Tag: refugees

Australia to deal with its boatpeople this week

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on Monday said he hoped to begin sending asylum-seekers who arrive by boat to the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru later this week.

With Australia facing a record influx of asylum-seekers arriving by sea, Canberra last month announced plans to send them to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island in a policy aimed at stemming the flow.

Bowen tabled a document in parliament Monday designating Nauru as a regional processing country under the Migration Act so boatpeople can be sent to the small state to await their visa decision.

“Subject to both houses (of parliament) passing a resolution approving the designation, the designation will allow for the transfer of irregular maritime arrivals who arrived after 13 August to Nauru,” Bowen said.

Canberra announced its intention to transfer asylum-seekers to Nauru and Papua New Guinea in mid-August as part of a tough new policy to deter them from paying people-smugglers to attempt the dangerous sea voyage.

Since then 2,087 asylum-seekers have arrived by boat — close to capacity for the camps on Manus and Nauru, which will accommodate a total of 2,100 once completed.

Bowen would not comment on who would be part of the first transfer to Nauru or whether children would be sent but said that he hoped the first group would be transferred within days.

“Construction work on the temporary facility is nearing completion and the government expects to be able to begin transferring people to Nauru later this week,” Bowen said in a statement.

More than 9,796 asylum-seekers have arrived in Australia on boats in 2012, many of them Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians who have paid people-smugglers to ferry them from Indonesia to Australia.

Offshore processing is a sensitive issue in Australia, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard adopting the policy after months of bitter political debate and after several boats capsized en route, drowning scores of people.

The policy signals a return to the practice of the previous conservative government, which sent asylum-seekers to Nauru and Manus, that centre-left Labor rolled back soon after taking office in late 2007.

The opposition supports offshore processing but said the government’s promise that asylum-seekers won’t be resettled quicker just because they are processed on Nauru or PNG will see them stranded in the Pacific for years.

“The policy that (they) have adopted means people could expect to wait on Nauru for five years,” opposition spokesman Scott Morrison said. – AFP

South Africa swamped by African asylum seekers

The Refugees Appeal Board and the Standing Committee on Refugee Affairs are swamped by appeals to review previously rejected asylum applications, an official said on Thursday

This was causing a delay in issuing asylum certificates, home affairs director general Mkhuseli Apleni told reporters in Pretoria.

He said 87,602 asylum applications were being reviewed by the Refugees Appeal Board (RAB).

Another 68,740 applications which were initially rejected and deemed manifestly unfounded were being reviewed by the Standing Committee on Refugee Affairs (SCRA).

“If an application is found to be manifestly unfounded, the decision is automatically reviewed by the SCRA,” said Apleni.

“If the initial decision to reject an application is upheld by the RAB or the SCRA, a final rejection letter is issued to the applicant.”

He said the department was struggling with the processing of large numbers of applications.

“South Africa is the recipient of some of the highest volumes of asylum seekers in the world… at this stage we are receiving an average of between 3,500 and 4,000 new applications for asylum each month.” He said as of Monday next week, the department would operate its refugee reception offices at extended hours.

He said to ease the application process, all Southern African Development Community nationals would be assisted on Mondays and Tuesdays, while East Africans would be helped on Wednesdays and Saturdays and West Africans on Thursdays.

Apleni said Asians and other nationals who fell outside the African groups would be assisted on Fridays.

If applicants arrived at the Refugee Reception Offices on a day that had not been allocated to them, they would not be assisted. He said the department was especially concerned about the long queues at the Marabastad offices, and that police officers would be assigned there to manage those queues.