wesley Mission and the SA Migrant Resource Centre, urging them to turn the temporary visa holders away, something which they have refused to do.
The SA-based Network for International Protection of Refugees has called the government's attitude to refugee agencies a "calculated attempt to cause distress to those charitable organisations".
"The Commonwealth and state governments do have the power and capacity to assist in resettling those refugees", a May 8 statement from the network said. "Denying assistance ... to these refugees will cause considerable stress within the community and, to some extent, will generate anti-refugee feeling."
The network says that the treatment meted out to temporary protection holders is discriminatory and in breach of Australia's obligations under the United Nations' refugee convention, which specifies that refugees should have the same legal rights and entitlements as the rest of the population and that, once granted protection, no distinction should be made as to how a refugee entered the country, whether illegally or not.
"Those refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq who arrived by boat must be treated the same as other refugees and all other Australian nationals", the statement said.