A further 27,000 people are in Australia after arriving at airports and claiming asylum in a trend that has seen an increase in “unmeritorious” claims from people using tourist visas to come from countries including Malaysia,China and India.
The government reviews follow a major investigation byThe Age,The Sydney Morning Herald and60 Minutes into allegations of widespread visa rorting linked to sex trafficking,drug crimes and the exploitation of foreign workers.
Rizvi said theTrafficked investigation revealed individual cases that were part of “industrial scale” visa rorting.
“TheTrafficked investigation highlights the case ofone migration agent who has been involved in around 150 bogus asylum applications,” he said.
“But with almost 100,000 bogus asylum cases lodged since 2014,there would have to be hundreds of such agents operating in Australia,with some lodging possibly thousands of applications.
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“Stories of unscrupulous migration agents are not new. What is new is the industrial scale at which this is now taking place and the extraordinary number of unsuccessful asylum seekers now living in the shadows of Australian society.”
The migration schemes encourage people to fly to Australia on tourist visas,claim asylum upon arrival and work while their claims are processed,leaving them exposed to exploitation because they have no work rights.
Migrant Workers Centre chief Matthew Kunkel,who acts for exploited workers,said it was impossible to be sure of the number in the country because it was “difficult to count what you can’t see” in a visa system that left people in legal limbo.
“There is a real failure of regulation,so more needs to be done to drive out the bad actors who prey on people and their hopes,” he said.
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“And we need a system where you don’t wait for two years for a decision.”
A report by the Migrant Workers Centre in September,called“Lives in Limbo”,found 65 per cent of workers on temporary visas suffered from wage theft.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced the Parkinson review on Monday and is preparing to announce the separate inquiry into migration scams,while Immigration Minister Andrew Giles signalled new measures to protect vulnerable workers.
Giles cited theTrafficked investigation to blame the former Coalition government for running down the visa system to the point where it was being “exploited time and time again by unscrupulous operators and people traffickers”.
Rizvi based his estimate of 100,000 workers based on figures from the Department of Home Affairs and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal showing the number of rejected claims from people who remain in the country.
Clarification:An earlier version of this story reported that visa scams had brought up to 100,000 workers into Australia using false claims. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and other refugee groups say this figure is not correct and is misleading. This masthead accepts that not all 100,000 people who have arrived in Australia and who have not had their protection visa applications approved are involved in visa scams. While this masthead reported the views of former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi on the visa application numbers,we accept that others,including the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre,dispute his conclusions.
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