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Refugees set to get visas under new Australian policy

Australia's longest-serving immigration detainees learned yesterday that visas await them under changes casting Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government in a more compassionate light.

Around 120 mostly Middle Eastern failed asylum-seekers not wanted by their countries of origin are set to get temporary-stay visas to get them out of the detention centers where they have been held for more than three years.

"What we have been looking at is a situation where a person has been judged not to be a refugee ... yet for practical purposes that person can't be sent back to the country from whence he came," Howard told reporters.

The prime minister stressed there would be no let up in the mandatory detention regime under which those arriving without a visa are kept locked up until their refugee claims are adjudicated.

He also pledged to maintain the offshore detention center in the small South Pacific nation of Nauru and to continue turning away asylum-seeker-laden boats from Australia's shores.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the visas would not be available to those still challenging rulings and would only go to those who promised to return home as soon as that was practicable.

"It's important to mention that this will not affect a large number of detainees," she said. "One of the conditions to the visa is that people accept the umpire's decision ... and agree to return when return to their country of origin becomes feasible."

The changes nevertheless reflect a less draconian stance now that the flow of boats full of mostly Middle East asylum-seekers was staunched two years ago. Detention centers are empty except for those who have exhausted all avenues of appeal against being denied refugee status.

Of the around 120 detainees who have been held for more than three years, most are Iranian converts to Christianity who cannot be repatriated because they risk arrest, torture or even death if they return home.

In Iran, as in other Moslem countries, renouncing Islam is a crime.

The government has argued that the Christian converts are not being accorded special treatment but that their religious affiliation heightens the level of risk they face if they are returned to their homeland.

Vanstone said the changes would not lead to the for six years because India will not take him back.

Greens leader Bob Brown said the new bridging visa for asylum-seekers would leave recipients in a "cruel limbo" because it didn't guarantee them permanent residency.

"What Amanda Vanstone is saying is, if you don't want to stay and rot for years behind the razor wire, renounce all your legal rights as a citizen, as a human being, and we'll let you out," he said.

"It's inhumane and the government's harrowing record of mistreatment of asylum seekers to this country continues."
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